It was 1984 — Prince’s “Purple Rain“ was the No. 1 album in America. Bruce Springsteen crisscrossed the country on his “Born in the U.S.A.“ tour. Madonna scored her first Top 10 single with “Borderline.”
And on the south side of Milwaukee, Frankie Yankovic, “America’s Polka King,” performed at the Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish Festival.
In attendance that day was 6-year-old Mike Schneider. His parents planned to drop him off at the festival rides while they enjoyed the polka show. That’s not what happened.
“The instant I heard Frankie Yankovic play, I decided I had to play the accordion,” said Schneider, a Brown Deer native. “I was so captivated I just sat there through the whole afternoon and watched Frankie play, and the rest is history.”
Mike Schneider as a child with his dad, Paul Schneider. Photo courtesy of Mike Schneider
Schneider, 45, grew up to be a professional polka accordion player with The Mike Schneider Band. He’s a regular at beer halls and festivals across Wisconsin year-round. In the summer, he tours the country’s public libraries for his Pint-Size Polkas children’s program. He learns tunes by ear, performs from memory and puts his own twist on things. And he approaches his life’s work with humility.
After the Yankovic show, Schneider’s parents were skeptical of his accordion dreams. But he convinced them he was serious. Pretty soon, Schneider was playing with his dad, Paul, also an accordionist.
Schneider called his first paid performance, which was in second grade, a “sort of gig.” A hat was passed for money.
“It was for an event called Sewer Fest. It was [at] a church that my dad’s cousin belonged to. They were having a sewer put in along the street that their church was on,” he said.
Mike Schneider as a child plays accordion with his dad, Paul Schneider. Photo courtesy of Mike Schneider
Some of the venues Schneider later cut his teeth in, like the Bradley Road Inn in Brown Deer and Sue’s Bay View Bandwagon in Milwaukee, are now closed. Others are still around, like the Pulaski Inn in Cudahy and Madison’s Essen Haus. One gig, however, held a special place for Schneider — the annual St. Aloysius Catholic Church Parish Festival in West Allis.
“I’d be very depressed for about 364 days of the year,” he joked. He’d look forward to the St. Aloysius festival for months, and he kept the gig for 22 years.
That West Allis parish celebrated its last Mass in 2021, capping a decade that saw Milwaukee’s polka scene of parish festivals and dancehalls dry up, Schneider said. He moved his family to Rock County in 2013. His children’s tour became a bigger part of his business.
But as soon as he left, something happened in Milwaukee — “the beer gardens started up.”
Beginning in Estabrook Park in 2012, beer gardens now exist in several Milwaukee-area parks. Many feature live polka music. Another frequent client, the Bavarian Bierhaus in Glendale, opened in 2016. Schneider plays in Milwaukee several times a month now.
“I think people are looking for pieces of their roots, and they’re finding it musically in polka music,” he said — though it may be over beers, not on the dancefloor.
Learning by ear, experimenting with different genres
Though he took lessons for a couple years, it was polka recordings — like those on the tavern jukebox — that taught Schneider his craft.
“It’s a lot of work for me to read the notes on a page,” he said. “I’m much quicker, for whatever reason, being able to listen to something and pick it up that way.”
He still learns music by ear, through recordings and live concerts. After he internalizes the tunes, he makes them his own. The results are “Schneiderized,” as a frequent bandmate puts it. Sometimes, his ideas come from jazz music.
“To keep my sanity, I play other types of music, too, and I think that helps a lot,” he said. “If I was just doing polka, polka, polka, waltz, polka, then I maybe would get bored.”
During a set at Old World Wisconsin on a Saturday in May, Schneider covered the jazz standard “Blue Skies,” “The Sound of Music” show tune “Edelweiss,” cowboy crooner Gene Autry’s “Ridin’ Down the Canyon,” German-language waltzes and several tunes of his own composition.
The event where Schneider played was the grand opening of the newly restored, Depression-era Wittnebel’s Tavern at Old World Wisconsin. The open-air museum hauled the unassuming white building from Old Ashippun in Dodge County, where the Wittnebel family operated it as a bar into the 1980s.
Visitors take in the restored Wittnebel’s Tavern at Old World Wisconsin on May 17, 2025. Nick Rommel/WPR
Their descendants came for the tavern’s reopening. Not long into Schneider’s outdoor set, one of them emerged from the tavern to compliment his music.
“It wouldn’t be it without this,” Jody Wittnebel complimented Schneider after a song.
“I appreciate it!” Schneider responded. “Are they polkaing in there?”
Too crowded inside, she answered. But Wittnebel said she was a polka fan.
“Polkaing does something to the brain. When you dance to it, it creates endorphins, serotonin, chemicals that you can’t get in a jar. Music and community make you happy, it’s the best thing in the world for you,” she told Schneider.
Milwaukee Brewers home games now feature Schneider’s music
All that experimentation doesn’t keep Schneider from mastering a Wisconsin polka classic — the “Beer Barrel Polka,” also known as “Roll Out the Barrel.”
That song was the subject of a surprise call Schneider got during his busy 2024 Oktoberfest season.
On the line were the Milwaukee Brewers. Ahead of the 2025 MLB season, they asked Schneider to record the iconic game day tune, along with “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and several polka snippets to punctuate on-field action.
“When you go to a game, you’re hearing a piece of your state,” he said. “Which I think is just so cool.”
He said the initial call from the Brewers was a “pinch-me moment.”
“It blows my mind that they’re using my stuff, and that they asked me to do it. It’s a real honor,” he said.
Schneider is faithful to polka and humble about life’s work
Like with his response to the Brewers’ call, Schneider approaches his work with humility.
About a COVID-themed polka song he never released, he said “it’s probably good I didn’t.” Some people have compared his singing to Wisconsin polka legend Steve Meisner. Schneider didn’t hear the resemblance. “I didn’t, I stunk,” he said laughing. And he downplayed his mentor role on his son’s robotics team — “we’re really stretching it, I wash dishes.”
That humility extends to his whole life’s work.
“I’m actually an introvert, believe it or not, by my nature,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder what the heck I’m doing, but it is what it is.”
Mike Schneider performing in Farmington, N.M. during his Pint-Size Polka tour. Photo courtesy of Mike Schneider
Yet he was never tempted to leave polka, only wavering from his vocation once, briefly, around age 10.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. But whatever I was thinking, I stopped thinking it, and I kept playing the accordion,” he said.
“I don’t think I’ll ever leave it,” he continued. “I will probably be buried with my accordion on, and that’s because I died with it on.”
Much of that still comes down to the pivotal day he heard Frankie Yankovic play at the parish festival in Milwaukee.
“Had my parents taken me to a Bruce Springsteen concert that same day, would I be a rocker now?” he asked, smiling. “I don’t know. That’s one of those mysteries of life.”
