Unexpected Journeys: An Interview with Alicia Jo Straka

I first met Alicia Jo Straka when she was just a little girl competing at the Kimberley Old Time Accordion Championships (KIOTAC) in British Columbia, Canada. She has accomplished so much in her journey as a professional musician and has a kind, genuine, down-to-earth personality. It’s been at least 15 years since I last was together with Alicia in an accordion setting, so I was excited to interview her for this issue of Accordion Life Today!Alicia and I met via Zoom in early April, 2022 and we recorded the interview to share with you!

Watch the full interview below or scroll down for a shortened transcription.

There is also a video of Alicia performing her composition Musette Soeur at the end of this article!

Alicia, it’s so great having you with us today! The Kimberley Old Time Accordion Championships holds a special place in our hearts. How did you first get involved with KIOTAC?

That’s a bizarre story! My parents were both choir teachers, so we had the summers off. I was the youngest of three. When I was six-years-old we decided to do a full tour of the USA with our tent trailer. I was young, so I don’t remember the details, but I think we made it as far east as Yellowstone National Park. It was very hot and our tent trailer didn’t have air conditioning—so all of us kids were grumpy. We met some people along the way who encouraged us to go north to Banff because it was just over the border and was beautiful. So, we crossed into Canada near Kimberley, B.C. It just happened to be the week that KIOTAC was taking place. There were no camping spots! We ended up camping in the horseshoe pit at the local campground because the entire place was completely full of accordion players. We were like, “What is happening here?” Everyone told us to go check out the competitions at the arena and the music at the Platzl.

Since your parents taught choir, were you already involved in music or the accordion?

I had started piano when I was four and been involved in my parents’ community children’s choir since I was about two. But I’d never heard or seen an accordion. There was no plan, to my knowledge, of introducing accordion in my future. My mom is 100% Swiss, and I later learned my Grandpa had played accordion, but it just wasn’t part of our family. That year at KIOTAC, in 1997, I ended up taking an accordion lesson with Karl Heinz in this little, closet-like back room. He taught me some chords and songs from Palmer-Hughes. Because I’d taken piano lessons, I recognized the treble side and thought it was cool—I took to accordion quickly because of that.

"There was no plan, to my knowledge, of introducing accordion in my future."

I know your vocal music comes more into the picture later, but did you take lessons for both accordion and piano at the same time? Did you focus on one more than the other?

I did both for many years. That first year at KIOTAC we met Eileen Hagen who happened to live in Portland, Oregon just like we did! She ended up being my accordion teacher through my childhood. We bought an accordion at KIOTAC and went back and I started taking lessons. My journey with piano is a little different because I had a really intense teacher for classical music. I wasn’t doing great with that. Even though I wasn't practicing as well as my teacher wanted, I was playing well. It was hard to balance accordion, piano and my love for sports. Even though my parents were musicians, they let me do other things like sports. I have friends in the music world that didn’t get the option to do that—they were told to stick to music as their focus. My parents let me do it all. Until high school, I was way more into soccer than music. While I knew I was good at music, it wasn’t my primary passion. I am curious how good I could have been if I had dug in at a younger age, but I honestly wouldn’t change anything. It helped me become more well-rounded.

So, when did that change for you? When did music become your passion?

Well, every summer I would move my focus from soccer back to accordion, because of KIOTAC. We went every year from 1997 until it closed. I would dive in to my accordion because I wanted to win. I was a very competitive kid. My journey with piano changed in middle school when I switched from my classical teacher to a jazz teacher. I only did jazz piano for a couple of years, but it was the first time I really connected with a style of music. I loved it. I was obsessed with a collection of pieces that Vince Guaraldi wrote for Charlie Brown Shows, and my jazz teacher made that book the course that we went through. It helped me enjoy music again. Before that, music felt like a task, what I did to get allowance, a chore. While I was naturally good at music, and I worked enough to do it well, it didn’t become a passion until high school, which is kind of crazy.

"...it was the first time I really connected with a style of music."

Tell me about the Roland V Accordion Festival that happened in 2009.

That was a really pivotal festival for me because it opened a brand new world I may never have been interested in. I was first exposed to Roland at KIOTAC in 2009. For anyone who doesn’t know, Roland makes a fully digital accordion. At the time, not many people knew about this electronic accordion option. Roland was recruiting people to enter their festival at KIOTAC because they knew a lot of Americans were up there for that event. That’s where I got the info to enter their U.S. competition. For the first round, I just sent a recording of myself playing my acoustic accordion. They picked five finalists from that round and sent them a Roland Accordion. I was one of the five. It was a very different competition from KIOTAC, which was about executing a good performance in different genres of music such as old-time, classical, jazz, etc. The Roland competition was about showing off their instrument and what it could do—to raise awareness of what was possible with the digital accordion. The digital accordion is like a piano keyboard, not an acoustic piano, but a keyboard you see played in a rock band. The concept behind the Roland accordion is that you can play different sounds from violin to trumpet, etc. That was a huge hurdle in itself. I had a hard time learning that instrument because it’s basically a computer. It was so much work just to figure out how to use the sounds, how to program them, and then choosing repertoire that best showed off the variety of sounds. It was a totally different experience for me. For the second round, I went to Los Angeles (USA). I think I got third place. The first two places couldn’t go on to the next round, so that’s how I ended up going to Rome for the finals.

During this time you were a freshman in college and going hard at it. What happened then?

I did the Rome contest and was just thrilled to be there. I think I placed ninth, but I honestly didn’t care about what place I got. It was an unreal, amazing trip. I came back home, gave the accordion back to Roland, and felt like that was the end. I won a Roland FR 7x for making it to Rome, but I didn’t have any further commitments lined up with them. I thought, "That was cool, back to college!” I had scholarships for both classical voice and piano performance, and was also working on a choral music education degree. I ended up getting three degrees in undergrad. Anyone that knows what music school is like … it’s an insane load of classes every quarter. Meanwhile, I started working for Roland because they reached out after that festival in 2009 and asked me to play at The National Association of Musical Merchants (NAMM) in 2010. I really didn’t understand what I was getting into! It's a huge event. That started a relationship with Roland where I was an independent contractor for them throughout college. I did trips and shows for them throughout all of undergrad. My original plan when I entered undergrad was to be a choir teacher. I had planned that from high school when I realized I really loved it. I’d also watched my parents teach choir my whole life, so that probably influenced me. It’s a job I understand. As I had more performing opportunities through Roland and other areas, I realized I wasn’t ready to go into a public school and start teaching. So I decided to take a year off—a gap year. Then, I got a full-time job offer from Roland. I started working for them doing random marketing, blog posts, interviews and training. It was a good, multi-purpose position to be in, and I learned a lot about business. I was still working on music and focused more on accordion, which is funny because I'd just graduated with degrees in opera and piano. Accordion was always on the side, but always the star. Now it is actually more of the star of my life, but it took a while for me to accept it. I really focused on other things for a long time.

"Accordion was always on the side, but always the star."

So, Alicia, when did the injury in your left arm happen? That’s pretty important as an accordionist.

I’m sure anyone who plays accordion knows that you get pain in lots of places. I was experiencing pain in my hands, my neck and my shoulders. Long story short, I got injured at physical therapy­—malpractice. The treatment of my left arm left me without the ability to move my fingers. I drove home one day and my left hand was stuck in a claw. When I washed my hair later, I just started bawling because my hand wouldn't do what I wanted it to. It was the worst day of my life. I can still physically feel the fear that I might not have the use of my arm for the rest of my life. I later learned that the nerves in my arm were basically cut off to my hand. After that first week, I could move my fingers, but they were very weak. I made treatment plans with other therapists to find out what had happened and what could be done. It took occupational therapy and a lot of work to get the strength and control back in my hand. That’s when my mindset pivoted because I didn’t know how strong my hand would come back—if it would ever be enough to play a full gig again. That’s when I decided to focus on voice. I kept working for Roland and was still able to do most of the work I needed to ,even though my typing was slow. That injury added a second gap year to my plan for undergrad because I was reevaluating. I didn’t want to plan on being a full-time performer on accordion or piano because I didn’t know if my left arm would regain its strength. I loved singing, so I decided to apply it to grad school.

Is that when your big move happened?

Yes. I was interested in moving, living further away from friends and family, and forcing myself out of my comfort zone. It felt like the right time to go try a new city for fun. Part of the reason I applied for grad school was to have a reason to move somewhere. I had been working with a vocal teacher in that first gap year, because I enjoyed singing and was focused on classical music. Classical repertoire wasn’t like performing on an opera stage—I was just keeping my voice in shape. I applied to BU, Boston University, and CU-Boulder University along with a couple others I didn’t pursue. I ended up getting a full ride scholarship from CU Boulder. That made the decision for me because I wasn’t interested in a bunch of debt. That's when I moved to Boulder, Colorado, where I really started exploring jazz. Boulder’s jazz community was so cool, so inviting, so warm, just very different from what I'd experienced.

You have a gorgeous voice, so I can see why you got a full-ride scholarship. Did you have ambitions to be on the opera stage, or did you do it because you enjoyed it?

I enjoyed it. The opera world, in my mind, is probably the most niche, difficult musical path to get a career in. I love it and think it’s fun, but I have this realistic need for stability in my life. If you want the opera route, you have to be willing to move every few months and not know if you're always going to get paid. It's so unstable.

I'm curious, how did you meet your husband?

That was another great part about moving to Boulder, Colorado. It was the last week of grad school and I had just turned in my thesis. There was a whirlwind of school coming to a close with my master's degree. I went out to a party with a friend, and there was a guy dressed in a full leopard-print suit. He was really going for it on the dance floor by himself. I thought that was awesome. I love a person who has no self-esteem issues. So I went up and started dancing with him. Honestly, based on how good he was at dancing and the fact that he was dressed in a leopard suit, I thought he was gay. I was just having a good time with this fun dude. Then he asked for my number, and I was like, “Oh, really? Okay.” So I gave him my number, and we went on a date a few weeks later. The rest is history. We clicked really quickly and got married in Denver.

And now your life is about to change again…

I’ve got that going on too! I’ll probably give birth in the next couple of weeks. It could happen any day! I’m pregnant with a baby boy and so excited.

Congrats! We caught you for this interview just in time! You've had quite a journey from KIOTAC to now. I understand you have a CD?

Yes! I have just recorded my first original studio album. I've recorded CDs in the past, but they were mostly ways to record everything I learned for KIOTAC. Last December, I cut this new album, Doing Just Fine, at a really cool studio in Boston, Massachusetts, called Plaid Dog. There were other musicians that I wanted to bring in, so I met with them virtually to listen and give my input. We finished the final round of tracks from them last month. Doing Just Fine is an album of fully original pieces in a French jazz style. My husband and I wrote some of the lyrics and had a French friend translate them so they are more poetic and lyrical than just literal. From what I’ve heard so far, I'm really excited—I'm a harsh critic of myself—as we all are in the music world. It will be mixed and mastered in the next couple of months, and then it will go on Spotify and my website.

Just over a week after this interview, Alicia Jo Straka brought her precious son into the world. We wish them congrats and know that her little boy will have an amazing family filled with good music!

You can learn more about Alicia at www.aliciajostraka.com