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.

Italy -- Out "Ovest" in Italia

An Italian cowboy at a ranch near Rome. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A friend of mine told me the other day about how much he enjoyed a few days' stay this summer at a dude ranch in Italy -- Silver Creek Ranch not far from Parma.

I took a look at the web site -- and I think I may have to go try it out myself....I find that I already missed some interesting looking events in Italy.

Not to mention various other ranches and "wild western spaces" -- all seemingly linked to the horse-riding and competition community.

Italian Cowboys in the Wild West imaginario... Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There's Seventeen Ranch, for example, which hosts a Ranch Academy -- this is run by Andrea (Drew) Mischianti, an Italian Cowboy whom I met some years ago when he worked at  the ranchlike Tenuta Santa Barbara ranch near Rome and was involved in organizing "western games" there -- these  included rodeo-style riding competitions as well as a variety of exhibitions, stands, etc. I was always planning to go there to see the working ranch -- on my cellphone I still have a text message from him announcing that there would be branding that I could visit. (It doesn't seem as if these games still go on.)

"Drew" Mischianti some years ago. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

He has spent much time out west in the U.S., and for awhile wrote a column for an Italian Western magazine called Western Side (which doesn't seem to exist any more). Now he edits his own cowboy magazine (in Italian) called Cowboy Journal, which runs everything from recipes to adventure tales.