Legacy by Steve Meisner
'Legacy' by Steve Meisner and the Legacy
Over a dozen years before his 2023 death at 62, Whitewater polka bandleader Steve Meisner had the ambition to record an album that represented the breadth of his musical taste and what he enjoyed playing in concert. Though he wasn't able to see that task through to its completion, some friends and admirers have.
Legacy is comprised the rudiments of the career-defining statement he was able to track before his passing. Those bits of his voice, accordion and whistling (!) are fleshed out by the Legacy Band, featuring Southeast Wisconsin old time music mainstays, including multi-instrumentalists Don Hunjadi and Tom Brusky, to make a 16-track collection.
Legacy makes it seem almost as if the middle Meisner in the family's musical lineage never left. The first generation, late polkateer/squeezebox player Verne Meisner, is represented by a remake of a somewhat klezmer-sounding polka. The current generation is represented by Steve's son, Austin, blowing baritone saxophone on his late parent's gently swinging rendition of a Wynn Stewart country dustie. And, as on many prior Steve Meisner releases, his brother, David provides some lyrics.
Elsewhere, Meisner and the Legacy Band evince their diversity with a righteously jazzy Louis Jordan adaptation, a medley of German waltzes and a Leadbelly standard, among other detours that still sound of a piece with the honoree's already broad, often Slovenian-based sound. Legacy plays as a worthwhile tribute to one of Wisconsin's most storied and amiable ambassadors of a music inextricably associated with the state. And like all good polka, it brings a happy atmosphere, even to the loss of a much-missed musical figure.
