Pickled Herring’s players ever merry

Published 10:56 pm Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Packing light is not an option for Lori Hansen of Langley. Everywhere she goes, the Whidbey Island resident totes an accordion.

As a child in Ballard, she took lessons from the Stan Boreson Music Center, but Boreson didn’t teach there. Then she learned from a gruff Swede who taught lessons from his home.

“Mom thought for sure I was going to cry and run away from him, but I marched in with my music books and took more lessons, learning ‘Tico Tico,’ ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’ and ‘Lady of Spain,’ ” Hansen said. “Moving to Whidbey Island in 1989, I started a little combo.”

It turned into the Pickled Herring Band, which just returned from Petersburg, Alaska, where they entertained at the annual Little Norway Festival.

The group includes David Borg, from Arlington. In the fourth grade, he picked out “Beautiful Dreamer” on a clarinet when he lived in New Jersey.

“I was hooked,” he said. “Lessons ensued.”

By high school, his passion was the tenor saxophone. A band he was in played on television on the “Soupy Sales Show.”

In 2003, he accompanied his father to senior dances in Everett, eventually being asked to sit in with the Harry Lindbeck band.

After four years, he was invited to join Pickled Herring.

The third band member, Jim Reynolds of LaConner, said his mother made him take piano lessons at age 5.

“She used to have to come and get me from the neighbors because I would sneak away and watch the first TV in town (1948),” Reynolds said. “I took classical piano until I was a freshman in high school.”

In 1956, he saw Elvis Presley on TV, bought a cheap guitar and taught himself how to play it. He played several instruments in several bands, including backing up Jan and Dean.

After serving in Vietnam, he joined a band that opened for the Beau Brummels. Reynolds is another Lindbeck alumni.

“I joined Pickled Herring about three years ago,” he said. “Lori is the most fun to play music with. Of all the bands I have played in, this one has the most accomplished musicians.”

The fourth member, George Eldridge from Mount Vernon, studied at Cornish Allied Art School in Seattle and did his own radio show. He teaches percussion and guitar for Kennelly Keys Music in Everett and Lynnwood.

Eldridge said his favorite group is Pickled Herring — the band with a bounce.

Original member Lori Hansen’s first on-air radio broadcast was around 1976 on a citizen’s band radio playing “Styrmans Valsen (Pilot’s Waltz)” from the wheelhouse of a crab boat she worked on in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

She loves going to Alaska every year, she said.

“Four days of foot-tapping music,” Hansen said. “It just doesn’t get any better than that.”

Last week, they entertained at the festival as well as for seniors in assisted living and at a long-term care facility.

“We played our brains out and had a blast,” Hansen said. “They said they would see us next year.”

There next performance is at 3 p.m. June 20 at the St. Merry Fest at St. Mary Parish, 4001 St. Mary’s Drive, Anacortes. Sample band music online at www.pickledherringband.com/CD1%20Samples.htm, from “Beer Barrel Polka” to “Happy Boys Schottiche.”

The band’s catchy name is hard to forget. About 10 years ago, Hansen said, she was inspired by something she likes to eat.

“I named it after pickled herring, a delicacy, and it was a good thing,” she said.

Give a listen

Hear music by the Pickled Herring Band at www.pickledherringband.com, including “Beer Barrel Polka,” “Karlsons Hambo” and “Happy Boys Schottiche.”

Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.