My name is Peggy Mueller.  I live in Germantown, Wisconsin, USA, and play the Button Box Accordion (or Steirische Harmonica or Ziach in Austria and Germany). It is an accordion-looking type instrument with buttons on both sides that is really a giant harmonica.  If you press a button and push the bellows together, it makes one sound.  If you press the same button and pull the bellows out, it makes a different sound.  The particular instrument in the picture is a Strasser, four row, in the keys of G, C, F and Bb – made in Graz, Austria in 1993. 

My grandparents came to the United States from Austria in the early 1900’s.  Soon they longed for the folk music of their homeland.  My grandfather sent to Vienna for a button accordion, and he gave it to my then ten-year-old father.  He whistled the melodies to him and told him to “play.”  My father learned the folk music and played it for his family. 

My childhood was spent hearing my father’s music.  We attended many social events in the German-Austrian-American community, where music was common.  I became an active member of a Bavarian Trachten Verein, and married a first-generation Bavarian.  It was natural that I someday would learn to play a folk instrument from my heritage.

My father taught me to play the music by ear.  He also taught my younger brother.  We played together publicly many times, often with my husband and daughter.  By chance I heard about Joe Smiell’s Button Box Camp in Norden, California.  It was dream come true – one week in the Sierra Nevada Mountains doing nothing but learning to play the Button Box.  I have attended all but one camp since 1993.  The camp not only helped me learn to play from written music, but also provided a source for making new friends from all over the United States  who have the same interest in the instrument.  I am also able to play with Joe Smiell and Otto Schnauber (a fellow student) as a member of the “Button Box Trio.”  As of July of 1999, Otto and I joined the teaching staff at Joe’s Camp.  What a wonderful learning experience it has been!

Having gained confidence in teaching I have increased the number of private students who come to me to six, including 3 young people ages 10 - 14.  I am proud of all of them and hope that I am able to really help them to play well.

I perform with my Bavarian Dance group, SVEV D’Oberlandler, where I am one of their regular musicians.  I play on my own regularly in Von Rothenberg Bier Stube in Germantown, Wisconsin, and for German Fest in Milwaukee, the largest German festival of its kind in North America, and private parties, picnics, business organizations and schools.  I have also played throughout the United States, Germany, Austria and Singapore. 

In 1999 I recorded music on a CD.  It is called “So klingt’s bei uns,” which means “this is how we sound here.”  It has 18 all instrumental selections of folk and folk style music.  My husband, Hansi, danced the Schuhplattler on one of the selections, and my friend, Cindy Schaefer-Hartz, joined me on six of the pieces while playing her zither.  It is pretty mellow in sound, and people who have purchased it have really liked it. 

I would be delighted to hear from anyone.  I can be reached via e-mail at btnboxpeg@wi.rr.com.  Hope to hear from you!