Frank Gibala

Alicia Keyes…Usher…Sheryl Crow…Pitt maintenance worker Frank Gibala….these are among the musicians planning to attend the 47th Annual Grammy Awards Ceremony Feb. 13 in Los Angeles, Calif.

When he is not working full-time in the maintenance department in Pitt’s Scaife Hall, Gibala plays clarinet and saxophone for the local polka band Henny and the Versa J’s. Last month, the 61-year-old North Versailles resident received the kind of news that most musicians only dream about: His band’s latest CD, Come on Over, had been nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award in the Best Polka Album category.

“My wife called me at work,” Gibala recalls. “I was so excited I was jumping up and down in the hallway.”

“People thought I was crazy,” he adds, with a laugh.

Gibala and his wife will fly to California for the Grammy Awards ceremony at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. There, Gibala and his bandmates will learn whether they garnered enough votes from members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to take one of the gold-plated, gramophone-shaped trophies home. Four other polka bands are also nominated. Not nominated this year is the Jimmy Sturr Orchestra, which has won the Best Polka Album Grammy 14 times since the category was created in 1986.

“Our band takes a fresh approach,” says Gibala, explaining that Henny and the Versa J’s’ tunes include hints of jazz and country music, while maintaining the traditional 2/4 polka beat.

Come on Over, which Gibala says took two-and-a-half years to complete, was a family affair. It features the work of Henny Jasiewicz on trumpet and his son, Butchie Jasiewicz, on drums; Henny’s sister, Dee-Dee Jasiewicz Ogrodny, on bass, piano, and vocals; her husband, Stas’ Ogrodny, on trumpet and vocals; and their son, Ryan Ogrodny, on violin, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, and vocals. Randy Koslosky plays accordion and piano and helps out on vocals, and although he and Gibala are the only nonrelatives, Gibala says the two “may as well be family.”

Gibala first picked up the clarinet at age seven and played in a band led by his father, The Bell Hops Orchestra, which featured musicians all under the age of 12. Gibala’s sister and two brothers were also in the band, as was Henny. Now, some 40 years later, Gibala and Henny have reunited in Henny and the Versa J’s. Gibala has been with the group for nine years.

As the band has played at festivals and dances throughout the Northeast and Midwest, Gibala has noticed a change in its audiences. “It’s hard to believe the numbers of young people who dance at polkas,” he says. “And I mean teenagers and people in their early 20s.”

Beyond their often-busy performance schedules, polka bands can be prolific recording artists. According to Gibala, many have recording studios in their own homes and turn out a fresh CD every year.

Gibala will be busy this week preparing for his trip to California. His wife has bought a new gown for the awards ceremony; Gibala plans to wear a black suit. He confesses to feeling a bit uneasy, a nervousness that goes beyond the normal jitters of a Grammy nominee: The five-hour nonstop flight to L.A. will be Gibala’s first plane ride, and he’s afraid of heights.

How will Gibala celebrate if he wins the Grammy?

“To tell you the truth, I don’t even know,” he replies, laughing. “The fact that we’ve been nominated hasn’t even sunk in yet.”