Accordion Noir Radio - Ruthlessly pursuing the belief that the accordion is just another instrument.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away… I jest, there is no Star Wars connection to last night’s episode of CFRO’s weekly hour-long Accordion Noir broadcast. It’s just our standard good, clean mix of squeezebox musics in a wide variety of styles from all over the world! If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly […]

This week’s episode of CFRO’s hour-long Accordion Noir broadcast shone the spotlight on (mostly) women accordionists selling music on the Bandcamp platform — as today is Bandcamp Friday, their best shot at actually getting paid for selling music recordings online all month! If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the […]

You can’t fool us! Alt-accordion fans are always in pursuit of the new big thing, and so for last night’s episode of our weekly Accordion Noir broadcast, Bruce has put together a program of tunes looking at “artists with new music and upcoming projects”. I guess that means that everyone in this week’s episode is […]

Accordion Noir radio’s parent radio station, CFRO Co-Op Community Radio, just celebrated its 50th anniversary! In recognition of the occasion, Bruce has stacked this week’s playlist of accordion songs with offerings dating to CFRO’s year of establishment, 1975. If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the episode's availability yet, you […]

The new episode of CFRO’s weekly Accordion Noir broadcast features all recently-released music from the past couple of years, a playlist calibrated to inspire you to join us at the 50th anniversary party for our parent radio station CFRO Co-Op Community Radio, taking place this Saturday night at the Legion hall on Commercial Drive (at […]

In honour of the birthday of famous bluesman Muddy Waters, who got his start on the accordion, on the latest episode of CFRO’s weekly Accordion Noir program Bruce has planned a squeezy tour of the blues for you.  If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the episode's availability yet, you […]

Many things are afoot, and your host Bruce is up to a lot in a turbulent and inconstant world, but ultimately it all filters through his squeezy brain and gets interpreted in accordion music playlist form. This week is no exception! If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the episode's […]

Bruce is feeling the imminent change of the season in his squeeze-bones, and hopefully with it… a lot of other change coming, too, for the better! If you are interested in getting a finer-grained understanding of how he’s doing, there’s no better way than carefully listening to this hour of accordion music he’s plotted out […]

This week Bruce lodged a complaint at the local DOGE consulate and discovered which country pulled the “accordion” straw in the Eurovision song contest this year — it’s Sweden! All that and more in this week’s episode of your favorite all-accordion, alt-accordion radio show / podcast! If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't […]

For the first time this year, we’re celebrating Bandcamp Friday — a day when the Bandcamp e-storefront waives its share of revenues from digital music sales, passing their portion along to your favorite recording artists. (In our case, your favorite accordion recording artists!)  Everyone featured in this week’s episode has music available for sale on […]

Bruce is on the road tonight, wearing a rut in that long trail entre la jeunesse et la sagesse, but though he can’t be in the CFRO radio studios airing our weekly squeezebox music broadcast this week he can at least use the information superhighway to pipe the episode to us via his parent’s bathroom, […]

Look out, Nazis! Bruce is in a real antifa mood this week, so if that’s going to hurt your feels… well, you’re probably better off unsubscribing and finding another podcast, I bet Joe Rogan will have a suitable guest this week. But if you are energized a bit at the prospect of Americans resisting the […]

Photo by David DG Jones Last winter we kept making new episodes of our weekly alt-accordion radio program, but they weren’t getting shared with our podcast subscribers because our host, the Internet Archive, was paralysed for a long time after a heinous hack. Since then we have been sharing the missing episodes with you as […]

It’s that time of year again, when lovers’ thoughts turn to accordions! Well… OK, maybe when accordionists’ thoughts turn to love. In any case, this week’s fresh episode of our hour-long alt-squeezebox broadcast is full of squeezy love songs, so we cover both possibilities.  If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you […]

A few months ago, our podcast host over at the Internet Archive got hacked, and it temporarily became impossible for us to submit recordings. And yet, our weekly alt-accordion music broadcast schedule kept up at its regular pace on the radio. Ever since then, we’ve been trying to get “caught up”, making episodes that dropped […]

We don’t often have the white stuff on the ground here in Vancouver, but currently we do and Bruce was moved to program an hour of wintry squeezebox songs on frosty themes for this week’s episode of our alt-accordion broadcast.  If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the episode's availability […]

Already the end of January? Every day feels like a lifetime of torments and yet… the time seems to be briskly whizzing away. Well, here’s a fresh helping of accordion music to help the time pass. If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the episode's availability yet, you can enjoy […]

There were a lot of disappointments last fall. Of course, the course of the US Election was a big one, and naturally the interruption of service by the Internet Archive by hackers also really brought us down, because the episodes of our program we had been putting together and broadcasting (such as the one that […]

Last night’s episode of the weekly, hour-long alt-squeezebox Accordion Noir program pays impromptu tribute to one of our patron saints, Garth Hudson of The Band, who died this week. If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the episode's availability yet, you can enjoy listening to it as digital audio courtesy […]

It’s been a rough century for trademark and copyright law, with much legal precedent for musical compositions and recordings thereof subject to decisions made in a bygone age governing punched paper rolls of player piano sheet music.  In all the back and forth, the societal interest in releasing creative works to the public domain was […]

Due to unscheduled downtime at the Internet Archive, we were unable to share this episode online when it first aired back in November, and frankly the mindspace it is informed by is possibly better left behind us, but be that as it may it is surprisingly difficult to play accordion with your head stuck in […]

I guess there’s been so much AI in the discourse lately, Bruce apparently generated this week’s Accordion Noir broadcast playlist using the assistance of an algorithm. But I understand it had been trained on his curation, so the mentality guiding the trajectory of this musical journey was that of a Virtual Bruce, if you will.  […]

So… our podcast schedule got disrupted by the Internet Archive hack late last year, and we never quite got caught up. But we can get closer. Here, today, I can share with you our incredible episode from the night before Halloween, 2024, our final broadcast before the world as we knew it ended. Yes: by […]

New week, new episode of the weekly Accordion Noir alt-squeezebox broadcast! New year, new edition of the Accordion Babes pin-up calendar! For the first episode of our program in the new calendar year, we shone the spotlight on the crop of talented babes populating the popular calendar/album this year, including an interview with local Accordion […]

As part of a Christmas miracle (sorry, I made that joke in the last write-up too, didn’t I?), this week’s episode of CFRO’s weekly Accordion Noir alt-squeezebox broadcast is somehow available online even before it airs on the radio. It absolutely is programmed with an eye to a seasonal sub-theme in the music selections, though […]

(This would have made for excellent cover art as well, but I opted to do the right thing and respect the stated copyright terms.) As you may recall, Bruce and I started the Accordion Noir broadcast way back in December of 2006 (18 years ago, yow! Bruce, we didn’t even observe the occasion, it got […]

In addition to sharing episodes of our alt-squeezebox broadcast from ten years ago and from a month ago, once in a while these days we also have the pleasure of sharing with you episodes of our weekly radio program from the same week in which it actually aired.  It’s a bit like living in the […]

A lot of ground work was required, but we are just about ready to unleash the motherlode of missing episodes dating to the Internet Archive disruption earlier this autumn. Hopefully we will have a chance to share them all and get caught up before the end of this year! Here is a recording of a […]

Apologies for the ongoing delays in getting our recent episodes online for the enjoyment of our podcast listeners! Here’s this week’s episode — it’s far from the first time we were shills for Bandcamp Friday, and hopefully it won’t be the last! We like the idea of recording artists getting a fair(er) shake at the […]

Better late than never, your squeezy host Bruce was very up front about the theme of this delayed October episode of our weekly program: other than containing accordion music, the only criterion was that it was made of up songs that he enjoyed. (I don’t imagine he programs many episodes filled with accordion music that […]

A few weeks ago, our podcast host at the Internet Archive went offline following a big hack. Since there, we’ve necessarily experienced a month of delays before being able to get the weekly episodes of our hour-long accordion music broadcast to you folks out there in cyberspace. (Hey, it’s not like we missed anything important, […]

Not every month hosts a Bandcamp Friday, but this month does, so we’re here to encourage you to go financially support your favorite recording accordionists with the biggest cut in the online music storefront business — at least, for one day a month.  All of the performers in this week’s episode of Accordion Noir should […]

Page one of the piano accordion sheet music to the “Farewell Polka” This week’s episode of Accordion Noir opens with a tribute to the recently passed Zulya of Australia and continues in a casuallly autumnal vein.  If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the episode's availability yet, you can enjoy […]

The evenings grow chill again, the mornings thick with dew and fog, and a massive harvest moon loomed in the sky last night. We don’t have to tell Bruce it’s autumn, he’s already been told.   He reflects upon this annual turn of the seasons in this week’s episode of our weekly alt-accordion broadcast. If […]

Last week we were presenting our mainline Vancouver accordion fest outdoors at a park, our eponymous Accordion Noir Festival (enjoy video documentation on YouTube!) kicked off lo these many years ago by Geoff Berner, and this weekend he’s at the heart of another one, the second installment of Vancouver’s Clean Air Festival! Casting the spotlight […]

A month ago I alerted your regular Accordion Noir host Bruce Triggs that “Weird Al” Yankovic had just released a new polka medley to celebrate the ten-year anniversary

Here’s a little breather, a music-focused episode of Accordion Noir between two weeks leaning on guest interviews. Last week Bruce chatted with Emily-Rose Šárkova, and next week he’ll be talking polkas (again) with “Weird” Al! This week, though, he just played his standard mellow mix of outstanding squeezebox recordings. If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions […]

(different interview, but the thumbnail was so applicable to our situation we couldn’t resist reusing it.) This past Sunday we learned about a traveling accordion performer who was scheduled to be performing in our town the following night and across our country in the following days and weeks. Jaron Freeman-Fox pointed her in our direction […]

(Note: despite the obvious superficial similarities in names and appearances, phonographs and gramophones are different things. One is the horned music player that plays from wax cylinders, and the other is the horned music player that plays from flat records. Like mixing up a VHS and a Betamax — very different!) Not content to rest […]

The wild thing about a festival of the age and breadth of scope of our Vancouver Folk Music Festival, is that in addition to the main draw — all the incredible international performers demonstrating their regional specialities typically not on tap locally — also if you go by the “merch table” tent, you have one […]

Greetings out there! If you were wondering what happened to this week’s episode of Accordion Noir, you’re not alone! No worries — it did end up airing on Co-Op Radio, and now it has gone up online with this very post. The focus of this week’s episode is this weekend’s return of the recently-frail Vancouver […]

Perhaps Bruce meant that the accordion music is emotionally heating up in anticipation of a key change? Hot weather in July is nothing extraordinary, but hey — here’s an AI-generated illustration to underscore the theme of accordion heat by burning real electricity to negatively impact climate change and generating genuine heat at a data centre […]

Inspiration is where you find it. Your host Bruce recently visited the dentist, and consequently last night’s episode of our weekly broadcast includes a lot of squeezy songs about mouths and the teeth in (and sometimes not in) them! After this many years of weekly episodes, it’s rare for such a starkly fresh episode theme […]

Yesterday was the birthday of the late, great zydeco hero Clifton Chenier, so it lent itself to the occasion of an hour of accordion music, such as we air every Wednesday night on CFRO Co-Op Radio! Chenier only provides zydeco bookends to a set that wanders all over the place, musically, but it definitely informed […]

It’s that time of week again to slip on your headphones and enjoy a blissful hour of sweet squeezebox music. The theme is… here we are in June, and Bruce wanted to play you some excellent squeezebox music, just like he does every week. It’s a good theme, that has gotten us through a lot! […]

Yesterday was Accordion Noir host Bruce’s birthday! But since he has the “big picture” perspective, he knows of many other important birthday and anniversaries in the accordion world also taking place at this time of year, and last night’s episode of our weekly broadcast engages all of them! If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly […]

Because every DJ lives, to some extent, in the world, every week’s episode of Accordion Noir tells you a bit about what is going on in its host’s life that week. One thing going on is klezmer music, which is directly portable to music radio! Also in Bruce’s present zeitgeist is cycling, which … is […]

The focus for this week’s edition of the Accordion Noir radio program is Victoria’s imminent Klezcadia festival, whose free virtual registration closes tonight! Basically, if you think you might be interested, you should go register, then return to listen to our podcast. If your Apple or Android (or plain old RSS) podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven't alerted you to the […]

A couple of weeks ago our regular host Bruce tried to seize the bull by the horns and broadcast an episode of our program from our home radio station, CFRO in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, mere blocks from his residence. He’s masterminded hundreds and hundreds of hours of broadcasts from the control board in its studios, […]

Today is Accordion Patent Approval Day, celebrating Cyrill Demian’s successfully getting the paperwork back with a stamp of approval in 1829 enshrining him as the inventor of the accordion! That's after Patent Filing Day on May 6th, when the clock really started ticking. (And then there is Friedrich Buschmann’s 1822 claim, substantiated by more of […]

Last night’s new, hour-long episode of CFRO Co-Op Community Radio’s weekly Accordion Noir program celebrates the 195th anniversary of Cyrill Demian’s patenting of the first accordion! (Truly we are alive at a great time for accordion enthusiasts, with the instrument’s bicentennial only five years away.) In honour of the occasion, we played squeezy music from […]