Musical brothers blazed legendary trail
Brothers made lasting impact on Minnesota music scene, community, family legacy
By Amy Zents
For more than six decades, Peter Wendinger of New Ulm, now 77, and his late brother, Paul, played concertinas together across the Upper Midwest, building a musical tradition that grew into a multi-generational travel business and a long-standing community effort to preserve Minnesota music history.
The story began in 1962 when Herbert Wendinger bought his sons their first instrument after seeing young musicians from New Prague and Montgomery performing in New Ulm. Peter and Paul had stayed home on the farm that day, but their father returned convinced his sons could learn the instrument and form an ensemble of their own.
“Paul and I didn’t go along with my folks that day,” Peter said. “We stayed home. But he had just seen those young kids play, and he put it in his mind that his boys could do that too.”
The instrument Herbert brought home was crafted by Christy Hengel, the New Ulm artisan whose Chemnitzer concertinas became well known among polka musicians nationwide. Peter and Paul soon acquired twin Hengel concertinas and began performing together. For decades, they played dances, anniversaries, and community celebrations across the Midwest. Because the brothers were close in age and played matching instruments with identical phrasing, listeners frequently mistook them for twins.
“Everybody thought that Paul and I were twins,” Peter said. “We weren’t. But the concertinas were twins. When we got them, we each got one, so they were twins.”
While music brought them regional recognition, the Wendinger brothers remained working farmers at heart. Raised in Nicollet County, the rhythm of their daily life was dictated by livestock, crops, and seasonal chores. Balancing agricultural labor with late-night ballroom performances required strict priorities. When summer tour schedules picked up, field work and farm duties were managed around performance schedules.
“When we got busier with the band, that was a priority,” Peter said. “So the farming just had to sit and wait for us to come home.”
This dual lifestyle of farming and touring was made possible by Dodie Wendinger, Peter’s wife of 57 years.
Raised in town in Klossner, Dodie met Peter during their high school years. After marrying, she managed the home, raised their children, and handled business administration for the band while Peter worked the fields and traveled to regional gigs. Dodie learned the routines of farm life through hands-on experience, often guided by Paul.
“I didn’t know nothing about the farming,” Dodie said. “But Paul taught me how to farm. In some dumb ways, he was the instigator in all the dumb stuff I had to do.”
As the family grew, Peter and Dodie raised four children: Ann Bauer, Sheila Howk, Scott Wendinger, and Shari Beranek. Every child was integrated into the daily routine of farm life and family operations.
Today, Ann Bauer is employed by Schell’s Brewery and works on the farm; Sheila Howk is the owner of Wendinger Travel; Scott Wendinger works as a draftsman for Hinicker Homes of Mankato and farms; and Shari Beranek works as an EMT for Allina Health and at the New Ulm Vet Clinic.
When the children were growing up, household and farm responsibilities took precedence over extracurricular activities.
“All the children had a job to do,” Dodie said. “If they had school and activity functions, they always knew we didn’t say they couldn’t be part of those activities. But they had to have their chores done because Mom wouldn’t do it because Mom had her own work.”
Over 65 years of continuous performance, the Wendinger Band shared the stage with more than 230 musicians. The group built an extensive catalog of recordings and became a familiar presence at ballrooms across Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas. Over time, the venue landscape shifted significantly across the Upper Midwest as historic ballrooms closed or changed operations.
“The ballroom dancing has disappeared,” Peter said. “Weddings, boy, have we got one wedding every year, every other year. That’s about it.”
In response to changing entertainment trends, the Wendinger Band adapted its scheduling, transitioning away from weekly ballroom dances toward outdoor concerts in the park, church festivals, county fairs, and community parades.
Their repertoire remained grounded in traditional dance music, leaning heavily on Czech polkas and waltzes due to their steady rhythm and danceability.
“The danceable music is Czech music,” Peter said.
Both Peter and Paul received regional and national recognition for their contributions to traditional dance music, earning inductions into the World Concertina Congress in 2005, the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in 2007, and the International Polka Association Hall of Fame, with Paul inducted in 2012 and Peter in 2024.
Peter viewed these inductions not as personal awards, but as recognition for the entire group.
“It wasn’t for me,” Peter said. “It’s the band that helped me receive these awards. So I just led the band.”
In 1976, the family expanded its commercial operations by founding Wendinger Travel. The idea started modestly out of the basement of the Wendinger home after the band organized a group trip to Hawaii for local fans. What began as a single vacation package quickly developed into a year-round group travel agency catering primarily to older adults who wanted guided, worry-free travel experiences.
Running group bus tours presented unique logistical challenges. Dodie recalled an early trip to Hawaii where a hotel overbooked its reservations, leaving several couples in their group without assigned rooms upon arrival. Rather than causing a scene in front of the travelers, Dodie quietly collected the available room keys, identified administrative errors in the front desk paperwork, and sorted out room assignments directly with hotel management behind the scenes. Her operating rule for group travel remained straightforward.
“You don’t argue in front of the people,” Dodie said. “You get them away and then you deal with the situation.”
Over five decades, the travel business expanded to offer domestic bus tours, ocean cruises, and international trips to destinations across Europe and North America.
Today, the travel business is managed by Peter and Dodie’s daughter, Sheila Howk, and her husband, Michael. Sheila originally trained as a schoolteacher, but stepped in to assist with group logistics when her uncle Paul fell ill.
“I fell into that one,” Sheila said. “I went to school for teaching, and so it didn’t happen until my uncle Paul got sick.”
Sheila recalled sitting in the back of a theater with her father during a performance by Daniel O’Donnell in Branson, Missouri. As they watched the show together, she reflected on the many tour groups her father had brought to see O’Donnell’s performances over the years, pointing out that songs from those shows were later adapted into the Wendinger Band’s own repertoire.
“I was able to sit next to my dad, listening to songs, reminiscing on different songs they had both recorded over the years, places he has taken people to see Daniel’s concerts, just smiling from ear to ear, enjoying every minute of the concert,” Sheila said.
In addition to their work with music and travel, Peter and Dodie played a key role in establishing the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in New Ulm. Founded in 1988, the non-profit organization was created to preserve state musical history and honor musicians across diverse genres, including polka, big band, country, rock, and blues.
“We needed to document it, get it from the musicians before they were gone,” Dodie said. “Because we’re not only a polka town, we had a variety of music that started: big band, modern, marching bands. We had choral groups that go way back.”
The museum, located at 27 North Broadway Street, was established in a building donated by the City of New Ulm, leaving the board responsible for utilities, maintenance, interior exhibits, and archival storage. Dodie served as treasurer and executive director of the museum for 30 years and currently serves as co-executive director alongside Bonnie Ubl. Operating on private donations, museum admission fees, and occasional state grants, the board relies on local volunteers to staff the museum and catalog historical artifacts. The board has consistently resisted proposals to move the hall of fame to the Twin Cities metro area.
“As long as I’m living, it’s not happening,” Dodie said. “Because your workers, your people that have pushed for this and started it, right here, not in Minneapolis.”
Now at age 77, Peter spends part of the winter season with Dodie in Arizona, enjoying a slower pace of life that includes attending movies and resting from decades of farm work and travel scheduling. However, their connection to New Ulm and the regional community remains active. Their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren remain involved in local agriculture, healthcare, and commercial enterprises across the region.
Fifty years after his family’s first group tour and more than six decades after picking up his first concertina, Peter’s impact reaches far beyond southern Minnesota to audiences across the Upper Midwest and travelers nationwide.
As his family’s travel agency continues sending tours out of New Ulm and the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame welcomes visitors, Peter’s recorded music remains a staple on regional airwaves.
Every Sunday at 12:30 p.m., Peter hosts a weekly half-hour program, the Wendinger Band Show, on KNUJ (AM 860 and 97.3 FM), which listeners can also hear online. When asked what he hopes listeners will say about the Wendinger Band 50 years from now, Peter reflected on the enduring nature of his own recorded music.
“Hopefully our 25 records are still being spun, and people remember it,” Peter said.
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