Tony Trischka's new CD -- A Great Big World

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


The American banjo great Tony Trischka has come out with a gorgeous new CD, "A Great Big World." You can hear a preview of one track by clicking the link on the photo above.

The CD showcases Tony't thrilling virtuosity -- and includes guests such as Andy Statman,  Russ Barenberg,  Tristan Clarridge, Mike Barnett and others on a variety of songs -- including one of my favorites, Woody Guthrie's "Do-Re-Mi." All the tracks are winners -- but the one that really hit me was the oddly titled "Purple Trees of Colorado."Amazing.

Writes Bela Fleck in the Liner Notes -- which can be accessed online:

"Everyone loves to play with Tony, because of his strong musical gifts and conception, and because he's one of the coolest dudes to hang around with and be yourself. Not everyone who asks you to play on their record actually wants that, but he does."

Though I've seen him in the U.S., I know Tony from here in Europe -- where he plays often, and where he has had considerable influence. This has been particularly so in the Czech Republic, where his progressive bluegrass style was a powerful inspiration to (among others) the musicians who went on to found the group Druha Trava.

In the 1980s, DT's singer-songwriter Robert Krestan and banjoist Lubos Malina were members of the pioneering Czech progressive bluegrass group Poutnici. (They left Poutnici and formed DT in 1991.) Robert at that time also played banjo. Tony was one of their heroes.

As I noted in an earlier post, Tony first toured the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in 1988, before the fall of communism, and he also returned in 1989, also before the Wall came down. During those stays, he performed as a guest on an LP by Poutnici, called "Wayfaring Stranger." In the liner notes, he describes Poutnici in much the same terms I have used to describe Druha Trava. "They … have a unique sound," he said. "Czechgrass instead of Kentucky bluegrass. In other words, they've made it their own, which is wonderful."

I've now caught Tony on tour with DT on several occasions -- first in 2008, and the latest time this past summer, where Tony tried out his new banjo -- a banjo made by the accomplished Czech banjo-maker Zdenek Roh.  (Zdenek is featured in the new documentary about Czech bluegrass, Banjo Romantika.)

Tony Trischka with his new banjo, made by Zdenek Roh. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

In addition to his Czech tours, Tony also plays elsewhere in Europe -- he teaches at a summer bluegrass workshop near Urbino, Italy, and this fall will be teaching at a "banjo camp" workshop in Germany.

Czech bluegrass -- 1983...

I can't resist posting this rather fantastically bizarre video from 1983 of the seminal Czech progressive bluegrass band Poutnici....oh, that communist-era sense of humor!





The video shows several members of current Poutnice line-up and also Robert Krestan (heavily bearded on banjo) who went on to found Druha Trava in 1991.

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"....

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

Czech Bluegrass Documentary Project News

Last summer, when I went into the studio in Prague to help with the recording of Druha Trava's CD Shuttle to Bethlehem, I ended up hanging out and traveling a bit with Lee Bidgood, an American fiddler and mandolinist who teaches at East Tennessee State University, which has a Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music Studies program -- and his colleague from ETSU, the documentary filmmaker Shara Lange.

Lee did his PhD on Czech Bluegrass (we met in 2004 at the Caslav Bluegrass Festival in CZ) and he and Shara are making a documentary film on Czech Bluegrass music and musicians -- I am thrilled to be onboard as a sort of consultant or production assistant....

The film now has a web site -- you can click HERE to find out information, see some video, hear some music and find out more about the project, screenings, events, etc.

One upcoming event is a concert August 8, in Johnson City, TN, at which Lee and fellow musicians will perform Czech translations of bluegrass classics as well as original material by Czech bluegrass musicians, in both Czech and English.

Here's a clip I took of Lee jamming late a night with Lubos Malina, of Druha Trava.

During out brief travels last summer, we also visited Marko Cermak, the godfather of five-string banjo playing in  CZ, at his cabin in the woods. 

Interviewing Marko Cermak. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

According to his own and other accounts, Cermak, who was active in the Czech tramp music scene, built his own long-necked, five-string banjo by studying photographs taken of Pete Seeger at Seeger's seminal 1964 concert in Prague concert. Cermak went on to become one of Czechoslovakia's first banjo virtuosi.

Marko Cermak. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Among other things, Cermak founded one of Czechoslovakia's first American-style country and bluegrass groups, the Greenhorns. The Greenhorns became extremely influential by playing Czech language versions of American folk songs, copying arrangements they heard on American Forces Radio.  In doing so, they, and similar groups, brought these songs firmly into the local musical tradition, fostering a total assimilation of many songs into the Czech repertoire. 

After visiting Marko, we went on to spend the night at the home of banjoist and banjo-maker Zdenek Roh, near Jihlava, where I had visited the previous year with Lubos Malina and Robert Krestan of Druha Trava.

Zdenek Roh. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Slovakia -- The annual Peter Dula Tribute Concert

Michael Lonstar and Dorota Krawczyk at the Peter Dula tribute. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This week I was in Kosice, in far eastern tip of Slovakia, to attend the annual concert and awards event held there to honor the memory of local son Peter Dula, a Slovak country singer who died of cancer in 2009 at the age of only 28. He had been diagnosed ten years earlier while in the U.S. playing hockey for a junior league in Boston, then got into country music while undergoing cancer treatment back in Slovakia.

I never met Dula (though we were friends on Facebook), but he was a friend of several of my friends in the central European country scene. Dula had fronted the band Veslari -- "The Rowers," Slovakia's oldest country music band, since 2004. With Dula singing, the band won a Slovak Grammy and other numerous  awards including the best European country band of 2007. They also played at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in 2007.


After his death, Dula's friends in the country music scene over here decided to honor his memory by each year passing on his guitar to a chosen artist, who would be its custodian for the following 12-month period, creating a sort of "Wayfaring Guitar" as a living memorial.


The guitar is handed over at a concert event where awards are also handed out, inducting chosen artists into "Peter Dula's Country Music Hall of Fame."


The first two awardees, in 2009, right after Dula's death, were European -- my friends Michael Lonstar, from Poland, and Allan Mikusek, from Slovakia. Last year there were four Americans: songwriter Mark Trail, Billy Yates, Joe Diffie and Buddy Jewell.


This year the awards went to my Czech friends Robert Krestan and Lubos Malina, and their band Druha Trava -- I worked with the band on their latest CD, Shuttle to Bethlehem, which features Robert's original songs sung in my English translations.


The concert -- which lasted four hours -- was held in a big theater-type hall in some sort of anonymous facility (a driving school?) on the southern edge of Kosice. The theater was packed, and the atmosphere was good: not raucous, like a German or Polish country crowd; not "tramp" like the Czech bluegrass crowd can be. There was no bar in the place -- so no one was drunk, either! And the only person in a real cowboy hat was Lonstar. (Several of us wore cowboy boots, though....)

Lonstar, a young Polish singer named Dorota Krawczyk, and a Slovak band led by local singer Laco Sasak performed during the first half of the show. A mix of U.S. songs, and traditional-style originals (sung in English, Polish and Slovak) -- concluding the set with a Slovak version of the song "Cowboy's Gone," which Lonstar wrote in memory of Peter Dula. All the while, pictures of Dula were projected onto the rear of the stage.

Druha Trava was the headline act and played the second half of the show. I've seen them perform a lot, but I've never seen such an enthusiastic audience -- whooping and stomping and cheering, etc. Pretty wild. DT hadn't performed in Kosice in years, and it was as if the audience was just hungry for the music.


At the end of the show, the awards (framed citations) were present, and Peter Dula's wayfaring guitar was handed over into the care of DT.

Then, as the closer, Robert, joined by the other artists, sang the folksong "Wayfaring Stranger", with Dula's picture as a backdrop, which seemed the right way to end the show.

Czech/US/Music -- Druha Trava and Shuttle to Bethlehem on U.S. national NPR radio

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

More DT and Shuttle to Bethlehem -- the band's English-language CD that mainly features my translations of Robert Krestan's original Czech songs.

A story on the band and the CD, by NPR political correspondent Don Gonyea, ran on National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" show today. Read a short version of it HERE or listen to the full story HERE.

The first time I heard Druha Trava play was April 2009. I was covering President Obama's trip to the Europe. There was a big outdoor speech in Prague, and the band was playing Czech versions of Bob Dylan songs.

I did a short radio postcard story back then, figuring it was the kind of experience that every music fan knows: You stumble upon a great band somewhere and never see them again.

Now it's the fall of 2011, and I'm chasing candidates around Iowa. Who should be doing a show at the Czech and Slovak Hall in Cedar Rapids? Druha Trava.

"Shuttle to Bethlehem"

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I just spent three days with Druha Trava in California (around the Bay Area) helping out with some of the PR for the new CD "Shuttle to Bethlehem" -- the CD showcases my English language translations of Robert Krestan's original Czech songs, and I also wrote the liner notes for the album.

It was fun. Three good and very well received concerts in three quite different venues as part of the band's current five-week U.S. tour (a sold-out gig at a coffee house in Santa Clara, a crowded concert in someone's house in Redwood City, and a lunchtime show at a Mexican Restaurant called Don Quixote's near Santa Cruz....see clip below

I also took part in a two-hour radio show on the local KRCB NPR affiliate in Sonoma country about the CD and the band, hosted by my friend Linda Seabright -- and ahead of the Don Quixote gig, I spoke on-air between songs during a live performance by the band on KPIG FM. (The studio is located in a former motel in Freedom, CA, and is decorated with layers of pictures and posters testifying to 40 years of rock...)

KPIG studio. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The band's tour has been getting good write-ups: to me it's interesting how the sets  they sing are  different in the States from what they do in CZ. Here in the US, most is in English -- new songs from "Shuttle" and a range of covers -- and there's more bluegrass. But in CZ, Robert's songs make up the major part of the onstage repertoire, with only a very few songs in English.

Czech/US/Music -- Druha Trava's English language CD is Out

      


By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Shuttle to Bethlehem, the new English-language CD by the Czech band Druha Trava, is officially out now in the Czech Republic -- and the band is in the US at the start of a five-week tour to launch it.  I take particular interest because I was involved with the CD production -- I translated Robert Krestan's songs and also helped out in the studio during recording. You can find the English lyrics HERE.

I'm eager to see how the CD is received -- so far, comments are very positive. One newspaper editor I know in Minneapolis called it on Facebook "a great album, and a wonderful introduction to the renowned "Czechgrass" band."

Czech Republic -- In the Studio with Druha Trava

In the studio. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In mid-July I spent two days in a Prague studio helping record the vocal tracks for a new CD by the Czech country/bluegrass/fusion group Druha Trava. Founded 20 years ago, in 1991, DT and its various members have brought out more than a score of albums, including several in English -- see a history of the group by Lilly Pavlak, posted on the European Bluegrass Blog by clicking HERE

But the new Druha Trava CD  -- tentatively titled "Shuttle to Bethlehem" after one of the songs (the inspiration was Bethlehem PA, not the "other" one) is the first that will primarily feature English-language versions of singer-songwriter Robert Krestan’s distinctive original songs.

I made the translations, and the studio session was the culmination of a collaborative project that had taken more than five years to come to fruition.
 
During the recording session, we were joined in the studio by Lee Bidgood -- a wonderful musician who did his PhD on Czech bluegrass and now teaches at East Tennessee State University, which has a  Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music Studies program -- and his colleague from ETSU, the documentary filmmaker Shara Lange, who are making a documentary on Czech bluegrass. They filmed the session and also interviewed Robert, banjoist Lubos Malina and me.

Lee and me when we met in 2004

Lee is one of the first people I got to know what I was starting to follow the Czech bluegrass scene -- we met at the Caslav bluegrass festival in 2004 and I recall how wonderful it was to talk to someone who also was looking at the scene and the music from the "outside" and considering the same questions that I was.

While he was doing research in CZ a few years ago, Lee kept a wonderful blog  in which he described music and musicians and reflected on the history and trajectory of the music in the Czech Republic. He hasn't posted anything lately, but it is a terrific resource.

I wrote about the Prague recording session this week in a post on the Arty Semite blog of the Forward, describing a bit of the complex process of translation. I started translating Krestan's songs into English in 2006 and continued working on them as one facet of the "Sauerkraut Cowboys/Indian Dreams" project for which I had  a Guggenheim Fellowship and NEH summer grant.

My first goal was basic: I loved the Czech originals, but I wanted to know what they meant. As I started working, though, it seemed much more logical — and in fact, even easier — to put them in a rhyming form that could be sung. The process was surprisingly straightforward.

A young student in Prague, David Kraus, supplied me with word-for-word equivalents. David’s father Tomas is an old friend, the secretary of the Federation of Czech Jewish Communities, but he also knows a lot about the Czech country music scene. In Communist times Tomas’s late brother [Ronald Kraus] produced, wrote and translated songs for several key Czech tramp and country-style groups [including the iconic band KTO]..

I took the words that David gave me, compared them to the rhythm of the original Czech lyrics, and listened over and over to the original songs in order to capture their meaning and rhyme structure as well as to fit them to the melodies.

Czech is a more bristly language than English, with quite different sounds and cadences, and Krestan uses words for their tonality as well as meaning. But remarkably, my lyrics got to a point where they seemed to click into place. Later, Krestan and I spent a couple of sessions together tweaking the English to improve both nuance and “singability.”

In the studio, as Krestan sang into the microphone, I stood in the sound booth with DT’s banjo player Lubos Malina, who is co-producing the CD with Nashville-based Steve Walsh. Five years on, it was the first time I heard the songs sung in their final form. (Walsh oversaw the recording of the instrumentals in Nashville last spring.) They sounded, well, right. I focused on recording levels and intonation, but I couldn’t keep a goofy smile off my face.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/140290/#ixzz1TEAt1c7T

Here's a brief video clip I took of one of the recording session takes of the song "Before We Say Good-Bye".

And here's the original Czech version, sung by the band performing outside Prague castle in 2009, when President Obama was there meeting with Czech leaders.

Rehearsing for new DT CD

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

For the past couple of days I have been in the rural Czech Republic, helping the Czech singer songwriter Robert Krestan of the Czechgrass group Druha Trava rehearse the English language versions of some of his songs for a new, all English language CD -- today we go in to the studio in Prague to begin cutting the tracks. I've never been in a studio for a recording, so it should be an interesting experience..... I did the translations of the songs, and I have to say, they sound good!

Here are the lyrics for the ones that will be on the CD:

Tanecnice (Dancer)


An upturned chair shows the hour has passed
In a night club at the end of care.
The one last dancer in the corner stands
Brushing glitter from her long dark hair.


I'm the last guest, the last glass in my hand;
I'm the last one in this place.
I push back my hat and I look at her,
How she fools the world, with all her paint


Refrain:
Josephina, dance for me, dance the dawning sky
For this undrunk, unfinished night
Ah, dance for me good-bye


She takes her bag, my ballerina;
Just a key and a bottle of beer.
She straightens the chairs and kills the light,
She smiles as she gets out of here.


I open the door, it's early dawn
It leads me down the path outside
Where heaven's morning stars await
The one who has refused to hide.


The north wind’s casting its magic spells
On my beachhead by the sea
When all at once my heart reveals
A naked fantasy


Somewhere in my dream a dancer whirls
Too daring maybe for my soul
I set sail toward the open waves
Just call me Ishmael 

Refrain:
Josephina, dance for me, dance the dawning sky
For this undrunk, unfinished night
Ah, dance for me good-bye


Infiela


Infiela,
Feathers in your touch
Dying, by your side
A hundred times, as much.
A tyrant takes my soul
I'm locked in God's embrace
The Devil calls my name
Eternal sacrifice

Morning, I set sail
From the waters of Cartegena
From the infernal gates of Hell
Grateful, at peace, I come
Morning, I sail away
In darkness diminished to dawn
Oh, beautiful, faithless one,
Infiela!


Infiela,
Weren't we maybe so
Lost in our own world
Countless times and more?
Pure in innocence
Damned in our desire
Gods in nakedness
Human in envy's fire?


Morning, I set sail
From the waters of Cartegena
From the infernal gates of Hell
Grateful, at peace, I come.
Morning, I sail away
In darkness diminished to dawn
Oh, beautiful, faithless one,
Infiela!




Shuttle to Bethlehem (Pendl do Betlema)


I hear nothing, just a barking and a seagull's cry.
Bells are wailing, friars humming, and the crows whiz by
The whistle's sizzling, even kissing you sounds like a slap
Dies irae, and all around the shrieks of pelicans.


Refrain:


But before I disappear, my dumb love,
Let me hitchhike for you while I can.
Today I'm gone, on the shuttle train to Bethl'em,
Maybe soon, a taxi to the promised land.


Your eyes tell me, you got everything you ever asked.
You're driven crazy, by my fear, my nakedness.
My heart is bleeding, the priest slashes with a knife of stone;
Just like you, dear, just like you and you and you alone.


Refrain 

But before I disappear, my dumb love,
Let me hitchhike for you while I can.
Today I'm gone, on the shuttle train to Bethl'em,
Maybe soon, a taxi to the promised land.

When I Take Off My Shoes (Az si jednou sund�m boty)


When you tell me to stop
And then when I take my shoes off
When the smile of the rails
Tells me jump, now, my friend


When my hand becomes hard
As a tile of terracotta
When I sit by my door
Just don't ask to what end.


When the dust from my roads
Cleans the scars upon my forehead
When I learn about things
That are best not to know


When the last of my rhymes
Become idle in my song book
It may well be too late,
The last time, maybe so.


Then when the wind and the rain
Wash the traces from Golgotha
When the smoke from the pyres
In the end fades away


When I take off my belt
And then when I take my shoes off
Nothing's left for me, now
And for you, now, who's to say.

When Death Does Us Apart (Az Nas Smrt Rozdeli)


When horses fly away
To the night, to the gates
Of Jericho
When our embrace dissolves
in the fog, on the shore
When those lips of yours are double-locked
As if I tried to kiss the Gates of Troy
I'm just an outcast soul without a name
Undrunk, unloved, unfull of joy.


When shots of firearms
quiet down
on the streets
down by the bay
When death does us apart
along its blue
waterway;
When the reek of booze clears this nest of doves
And the fortune teller does the same
It’s the end of song, end of love
End of war, end of game.




The Last of the Galleons (Za Posledni Lodi)


The last of the galleons had sunk into the sea
The last of the soldiers had heard his death knell
And a desolate chant from within a stone cloister
Was like one of us bidding farewell


The last of the galleons had sunk into the sea
And like night-flying bats the wind ruffled the shore
And a brave young musician chimed chords on an organ,
Jeremiah's his name evermore


The last ship had sunk, and I rushed to a place
Where the turning flood tide left me armor from Spain,
A sack of pesetas, some yellowing letters;
Stark memories and, unfathomed pain

Czech Republic -- Druha Trava recording in Nashville

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

My friends, the Czech bluegrass/fusion/rock "Czechgrass" band Druha Trava are recording a new album in Nashville -- and are maintaining a very interesting and revealing blog that reflects on and describes the process of crafting songs (the Czech translates pretty well in google translate).

There are pictures and some fascinating video showing how the songs come together. (It's not as dramatic as Godard's film One Plus One, one of whose running themes was the Rolling Stones working on Sympathy for the Devil....)

Gold!

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There's gold in them thar hills! The discovery of gold by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in what is today California, on January 24, 1848 sparked the extraordinary migration of as many as 300,000 people who "rushed" to the region by land and sea to seek their fortune in search of the yellow metal.

The Gold Rush and fabled Mother Lode captured the world's collective imagination, inspiring songs and stories, literature and tall tales, as well as attracting fortune-seekers from all directions. Boom towns grew up, and prospectors and gold-panners became Wild West archetypes, part and parcel of the set of Frontier characters that ranged from Native Americans in feathered headdress to cowboys, trappers, schoolmarms and whores. Indeed, gold-panning ponds are de rigeur features of some of the Wild West theme parks in Europe, and there are gold-panner hobbyist/reenactor groups. One of these hobbyists taught me to pan for gold when I visited Beaver City, a private wild west town in the Czech Republic.

I learn to pan for gold in Beaver City

Last week, I spent a day in the "real" Gold Rush country, partaking in a mash-up of experiences that blended today's realities with the romance of the Imaginary West.

I visited Sutter's Mill itself, where a nicely laid out museum park tells the Gold Rush story through monuments, mock-ups of old buildings (reminiscent of stage-sets, theme-parks or European skansen open air museums) and preserved original sites. From the top of a hill, a monument to Sutter surveys the scene.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The park includes two fascinating pioneer cemeteries, one Protestant and one Catholic, whose tombstones and epitaphs told the story of European fortune-seekers who ended up in this corner of California. (I also visited the tiny Jewish cemetery in Placerville - I posted about this on my Jewish Heritage blog.)

What was particular interesting at the cemeteries was to see the stones on which was inscribed as part of the epitaph the origin of the deceased: "A Native of Germany," "A Native of Ireland," etc etc: all drawn, one way or another, by the lure of gold.

Catholic cemetery. photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Protestant cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I stayed (natch) at the Mother Lode Motel in Placerville,  a tourist town in the heart of the region, where Wild West kitsch similar to that found in Europe is on sale.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There is a historic 19th century hotel in town, the Cary House.

Cary House. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

But the Mother Lode was more my price range -- and it had free WiFi, too.

Mother Lode Motel, Placerville. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

What brought me to the Gold Rush territory also formed part of the real imaginary mash-up -- my friends, the  Czech bluegrass/country/acoustic rock band  Druha Trava, were giving a concert in Placerville on Oct. 6. (I toted my newly purchased ukulele to the gig -- I don't know how to play yet, though -- and wore, of course, my cowboy boots....)

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Here's some video from the show:

Czech Republic -- Pavek Bobek

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

Last night in Prague I attended the launch concert for the new CD by the Czech singing legend Pavel Bobek. The CD is Czech language covers of Johnny Cash songs and much of it was recorded in Nashville. This sparked the main Czech TV news to feature it on its broadcast on Sunday.

I found the concert poignant: the passage of time and all that. Bobek, who is in his 70s, had a bout of bad health in recent years. He got his start in the late 50s/early 60s as "Mister Rock and Roll." I watched videos of his youthful performances before going to see him live....

Backed by the Malinaband (mainly members of Druha Trava), Bobek performed some of his big hits -- covers of Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Springsteen songs, and also the perennial fave "Country Roads".

He encored with the duet "Jeste neni tma" from DT's Dylanovky CD, with Robert Krestan -- a Czech cover of Bob Dyland's "It's not dark yet"

The hall, at a local culture center, was packed with fans of all ages, and they cheered and whooped -- giving him a standing ovation.

DT's Visas OK

Bea Flaming reports that Druha Trava's visa delay has been cleared up.

Thanks to the tenacity of Greg Buhr working from Minnesota Senator Al Franken's office, I just received word a few minutes ago that Druha Trava's visa petition has been approved! Greg left a message last Thursday at USCIS, then spent 55 minutes holding on the phone on Friday waiting to speak with the Congressional Liaison there, and called again this morning receiving a promise that they would make a ruling on the petition today! He kept working it until they acted. They called him just a bit ago and he immediately called me. Since the US Embassy in Prague is ready to interview Druha Trava, all should go well from here on out! Bea Flaming - DT US Representative

Druha Trava's U.S. tour threatened by visa delay

DT's instruments and screen image of the Obamas and Czech leaders. Photo from www.druhatrava.cz

Next month's U.S. tour of the "Czechgrass" band Druha Trava, the band that played ahead of President Obama's speech in Prague earlier this year, is being threatened by delays in processing their visa requests. The Druha Trava web site reports that if the visas, which were applied for in May, do not come through, the band will have to cancel the 10-state, 18-gig tour, which is due to begin Sept. 4.

DT's U.S. representative Bea Flaming reports, on the web site:

It seems so ridiculous that this band, who performed for an hour at Prague Castle before President Obama's speech there last April, are having such a hard time getting visa approval this year (especially after getting visas every year since 1993, except last year when we canceled the tour before we even filed for visas).

I first FedExed Druha Trava's visa petition on Friday, May 15 this year and I got notification that USCIS received it on Monday, May 18 with Receipt Number: WAC0916351796. According to the USCIS website it should take two months or less to process I-129 petitions for P-1 visas. I have been eagerly awaiting an approval notice since mid July.

On Tuesday, August 18 I received a letter from USCIS detailing more information and documentation that they wanted, including signed contracts for all booked gigs (I have been signing the papers that lawyers have been filing on my/Druha Trava's behalf since 2004 and I've never before had to provide signed contracts for every single gig, just for a representative number of them, but this is the first time I have filed by myself, as DT's beloved friend, Mary Gardner, who for a dozen years gather materials and paid the lawyers on our behalf, died of cancer last year).

Read the entire post from the DT web site

My Translations of Druha Trava Lyrics Now Online

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In advance of the upcoming U.S. tour of the "Czechgrass" band Druha Trava, DT's U.S. web site has posted the translations that I made (with David Kraus) of 10 of Robert Krestan's original songs. See them by clicking HERE.

The songs include some that the group will perform during the Sept. 3-Oct 4 tour.

Poland -- Silesia Folk and Country Festival under way

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I got in to Ustron, in the way south of Poland, last night, driving from Oswiecim (Auschwitz) of all places....and into the Silesia Folk and Country Festival. It still gives me a thrill? chill? quick hit of the odd? when I hear a Czech band (in this case "Drops" this afternoon), in the market square of a Polish village (Ustron is a spa town at the foot of the Beskidy Mountains near the Czech border) singing "All Across America." Aside from the great banjo player Tony Trischka, who plays with Druha Trava tonight, I'm probably the only American here.

Drops. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

This is called an International Folk and Country Festival -- last night highlighted singer-songwriters: a group called Czerwony Tulipan (Red Tulip), the Warsaw-based singer Tomek Szwed, whom I have heard at other festivals and also interviewed a couple of years ago, and an English troubador called Pete Morton, who "sang out" with an energetic set that I have to admit was a little too spiritually uplifting for my taste! A bit hit with the crowd, though, even though he sang in English.

Tomasz Szwed. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

This afternoon, I was interviewed by Polish TV-Silesia for the feature they are doing on the Festival for the evening news tonight -- will post the link when it is up online!

Last night's concert was free, as was the afternoon performance today on the market square. Tonight's costs 10 zloty, I think -- about $3. It will be a mix of acoustic and more rocky stuff, with DT and the Slovak band Peter and the Rowers, one of the top European country acts.

I MUST photograph the food stalls -- last night I kept eating little pieces of local smoked goat cheese, grilled til almost melting and served with jam. Yum. Most of what else is on offer is what I have come to recognize as festival fare -- grilled sausages and chops, and other meats of various varieties. Oh yes, and beer. And honey vodka...

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."

Prague -- More Druha Trava Obama

NPR (National Public Radio) on Sunday ran a really nice piece on Druha Trava performing ahead of President Obama's speech in Prague -- but the correspondent, Don Gonyea, for some reason never identified the band by name. He played a lot from their performance, comparing their version of Bob Dylan songs (from the CD Dylanovky) with Bob Dylan originals.

Most of the comments on the npr.org web site (including my own) point out the oversight.