England et al -- February International Country Music Festival Line-up Expanding

Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The program for the International Festival of Country Music to be held in February in London's Wembley Arena and other venues is expanding -- Charlie Pride and Asleep at the Wheel have been added to the line-up.  Acts now include headliners  Pride, AATW, Reba McEntire, Ricky Skaggs, and Lonestar, as well as supporting acts Narvel Felts, John McNicholl, Jo-El Sonnier, Will Banister, George Ducas, Sandy Kelly & George Hamilton IV, Raymond Froggatt, and Tim McKay.  

The Festival kicks off  Feb. 26, 2012 at Wembley -- scene in the 1970s and '80s of famous country music festivals  -- and then travels to Belfast, Zurich and Germany.

Returning to Wembley after more than two decades thus really marks  a symbolic return of big-time country music to the mainstream arts agenda -- and signals a revival of popularity in the genre. As the web site says:

The International Festival of Country Music introduced country music to the British public almost 45 years ago.  The shows, promoted by the legendary Mervyn Conn, ran for 23 years from 1969 to 1991 at Wembley Arena.  Hugely popular, the shows always featured the biggest stars of Country music fans were treated to outstanding performances by artists including; Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette, Jerry Lee Lewis, Crystal Gayle and many more.

Now after a gap of 20 years the Festival is back, and one thing that has not changed is world class line-up.

International Festival of Country Music founder Mervyn Conn said: “I’m bringing the International Festival of Country Music back after over twenty years due to popular demand. The regard for Country Music has grown significantly in the UK since the first year I promoted this event and I believe that now is the time to reintroduce this once hugely popular event to converted fans of country music and to a new and emerging group of country music lovers”.

Reba McEntire comments; “My band, crew and I are really looking forward to going back to Europe to play our music. The last time we performed there was in 1999! We have been very busy for the last 10 years doing the REBA TV show and concerts in North America. Now, we are so excited to be able to travel abroad and do both our new and old songs for our European audience, who has always been so good to us.”

Mondo a Little Bizarro -- Asleep at the Wheel Chinese Style

The iconic Texas Swing group Asleep at the Wheel featuring Ray Benson and He Wenxing with the Yunnan Performing Arts Group team up for a unique version of the band's trademark song -- Miles and Miles of Texas in the KLRU studio. The performance took place as a part of the Yunnan, China cultural exchange visit to Austin, Texas.

Berlin -- Asleep at the Wheel Turns 40 (and I'm at the Country Music Messe)

 I look into the somewhat distorting mirror at the Country Music Messe in Berlin. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

As I'm currently at the annual Country Music Messe in Berlin, Germany, country music is on my mind... and here's a nice, long piece in Billboard magazine about the Austin, Texas-based Western Swing band Asleep at the Wheel celebrating its 40th birthday.

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - When Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson started a band in Paw Paw, West Virginia, in 1970, he had no idea that 40 years later he would still be at the helm of one of America's most adventurous musical outfits.

During a four-decade career, the band has earned nine Grammy Awards, launched a critically acclaimed theatrical production, performed with everyone from Willie Nelson to President Obama to the Fort Worth Symphony, released more than 25 albums and had an airport roadhouse named after its frontman.

"At times it feels like it was yesterday and at times it feels like a hundred years ago," Benson says. "If I look back to 1969 when I quit college and said, 'This is what we're going to do,' it's hard for me to believe that it all happened way beyond my expectations." 

Read full article

I've know Ray since we were teenagers in suburban Philadelphia: he went to Antioch College for a bit while I (and Ray's brother) were at Oberlin, and we had a memorable time once hitch-hiking back to Philly together. We two hippies got a ride with a truck-driver who claimed to be "Col. Frank Savage" -- or General Frank Savage -- who was actually a character in the movie and TV show "Twelve O'Clock High". He scolded Ray when he said 'damn" or "hell" or something, telling him "not to use language like that in front of a lady" (i.e., me). He didn't like the fact that I was hitch-hiking (even if accompanied by a 6'7" man) but told me my Daddy should rest easy because Col (or Gen.) Frank Savage would take good care of me during the drive.

Ray Benson and me in Interlaken, Switzerland during the Trucker Festival, 2004

I've   seen Ray and the band perform many times over the years, most recently in Craponne, France in 2008 during the Country Rendez-vous festival. And I wrote a profile of him at that time -- click HERE.

Ironically, the fact that I knew Asleep at the Wheel became a factor, many years later, in my connection to the country music scene in Poland, and with Michael Lonstar -- whom I saw last night at the Berlin Messe.

Michael remembers that we first met in December 1982 at a party in Warsaw, where I was the UPI correspondent. I have to say that I don;t recall the occasion -- but Michael remembers that we "were sitting in the kitchen on stools, and we were talking about Asleep at the Wheel."

Nashville considers overseas country music

Dierks Bentley, Country Rendez-vous, Craponne, France, 2008. Photos (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As the Country Music Association's annual festival and fan fair kicks off in Nashville, the AP runs a story about American country music artists touring and trying to reach an international audience. Readers of this blog will have seen reports and pictures of mine on several American country and western (and bluegrass) acts on the road here in Europe. Some big name acts tour, but most of the acts on the European circuit are independent, lesser known or niche performers. They play at some of the dozens of country music and bluegrass festivals held around the continent from spring into the fall, and also at clubs, saloons and even concert halls. (Kris Kristofferson performed a couple years ago in one of Vienna's top classical music venues -- a wild scene with the audience in cowboy hats and boots, amid the rococo decor.)

Writer John Gerome starts his AP article with an interview with Dierks Bentley about a recent tour of Australia with Brooks and Dunn and then looks at other acts who tour, mentioning the size of the market.

Few contemporary country hitmakers tour outside North America with regularity. The international market for country isn't anywhere near what it is in the U.S., and the cost of hauling a crew, band and equipment across continents is brutal.

"Most country acts are reluctant to go overseas because they can't make the same money," remarked Joe Galante, chairman of Sony Music Nashville. "But you have to go there and spend some time and build a marketplace."

A few are making a go of it. Besides Bentley, Keith Urban regularly tours abroad. Brooks & Dunn, Sugarland and Taylor Swift are also making inroads. Alan Jackson and Martina McBride are both preparing to play shows in Europe.

Read full article


I saw Dierks Bentley himself, in fact (along with Asleep at the Wheel and others) at the Country Rendez-vous festival last July in Craponne France.

The Country Rendez-vous, one of the premiere country music festivals in Europe, always books American artists as the vast majority of its acts. Its roster over its more than 20 years of history is impressive -- everyone from the father of bluegrass Bill Monroe to Marty Stuart, Joe Ely, the Derailers, to Billy Joe Shaver, Mark Chesnutt, Guy Clark, Alison Krauss & Union Station, Rhonda Vincent, Whiskey Falls, and many, many more -- see a more complete list by clicking HERE.

Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. Country Rendez-vous, Craponne, France 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Country Night in Gstaad, Switzerland each September also features mainly U.S. acts. This year's headliner will be Kenny Rogers.

Other acts that have toured recently include Ricky Skaggs, banjo great Tony Trischka, Kris Kirstofferson, Lynne Anderson, Roseanne Cash, Dale Watson, and on and on.

For more about country music in Europe -- see earlier blog posts here, or take a look at the lengthy paper I wrote (you can access it from a link in the sidebar).

Willie and The Wheel -- on VOA

Asleep at the Wheel fans in France, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel (led by my old friend Ray Benson) have come out with a new CD, "Willie and the Wheel," which has been receiving excellent reviews.

Here's a link to a report on it on Voice of America -- a government radio station aimed specifically at the international market. You can read to the report by clicking HERE or listen to it by clicking HERE.

I've known Ray since we were teenagers in suburban Philadelphia -- and I profiled him last summer after seeing The Wheel perform at the Country Rendez-vous festival in Craponne, France.

I posted pictures of that concert on this blog.

Jewish Texan Country Singer (NOT Kinky Friedman)

In a previous post I posted a slideshow of pictures of the Austin, Texas-based Western Swing band Asleep at the Wheel, whose leader and anchor over the past more than 35 years is my old friend Ray Benson, performing at the Country Rendez-vous festival in Craponne, France. I've known Ray since we were teen-agers. He, like me, hails from suburban Philadelphia, but he moved to Texas in the early 1970s and has transformed himself from an east coast suburban Jewish boy to one of the top country music performers around -- he's won nine Grammy awards as the leader of Asleep at the Wheel and maintains a full-throttle recording and performance schedule.

Ray is not a "Sauerkraut Cowboy." But he is an example of how people can transform themselves, reinvent themselves, even "live their dreams". I've talked to him several times about this. And this, of course, is "the American way." People immigrated to America from all over the world and became Americans. Texas, too, is an "immigrant state." My own great-grandparents immigrated there from what is now Lithuania.

The imaginary wild west is an immigrant state of mind. People I've met in the European country and western scene immigrate internally, for a variety of reasons, into an imaginary wild west that they make real.

Here's an article I wrote about Ray -- it's for the Jewish media, so it focuses on his Jewish background.


A Jewish singer towers over country western scene

Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber Published: 09/26/2008

CRAPONNE SUR ARZON, France (JTA) -- Think Jews and country music and you'll probably come up with Kinky Friedman, the cigar-chomping frontman of the iconoclastic Texas Jewboys, who is also a humorist, mystery novelist and failed but flamboyant candidate for Texas governor.

The real Jewish king of country music, however, is Ray Benson, the nine-time Grammy-winning leader of the country western swing band Asleep at the Wheel.

At 6-foot-7, Ray Benson has been described as a "Jewish giant" and "the biggest Jew in country."

He literally and figuratively towers over the stage in a Stetson and fancy tooled boots, with a grizzled beard and long, thinning hair pulled back in a pony tail.

"I saw miles and miles of Texas, all the stars up in the sky," he sings in his deep, mellow baritone. "I saw miles and miles of Texas, gonna live here 'til I die."

Now 57, Benson was born in Philadelphia but has lived in Austin for 35 years. He talks with a twang, plays golf with Willie Nelson, has recorded more than 30 albums and was named Texas Musician of the Year in 2004.

By his own estimate, he is the only Jewish singing star in the country western scene.

"Kinky's not a country western singer -- he's Kinky!" Benson laughed during a conversation with JTA this summer at the annual Country Rendez-vous festival in south-central France, where Asleep at the Wheel wound up a five-nation European tour.

READ FULL ARTICLE

Country Rendez-vous Festival, Craponne, France

I'm at the annual Country Rendez-vous country music festival in Craponne, France this weekend. Got here Thursday, driving up from Italy, arriving just in time to attend the opening reception at a government building in Le Puy, the nearest big town to Craponne. Le Puy is a spectacular medieval (and older) town, a historical place of pilgrimage and mysticism, built in an area of extinct volcanoes. An ancient cathedral tops a steel hill at the center of town, with a spectacular church on another nearly vertical neck of rock, and a huge statue of the Madonna and Child on another.

I was at the festival for the first time last year, and ended up writing a piece on it -- and country music in France in General -- in the International Herald Tribune.

I'm staying with the artists in Le Puy -- a tad inconvenient, as it is a 45-minute drive to the festival venue in Craponne, which means if you go out there, you can't just run back.

The headline act of the first night of the festival (last night) was Austin-based Asleep at the Wheel, the legendary western sweing band led by Ray Benson, who (like me) hails from suburban Philadelphia and whom I've know since we were teenagers.

I chose to go up to the festival on the bus with the band, so I missed the first couple of acts, but I did see the extraordinary progressive bluegrass/roots band Cadillac Sky, which I loved.

They played just ahead of ASTW - who went on well after midnight, playing a mix of their old hits (Take Me Back to Tulsa, Miles and Miles of Texas, etc) songs from their musical play about Bob Wills, A Ride with Bob, and other pieces - Ray did a terrific version of Townes Van Zandt's classic Pancho and Lefty. (I think my favorite song I've heard Ray perform is another Van Zandt song, If I Needed You.)



The crowd was not as huge as it could have been, as it had rained heavily during the evening. But the band got at least part of them up and rocking.

I got to bed at 4 a.m....