Paulius Musteikis
Stacy Harbaugh spreads the polka joy as DJ Shotski.
Stacy Harbaugh spreads the polka joy as DJ Shotski.
As the pandemic’s darkest days shifted to a new normal, many people took life by the horns and did the thing they’d spent so many months pondering. It might have been a new job, a new home, or a dream vacation.
Stacy Harbaugh’s pandemic pursuit was quintessentially Wisconsin: She dreamed of playing polka records for people. Harbaugh knew that polkas, with their danceable rhythms and smile-inducing oompah feel, would be the perfect thing to help spread the joy that everybody craved.
“Polka music is there to help people come together,” Harbaugh says. “It’s happy music so it’s about the community being happy together.”
Harbaugh spreads the joy as DJ Shotski — a moniker inspired by the group drinking device of shot glasses on a ski. She plays polka music from her vast vinyl collection at events, and last month began hosting Monona radio station WVMO-FM’s Polka Time show at 7 p.m. on Sundays. Her show replaces Rick March’s Down Home Dairyland, which had been on the station since 2015 (and on WORT-FM and WPR from 1986 to 2000). March, the former state folklorist and co-author of Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka, moved out of state.
“I am a polka enthusiast, not an expert,” says Harbaugh, whose day job is communications director for the River Alliance of Wisconsin. “I don’t do this because I know everything, it’s because there’s a lot I love and want to share.”
Harbaugh grew up in Indiana and moved to Madison in 2004. As she absorbed the state’s culture, she became enamored with its soundtrack.
“It just seemed like polka was everywhere. Every time I went to a beer fest or a brat fest, there was polka music,” she says. “And every time I heard the music I had to drop everything and go see the band.”
She loved not just listening to the music but watching people dance, being moved to tears by seeing the beauty of the couples who had been polka dancing together for decades.
“I thought, ‘Is there something I can do to help keep this music going?’” Harbaugh says.
She began building a collection (she now estimates it at about 400 albums) of primarily German style (known as Dutchman style) polka by Wisconsin and Minnesota artists, recorded in the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, the longtime WORT volunteer made a New Year’s resolution for 2020 to learn more about radio and how to work the equipment to host her own music show. She also wanted to learn to be a DJ with vinyl, just as a way to share old records. The pandemic interrupted her lessons.
“During COVID, I had nothing else to do but play records and think about when this all ended, what did I want to be doing?” she says. “And I thought about what I could do that is different, what kind of music I could play that’s special and I never get sick of. I never get sick of polka music.”
Harbaugh often spends weekends in search of polka records. Some she purchases, some are given to her by people who find her and offer them.
“It’s been a delight to connect with people all over the state and hear their stories of how they got these polka records,” she says. “Sometimes they are hand-me-downs from family, sometimes they were obtained from friends. It might be a situation where they are downsizing but they want these polka records to go to a good home.”
She attended Pulaski Polka Days in July, meeting more people in the Wisconsin polka community. And she’s contacted other women polka radio hosts. Harbaugh found academic research about polka DJs in the U.S. and learned that 91 percent were men.
“It’s all the more important to find the other women DJs in the country so we know each other exist,” she says.
Harbaugh will be in the heart of polka music later this month when she plays records in the hospitality tent at Green County Cheese Days in Monroe Sept. 16-18. Event organizers found an original 45 of “Cheeseday in Monroe” — the official song of Cheese Days.
“Of course I’ll play the heck out of that,” she says.
Around Madison, she hopes to do more of the kinds of events she’s already hosted: playing polka records at commercial breaks during a Packers game watch party at the Harmony Bar and at an open house for Polka! Press at Dark Horse ArtBar on National Polka Day (Aug. 9).
“It was a whole new generation being exposed to Wisconsin polka,” Harbaugh says of the Polka! Press event. “That made it my ideal audience.”
Beyond learning more about polka and collecting more records, Harbaugh hopes to hone her DJ and radio skills to do more with her show, including hosting guests and featuring events she records.
“It’s like that resolution I had at the beginning of 2020,” she says. “It just took a few zigs and zags along the way.”
