Accordion repair is a dying occupation. Meet an Albertan keeping it alive

In Edwin Erickson's workshop, about 100 busted accordions of varying vintages are heaped on tables, lined up on shelves or packed away in multicoloured cases on the floor.

Some need tuning. Others have crooked buttons and blown-out bellows. A few are 100 years old.

To help get through the backlog, Erickson is building a new workshop outside his home, using wood cut by his grandfather nearly a century ago.

He's even planning to put in an elevator to help him get his accordions to the second floor.

Erickson, 73, has fixed accordions for over 50 years.

He first took up the accordion in his late teens, playing in gigs and later teaching students. He eventually went to Italy, where most of the world's accordions are made. It was there he got multiple certificates in accordion repair. 

"I made a life out of it," he said from his home in Buck Lake, Alta., about 150 kilometres southwest of Edmonton by road. 

The accordion was invented in Europe during the early 1800s and became popular for folk music. The instrument uses either a piano-style keyboard or buttons for melodies. Sound is produced by compressing and expanding the bellows — the mechanism that pumps air through the reeds.

When Erickson first started repairing accordions, repair people could be found in Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge and other places in Alberta.

"That is unfortunately no longer the case," he said.

"I don't think it would be unfair for you to say that accordion repair is a dying profession, at least in North America." 

He credits the decline in accordion music to the rise of rock 'n' roll.

"It makes my heart cry."

What makes the instrument special, said Erickson, is how it can convey emotion. 

"The bellows in an accordion is like the bow in a violin. The real heart of the music comes out through the use of the bellows," he said.

While it isn't as popular, it's still widely used, as Erickson has more work than he can handle, from repairing performers' accordions to helping people who found their parent's old instrument in the back of their closet and want it fixed.

The intricacies of repair 

An accordion can have up to 6,000 parts. Putting one together requires labour from workers in more than 20 different occupations, said Erickson.

"From steelwork to leather work to bellows makers to tuners," he said.

Tuning an accordion requires filing more than 400 metal reeds by hand to raise or lower the instrument's pitch. It can take more than 10 hours.

Erickson said that on average, an accordion needs tuning every 10 years.

Erickson has trained other musicians in accordion repair. One of them is Andrei Piatrashka. 

Piatrashka learned to play the accordion as a child, but left the instrument behind when he immigrated to Canada from Belarus in 2001.

About four years ago, he acquired an instrument similar to the one he had as a kid. He reached out to Erickson to learn how to care for it properly.

"This was a soul-satisfying experience. Not only did I get to learn something I enjoyed, I got to learn it from a person who has so much passion," Piatrashka said.

Piatrashka refers to Erickson as the "Bob Ross of accordions." Ross was an American artist and TV personality who became known as everybody's favourite painting teacher.

Piatrashka now does accordion repair from his home in Sangudo, Alta., about 120 km northwest of Edmonton by car. 

He's realized it isn't only an old person's instrument, as some younger folks are getting into it.

'No sad polkas'

Jordan Rody started playing the accordion when he was 12 years old. Now 29, he calls himself Alberta's polka king.

Erickson taught Rody how to make basic repairs to his instrument, such as how to wax it properly in Alberta's dry climate.

Rody got into playing the accordion because the music, in general, is happy. 

"There's no sad polkas," he said.

After five decades of tuning accordions, Erickson said his hearing has never been better. 

But one frustration as he ages is that he doesn't play as well anymore. He says his fingers can't keep up with his brain. 

"You know what you have to do and you know how you have to get there, but the signal is just delayed." 

Regardless, he has no plans to retire and is even working on building his own accordions from scratch. He hopes to sell them commercially one day.

Even after half a century, Erickson's interest in the instrument is not waning. 

"When the accordion is gone," he said, "I guess I'm gone, too."