Interview with me on Czech Radio

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Czech Radio’s English language service recently interview me, along with banjoist-multi-instrumentalist Lubos Malina, about the great “Czechgrass” band Druha Trava’s new double live CD.

You can access the interview by CLICKING HERE.

We talk about the new CD set — one CD was recorded during the annual summer festival in the beautiful town of Telc, and the other is a compilation of performances last year with guests Peter Rowan, Charlie McCoy and Katia Garcia.

We also spoke about my role in DT’s previous CD, Shuttle to Bethlehem, which mainly features my English language translations of DT singer-songwriter-frontman Robert Krestan’s songs. (I've written about that experience on this blog).

After the interview, Lubos and I stopped to visit the new museum devoted to pioneering Czech animator Karel Zeman, and then went on to a concert by Kris Kristofferson.

Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

More on Charlie McCoy and also Czech Texans

Days of Texas poster, Roznov pod Radnostem, CZ, 2005. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As I reported earlier, the virtuoso harmonica player Charlie McCoy is being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. An article about him in a Ft. Myers Florida paper describes him as

one of the most recorded, most influential musicians in Nashville. And he’s virtually unknown outside Music City, USA.

Read full article

I write about Charlie on this blog because he is quite wellknown in the country music scene outside the USA. He tours regularly in Europe and elsewhere, and he makes a point to play with European bands (like my friend Steve & Heather in France and Druha Trava in Czech Republic) and also records with them.

I met him back in 2005 when he was touring with Druha Trava -- the concert I saw was at a "Days of Texas" festival in the little town of Roznov pod Radnostem, in eastern CZ.

Texas quilts in Ethnographic museum. Roznov pod Radnostem, CZ. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As I wrote in the International Herald Tribune (the link has expired), the setting was the Wallachian Open-Air Museum,

a sprawling complex dedicated to the preservation of local folk traditions and architecture. And the festival highlighted the fact that from the mid-19th century until World War I, thousands of people emigrated from Roznov and other towns and villages in the region to the Lone Star State. Today, Texas has the largest ethnic Czech community in the United States.

There were demonstrations of 19th century farming customs used by the emigrants, and performances by American-style Czech country-western groups as well as by local folk groups performing Wallachian songs and dances. An exhibition of quilting featured local designs as well as a big patchwork quilt reading "Texas," hung prominently from the upper floor of the old Roznov Town Hall.

I felt an immediate connection. My own great-grandfather immigrated to Texas from Lithuania in the 1880s, my mother and grandmother were both born there, and I had relatives who lived in some of the heavily Czech Texan communities.

Near Roznov, I made it point to visit the village of Lichnov, where a private little museum documents the Wallachian exodus with an exhibition called "Hope Has a Name -- Texas." It is a genealogist's paradise of archival records, photographs, maps and memorabilia tracing family histories on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was rather poignant to see how the immigrants, building new lives in a new world, named raw new prairie settlements after their ancient Czech hometowns and, in many cases, maintained at least some of their native customs and even a command of the language.

Indeed, the then-Mayor, Vaclav Mikusek, recalled his surprise when he first met descendents of Wallachian immigrants to Texas about 15 years ago. "There was one man whose ancestors had come from a village near Roznov, and when he started to speak Czech, it was like I was hearing my grandfather," he told me. "He was using the same words, same expressions. We were discussing it in the museum," he said. "Anyone who wants to hear a pure Wallachian dialect must go to Texas."

Charlie McCoy to Be Inducted In Country Music Hall of Fame

Charlie McCoy, the Grammy-winning, virtuoso harmonica player who has played with country and bluegrass bands all over Europe and released albums in France, Denmark, Germany and the Czech Republic, will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame May 17, along with Barbara Mandrell and Roy Clark.

The announcement of the honor was announced a couple months ago, but you can click HERE to see a recent article in The Ft. Myers Weekly, of Ft. Myers, Florida, where McCoy lives part time.

As McCoy's web site puts it:

Charlie is known all over the world. He performs every year in Europe and Asia, most frequently France, Japan, and Denmark. His European backup band is made up of Europe's finest musicians and is second to none.

This summer, he will be playing in the Czech Republic, France, Japan and Sweden.

He has recorded with my friends the French country duo Steve & Heather, and also with Druha Trava, the great "Czechgrass" group, with which he has frequently toured in CZ -- the album was a live recording of a concert in Brno. I met him, in fact, during one of his tours with DT, back in 2005.