Summer 2021 has been a busy time for Auf Geht’s. We began our summer June 4^th in Tomball for the 20^th Annual Tomball German Fest. What a great way to get back together after the long, dry pandemic months of 2020! Tomball is one of our very favorite festivals and hosts some of our very favorite people and bands. We had our whole 5-piece group there, and special guest Ryan Barker joined us on Sunday with his great singing, trumpet and keyboard playing. What a great celebration weekend it was!

Next on the schedule for the band was a trip to New Braunfels to play at Krause’s Café. Randy, Wolf, Kerry and Glen had a great time playing happy music and catching up with old friends we hadn’t seen in many months. We all had such a great time together they asked the band to come back one more time before summer was over, so we’ll be there again August 4^th. If you’re in the area, come on out and see us and enjoy some of that great Krause’s food and New Braunfels hospitality!

My big project for the band this summer has been the rebuilding of the Auf Geht’s website. I am proud to say that I recently moved our site over to Houston-based service provider HostGator. “Brand-X” had gotten too expensive and problematic, so I took the plunge and moved everything over. (I have three business websites that needed this). Unfortunately, the software I had used to build the old Auf Geht’s site was proprietary, and nothing I did would transfer over to the new home. That meant I would need to start all over again from the very beginning and learn new software at the same time. It’s been a learning experience, to say the least! But I have also enjoyed the project! I hope you like the new look!

Some other news that many of our Auf Geht’s friends may not be aware of is that I have been playing accordion now for a couple of years and have been performing solo at Rudi Lechner’s German Restaurant since last November. When the pandemic shut everything down back in 2020 the restaurant had to close its doors to public dining (and happy music!), so Wolf and I went several months without playing there. When Rudi’s opened back up, it was for reduced hours and limited seating. After a few months of this I approached manager Angeli and asked about having music again. She graciously invited me and our friend Ed Karisch to take turns playing to see how things went. The reduced hours and using single musicians instead of duos have saved the restaurant money and have kept the happy music going! Things are picking up now, and business hours have begun to expand back to where they were before the shut-down. Woo-hoo!!

Some of you may still be scratching your heads, though, at the thought of Randy playing accordion. Me too! I have always wanted to play, and the 2020 shutdown was a perfect time for me to put the accordion project into high gear. And I’m having a ball! Some people think I’m getting better too! I play and sing at Rudi’s with my accordion and break things up occasionally with the guitar and alphorn. For my trumpet and saw songs, I have put together some backup tracks to play along with. It’s a ton of fun, and I love the variety! Many thanks to Angeli and Jay at Rudi’s and my dear friends Wim and Bethel for their patience while I got more comfortable performing with accordion! Thanks also to Wim and Bethel for the great requests for songs to learn! And thanks to Valina and Tomball German Fest for allowing me to debut my solo act in the Community Center there in June!

Looking ahead to the Fall and Oktoberfest season, things are really shaping up to be a fun and busy time for the band! We are so excited to return to so many of our old favorite festivals – Addison, McKinney, Ft. Worth, Robert’s Cove, Granbury, Celina, Galveston Island Brewers, Oktoberfest Houston, Round Top “OktoBierFest”, Wurstfest, and the Tomball Christmas Market. Dates and links to all these great events are provided on our “Schedule” page here at AufGehtsMusik.com along with the Rudi Lechner’s Restaurant calendar. Check it out! We’d love to see you!

There you have it! Our first blog post! It looks more like a long-overdue letter – and maybe that’s what it really is! – but I had lots of exciting things I wanted to share. Most future posts will be much more reasonable in length. Drop me a line if there’s something in particular you’d like to hear about!

Have a great summer, and I hope to see you out at Rudi’s or at some of the Oktoberfest venues this fall!