Kitchen

band

spreads

holiday cheer

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- The HummDingers kitchen band spawned from a New Ulm resident who saw a similar band while wintering in Texas several years ago.

The senior citizen returned to New Ulm with information and videos of a kitchen band and asked Diane Fasse of the New Ulm Senior Center about the prospects of starting a similar band here.

Directed by Isla Hoffman, the HummDingers grew from six members to more than a dozen these days.

"It's really taken off the past couple years. We go wherever we're invited," said Fasse, who is the band's accompanist. "With humor, lots of fun, audience participation and schtick, we perform at all sorts of events like senior and assisted-living and mother/daughter banquets."

The band plays hummerzoos, kazoos. Members created their own instruments from washboards, washtubs turned into bass fiddles with string and a broom handle, plungers, dishpans that became drums, spoons and eggbeaters.

Ninety-two-year-old Ernie Sands is the band's senior member. He plays a bass.

"Alexander's Ragtime Music," is the band's keynote song. Other tunes include "Old Lutefisk," played to the music of "Old Tannenbaum."

The band will play at Divine Providence Community Home in Sleepy Eye on Jan. 11, at Orchard Hill in New Ulm on Jan. 14 and Old Main Village in Mankato on Jan. 15.