Wearing cowboy on his skin (in Bavaria)

I've been visiting Willie Jones, the American-born singer whose been based in Germany for more than 30 years and is one of the standouts on the European country scene. He has a new compilation CD coming out this fall, and I wrote the liner notes.

Willie is one of the first people I met in Europe's Imaginary Wild West -- back in 2003, when he was the strolling singer at the Pullman City wild west theme park (I was writing an article for the New York Times on European wild west theme parks). We went on a memorable road trip to a country roadhouse in southern Bohemia ... the first time I heard "The Okie From Muskogee" sung in Czech.... I last saw his about a year and a half ago, at the "mini Dobrofest" festival in Trnava, Slovakia (which I wrote about HERE).

Last night I went with Willie to a club gig in a village in Bavaria, near Regensburg: he played bass backup for a German duo called Bud 'n' Cellar, and also sang....country-infused rock and pop.

The club was packed -- and the fans demanded -- DEMANDED -- DEMANDED -- that they play "Country Roads" -- two times! I have posted about the significance of this song in the European country scene.

I was particularly fascinated by the tattoos sported by one of the group's friends. He wore his enthusiasm on his skin.

Here's another couple of pics from the gig:

More evidence of growing Italian country scene

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Here's more evidence that Italy's country western scene is developing.

The Italy blog Italy Chronicles runs a post about an Italian country singer named Fabrizio Pollastrelli who goes by the stage name Paul Aster and plays with a band called "The Fellows." His web site says they play "southern rock 'n' country music."

Aster hails from northern Italy and is currently based on Fano, in Le Marche on the coast.

Here he sings -- like so many other European country artists -- Country Roads....

Italy has a few wellknown, veteran bluegrass groups -- like Red Wine and Bluegrass Stuff -- but until fairly recently it has not had much of a "mainstream" country music scene.

As I've posted in the past , this seems to be changing. There is a slowly growing country-western-music-etc scene that includes country music and other general western festivals as well as a surging line-dance scene.

This is on top of fairly well-established western scene linked to horses and horse-riding, and the Cowboy Action Shooting scene, which has clubs in many parts of the country.

The biggest western event has long been the FieraCavalli -- horse fair -- in Verona.

Here's a video from the FieraCavalli 2009 -- masters of line dancing.






I can't forget that the first European country singer I met when I first started exploring the "imaginary wild west" was an Italian, "George McAnthony," from the South Tyrol/Alto Adige region. I saw him perform a couple of times and did a lengthy interview with him -- he was a nice guy and he and his story helped trigger my interest in the imaginary wild west phenomenon..Sadly, George died three years ago, aged only 45.

Still, just nine or 10 years ago I attended a  well-attended "Western Games" festival near Rome -- and there was no line-dancing, and the country band they had playing drew an audience of zero.

RIP Czech singing legend Pavel Bobek

Pavel Bobek at the gala Prague concert in 2012 celebrating his 75th birthday

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


Sad news in the Czech music world....the singing legend Pavel Bobek died in Prague today (Nov. 20). He was 76, and had been in declining health for some time.

I got to know his music -- and him, a little -- in recent years as he performed frequently with Druha Trava and with Lubos Malina, who also produced Bobek's last CDs. Last year, he was inducted into the Czech popular music award "Andel"'s hall of fame.

Bobek got his start in the late 50s/early 60s as  the Communist era's "Mister Rock and Roll," and also became a star in the Czech country scene. He had big hits with covers of American songs by Kris Kristofferson, Jon Denver, Bruce Springsteen and more -- like this Buddy Holly cover, very early on.




Another early clip -- a Czech version of "Sunday Morning Coming Down"




And here he sings another of his big hits -- a Czech version of Springsteen's "My Home Town." The video sets it against the bleakness of a Czech Communist-era "panel house" apartment complex...




Bobek's duet with DT's Robert Krestan of "Jeste Neni Tma," Robert's Czech version of Bob Dylan's "It's Not Dark Yet"  from the 2007 Dylanovky CD, is one of my favorites. Here they are, performing it in 2010 during a concert  in Prague.

As I wrote at the time, the concert was very poignant, as his health problems were evident even then, three years ago -- but the packed audience gave him thunderous applause.

Last year, I attended a gala concert marking his 75th birthday. Again, it was a very poignant, very moving experience, as he appeared very frail onstage. Again, he performed for a full, enthusiastic audience.

Another Czech singing legend, Karel Gott, joined Bobek on stage at the birthday concert.

I have to close with Bobek's Czech version of "Country Roads"....

On its 40th birthday -- NPR on "Take Me Home, Country Roads"

A couple sings "Country Roads" at the Geiselwind Trucker and Country Festival in Germany, 2007. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In Europe, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" -- John Denver's 1971 mega-hit -- is probably the most popular (and most covered) country-style song by local singers.  To mark its 40th birthday, America's National Public Radio (NPR) ran an interview with the song's writers -- no, not John Denver (born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. in 1943), who died in a plane crash in 1997, but songwriter Bill Danoff and his girlfriend and writing partner Taffy Nivert.

"Take Me Home, Country Roads" became the unofficial anthem of West Virginia and the official song of the West Virginia University Mountaineers. But here's the catch: Danoff had never even been to the Mountain State before writing it, though he'd heard the sounds of the state as a kid growing up in Massachusetts.
Danoff said he listened to "hillbilly music" on WWVA from Wheeling, W.V.
"I just thought the idea that I was hearing something so exotic to me from someplace as far away," he said. "West Virginia might as well have been in Europe, for all I know."

Danoff would go on to write 12 more songs for John Denver. And he would also form the Starland Vocal Band, famous for "Afternoon Delight." Still, 40 years later, Danoff said, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is his biggest moneymaker — he says he splits 75 percent of royalties with Nivert and gives the remaining 25 percent to the Denver estate.

Here are the three of them:

 "Country Roads" touched a chord: it's omnipresent, everywhere.

"My first country song which I heard was  'Almost Heaven, West Virginia,'" a German truck driver told me in 2004. '… Henry John Deutschendorf... it was fantastic, yeah? And so I fell in love with country music. [...] He gives us beautiful songs. John Denver. His grandfather was German, and he was one of the best. But he died too early."

Here's Denver singing "It's Good to Be Back Home Again," -- in Germany. It's about a truck driver coming home.

I find "Take Me Home Country Roads" incredibly sappy; sugary sweet and bland at the same time.

But audiences in Europe love the song -- they invariably sing along, swaying and smiling. The idea of "home" translates into a sense that we (they) are all at home in America -- or the America of dreams, where is here. Other  songs popular in the European country scene also play on this sense of the universal "home" somewhere in the mythical West (or South) -- "Sweet Home Alabama," for example.