Bel-Aire Polka Days

It was a no-brainer for Eddie Blazonczyk Jr.'s Versatones (pictured) to get the headlining spot at the Bel-Aire Polka Days festival: The Blazonczyk family runs Bel-Aire Enterprises, the Bridgeview polka empire that houses an indie polka record label and has put on the festival every summer for the past 40 years. Both the fest and the label were founded by Eddie Blazonczyk Sr., a national polka legend and the founder of the Grammy-winning Versatones. In the meantime, Blazonczyk Jr. has grown into a blazing concertina (a smaller, more complicated version of the accordion) player himself. His voice has the same light charm as his father's, but on tunes like "Another Day on the Road," from last year's slickly packaged, celebrated Highways & Dancehalls, his road-weary outlook is a welcome respite from the sentimental "Be My Wife" and "Please Be My Love" songs that might turn away cynical outsiders.

The Versatones' music is rooted in the "push" and "honky" styles that erupted in the '50s Polish community in Ukrainian Village and makes for profoundly good dance music. The band favors push, which has two stentorian trumpets playing precomposed lines; fellow Polka Days performers Stephanie and Her Honky Band play honky, which switches out a clarinet for a trumpet and leaves room for improvisation, giving the music a woozier, Dixieland jazz feel. Seven bands in all will play the outdoor pavilion in St. Joe's Park against a backdrop of authentic Polish cuisine and numerous distractions for the kiddies, happily oblivious to the occasionally racy songs (Stephanie performs a number called "In Heaven There Is No Beer") that'll give their parents a few laughs.—Matthew Lurie