While in high school, Dan Biemer inherited an accordion from a great aunt, and he admitted, “I scorned it for a long time. It wasn’t cool. I liked electronic keyboards.”
Now Biemer plays his accordion happily while singing songs he wrote that make fun of himself, Barbie dolls, “Star Trek,” Dungeons and Dragons, whatever strikes his imagination. And people pay him to do it.
Calling himself Captain Ambivalent, Biemer will perform “Fear the Accordion,” a one-man multimedia musical show, on April 8 and 9 at Three Brothers Theatre in Waukegan.
The show features Captain Ambivalent, wearing a superhero cape, who woke up after a long sleep in an underground complex of secret mutants controlled by a crazy computer. Captain Ambivalent tells the story with some costume changes, video and creepy characters.
Biemer has been featured at fringe festivals, on South Bend Public Television, and even briefly on “America’s Got Talent.” His recordings have been played on WFMT and WXRT, and he’s working on a fourth album.
Biemer, who grew up in Kentucky and lives in Indiana, said he’s always been a little on the nerdy side. Consider that he earned a bachelor’s degree in Fundamentals: Issues and Texts from the University of Chicago. While attending college, he wrote musical theater pieces, some of which got performed.
After he graduated, he thought about going into music. But he had a student loan to pay off, so he went to work for what he called “a big corporate law firm” for 20 years. He worked as a specialized technical paralegal. He found some time to perform at a few private parties and some open mic nights. He starting getting paid to do his shows in 2006.
“I guess I made an impression,” Biemer said. “At open mic, you see all these guitar cases lined up, then this giant sparkling gold accordion. That’s enough to get people’s attention.”
Most of the guitarists sang heartfelt ballads,” he said. “So I stuck with the funny stuff.
“I’ve always liked funny songs. My dad likes funny songs. He can still sing novelty tunes from the 1920s by heart.”
Like most songwriters, Biemer uses real life scenarios for inspiration. A song about torturing a Barbie doll came from a conversation with a relative’s daughter.
His newest song is about Shakespeare’s Hamlet explaining to Ophelia how he accidentally stabbed her dad.
He’s performed at Three Brothers Theatre before and says the audience “appreciates unusual and offbeat shows.”
“Fear the Accordion” includes a multimedia projection system and interactions with characters including an evil computer overlord.
“This show incorporates the history of the future including how the science fiction movies changed over time,” Biemer said. For example, he learned old “Buck Rogers” movies from the 1930s used the sounds of propeller planes to imitate the sound of spaceships. “They didn’t have jets yet. That inspired a song,” he said.
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There’s a lot of laughing at his shows, he said, “It’s everything from chuckling to laughing hysterically. A guy once told me his face hurt from laughing,” he said. Sometimes adults tell him after the show that they were forced to take accordion lessons while growing up.
And for the record, yes he does write polkas for the accordion, including his latest release, “She Takes Bad Selfies.”
The rollicking song that invites you to get up and dance includes the words, “She takes bad selfies and posts them all the time / Most of them are blurry and some have glowing eyes.”
“I think that qualifies as a polka,” Biemer said.
Fear The Accordion by Captain Ambivalent
When: 7:30 p.m., April 8 and 9
Where: Three Brothers Theatre, 115 N. Genesee St., Waukegan
Tickets: $15-$20
Information: 224-419-4325, threebrotherstheatre.com
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.