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.

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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.

My bluegrass in Europe article on the NYTimes web site

The Czech bluegrass band Cwrkot at the Banjo Jamboree, Caslav, CZ, 2007. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

My article on Bluegrass in Europe appeared today in the International Herald Tribune and -- thanks to the Trib's new web site merger with the New York Times -- on the NYTimes web site.

The original peg for the story was going to be the European Bluegrass Summit I attended in Buehl, Germany two months ago -- but things cropped up in between, and the story ends up being more a preview of events in Europe for Worldwide Bluegrass Music Month in May. I also delayed long enough to be able to add a line about Druha Trava playing ahead of the Obama speech in Prague April 5...

Bluegrass Thrives, Far from Home

By RUTH ELLEN GRUBER

Published: April 9, 2009

PRAGUE — A recent concert in Prague demonstrated the far-flung reach of an infectious musical genre that spells “Americana” from the first ringing twang of a finger-picked string.

It was a concert of bluegrass music — but the event was a far cry from the high lonesome hills of Appalachia.

Lilly of the West, a bluegrass band from Bulgaria, was joined by Czech musicians for a performance hosted by the Bulgarian Culture Institute at its premises in the heart of the capital.

“The music is very sincere, it’s about the lyrics, about the songs; every song tells a story,” said Lilly Drumeva, the singer who founded the band more than a dozen years ago. She had first heard bluegrass in Vienna, she said, when she studied there in the early 1990s.

Famed for its close harmony singing and lightning-fast fingerwork on the banjo, mandolin and fiddle, bluegrass music has an international following among a passionate niche of devotees.

In Europe, dozens of bluegrass concerts, festivals, workshops and jam sessions take place throughout the year. Homegrown bands take center stage, but American musicians also often tour. And local bluegrass associations, Web sites, blogs and publications promote the music and chronicle events. Scotland, the Czech Republic, Norway and other locations have even had bluegrass programs in public schools.

The scene is small but intensely active, said Dennis Schut, a Dutch musician who has been involved in bluegrass since the 1970s.

“I see it as a sort of religion or something,” he said. “You get addicted to bluegrass. The first time you hear it, you’re hooked.”

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Prague -- YouTube of Druha Trava playing for Obama

Here's a youtube video of the "Czechgrass" group Robert Krestan and Druha Trava playing in Prague on Sunday to 30,000 people gathered to hear Barack Obama at Prague Castle.



The song in this video is one of Robert's songs that I have translated into English, for a planned English-language CD:

BEFORE WE SAY GOODBYE

Now that we're saying good-bye
Now that we're saying good-bye
I'll give back your stories, and you'll return me mine
Now that we're saying good-bye

Before, dear, we both go to sleep
Before, dear, we both go to sleep
I'll give back your smile to you, it's yours for you to keep
Before, dear, we both go to sleep

You say you don't want nothing, you've got nothing, you don't know
Is it my head you're after, oh my darling Salome?
Or my soul you're searching, oh my dearest Lady M?
To take away…

Now that we're saying good-bye
Now that we're saying good-bye
I'll give back your stories, and you'll return me mine
Now that we're saying good-bye, dear

The truth she is a dancing girl, from the Moulin Rouge
And I don't want to die again, I just want to help you
There are many things I know, that never have an end,
Don't conclude….

Now that we're saying good-bye
Now that we're saying good-bye
Now that we're saying good-bye
Now that we're saying good-bye

Prague -- Druha Trava to play for Obama

Robert Krestan, Tony Trischka, Lubos Malina, Aug. 2008. Photo (C) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm thrilled to learn that my favorite band, Druha Trava are going to play in Prague Sunday ahead of President Obama's big foreign policy speech at the Prague Castle -- and I wish I could be there!

DT is billed as a bluegrass band, but in fact goes far beyond that, mixing bluegrass, blues, rock and other influences into what is sometimes called "Czechgrass." I have worked with the group's singer/songwriter, Robert Krestan, to translate 10 of his songs into English, for a hoped-for English language CD -- except for last year, DT has toured the US every year since about 1994 and has developed a following in the United States.

This is what I wrote about the group in the New York Times in 2005:

Robert Krestan, singer, songwriter and frontman for the Czech bluegrass group Druha Trava, is a brooding stage presence. A solid figure with shadowed eyes and a wild shock of long gray hair, he dwarfs the mandolin he cradles against his chest, singing with a gritty passion that a fan at a recent concert explained was a ''real Czech growl.''

Druha Trava means ''Second Grass.'' It is at the forefront of the flourishing Czech bluegrass scene, but as its name implies, it reaches far beyond the classic bluegrass genre for inspiration.

Formed in 1991 by Mr. Krestan, the banjo player Lubos Malina and other veterans of the acoustic music scene that had long thrived in Czechoslovakia, Druha Trava can delight hard-core fans with scorching versions of bluegrass standards.

For the most part, however, it uses American roots music as a launching pad for its own synthesis of jazz, pop, folk and even classical motifs. In doing so it transforms a quintessential American idiom into a richly textured, highly personal statement that defies genre classification.

Call it Central European bluegrass rock, perhaps, or Czechgrass.

Over the years the distinctive sound and the band's virtuoso musicianship have won Druha Trava multiple Czech music awards, as well as a loyal following at home and in the United States, where the group tours at least once a year. Its next American tour begins Sept. 20.

''We grew up on simple music, bluegrass music, simple old country music, acoustic country music,'' Mr. Krestan said between concerts during the group's current summer tour through the Czech Republic and other countries. ''It was the music of our youth, of our heart.''

But with sensibilities also honed by rock 'n' roll, world music, their own Czech heritage and other influences, he said, ''bluegrass music wasn't enough for us.''

The band couldn't ''squash'' everything they wanted to convey into the tight format of traditional bluegrass, he said. Instead, they chose to use bluegrass instruments to play whatever sort of music fitted their taste.

Mr. Krestan's raw vocals and original songs are an important part of the mix.

Though he often sings cover songs in the original English, he is best known among Czech fans for his own elliptical, at times provocative, lyrics, which are somewhat reminiscent of early Bob Dylan. '

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Last summer, I posted about following DT's Czech tour with the US banjo great Tony Trischka, and I also posted pictures.

I've written extensively about the Czech bluegrass scene, on this blog and elsewhere.

I'm Interviewed on Czech Radio

Rattlesnake Annie and Petr Kocman, Prague Country Fontana, 2007. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

When I was in Prague last week, I was interviewed by Jan Richter for the English language service of Czech Radio -- on subjects ranging from Jewish heritage to European country music. I tried to keep my answered pegged a bit to the Czech experience, so I discussed positive developments in the preservation of Jewish heritage sites in CZ, and (in the country music segments) the collaboration between CZ country star Michal Tucny with the American Rattlesnake Annie, as well as the American reception of the group Druha Trava.

“I think Rattlesnake Annie came here on an invitation, and she and Michal Tučný just simply clicked. They performed together, they got along very well and she began a career over here. She was recognized, she toured not just Czechoslovakia as it was but she also played in East Germany and West Germany; she played with a lot European country music acts. She wasn’t the first but she was one of several American artists who made their careers in Europe. The most famous, or infamous, was Dean Reed, who sang a sort of rockabilly, rock, country songs and also appeared in the East German wild west films. But Rattlesnake Annie was unusual because she did this in the communist block. Year before last, which would have been the 60th birthday of Michal Tučný, the country Fontána Festival was held to honour that date, and Rattlesnake Annie came back and sang the duets that she used to sing with Michal Tučný, she sang them with contemporary Czech artists like Petr Kocman and others. It was a very moving moment and the crowd just went wild.”

If you go to the site, you can click a button to hear the interview.

Video of Tony Trischka and Druha Trava

I've been lax about posting -- I still am transcribing the interview I did with Tony Trischka last month, which I hope to post soon. Meanwhile, here's a (blurry) video clip I shot of Tony and DT performing Nashville Rag in Frydek Mistek.

On Tour in CZ with Druha Trava and Tony Trischka

It was sort of an insane thing to do, but this past weekend I drove up to the Czech Republic from Italy in order to catch the last couple of concerts of a tour by Druha Trava and the banjo virtuoso Tony Trischka. Tony had toured with DT in May, when I was in Nashville, and that tour apparently had gone so well that he came back in August for a week.

I had never seen Tony perform live before, but that was just one of the reasons that I had wanted to catch some of the tour. He had first toured the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in 1988, before the fall of communism, and he had also returned in 1989, also before the Wall came down.

During those stays, he performed as a guest on an LP by Poutnici, the influential progressive bluegrass group that Druha Trava's Robert Krestan and Lubos Malina played with before founding DT in 1991, and which in turn had been very influenced by Trischka's music. I had found a somewhat scuffed copy of that LP, "Wayfaring Stranger", in the used vinyl bin of a used book store in the little town of Kutna Hora 3 years ago. I bought it for the equivalent of a couple of dollars. In the liner notes, Trischka 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 caught 2 concerts over the weekend -- one Saturday night at a little festival in the town of Frydek-Mistek, in northeast CZ near the Polish border, then on Sunday at another little bluegrass festival in the town of Chotebor, about 65 miles east of Prague. Druha Trava is still labeled "bluegrass", though their music only uses bluegrass as a starting point; Tony and I agreed that this is one of the reasons we like the band so much; they don't stick to rules or try to recreate or imitate the American bluegrass sound, rather, they take the musical building blocks and create something new. Robert Krestan's original songs and distinctive gravelly voice put the stamp on this; even their take on Dylan songs in their last CD, "Dylanovky," transforms them into Druha Trava songs.

The concerts featured DT in the first half, then DT and Tony Trischka, then Trischka solo or backed by the group. Among the standout pieces were duets featuring him and DT's banjoist Lubos Malina. For the final encore at Chotebor, the two of them performed a tricky maneuver whereby one played the right hand and the other the left, on the same instrument.

Over the weekend I had an opportunity to talk with Tony about his experiences touring CZ in the late 1980s -- he told me stories from that tour that underscored how, at that time, the music, and the experience of the music, (and the experience of experiencing the music) had a powerful symbolism that, particularly for younger people, has largely dissipated if not disappeared. (More on this later.)

Here's a slide show to give an impression of the scenes in both festivals -- all very similar to the bluegrass festivals in the US as portrayed, for example, in Neil Rosenberg's book "Bluegrass Odyssey." The little stage, the spare seating area. Stalls around selling food -- the usual Czech fare: in Frydek Mistek it was mostly grilled pork products (sausage, "steaks", etc and boiled hot dogs); at Chotebor there was goulash, liver dumpling (rice) soup and a sort of fried chicken cutlet that one of the musicians tried only to find it was almost raw inside. I stuck with potato chips.

There was also a lot of beer -- the local beer (and one of the sponsors) of the Chotebor festival is called "Rebel". Now, I've taken a lot of pictures of the Confederate flag displayed at country festivals in Europe, and I've met a lot of Civil War reenactors in various countries and discussed what this all means.... but Rebel beer is not related to the U.S. Civil War and no stars and bars are involved. The term refers to a local 19th century anti-Habsburg writer and agitator named Karel Havlicek Borovsky -- who died in the 1850s, well before the US Civil War broke out....

I've never seen a bluegrass festival before with a big screen, as in Chotebor! It was particularly odd, as the venue was so small that you could easily get close as close to the stage as you wanted.