Jewish Texan Country Singer (NOT Kinky Friedman)

In a previous post I posted a slideshow of pictures of the Austin, Texas-based Western Swing band Asleep at the Wheel, whose leader and anchor over the past more than 35 years is my old friend Ray Benson, performing at the Country Rendez-vous festival in Craponne, France. I've known Ray since we were teen-agers. He, like me, hails from suburban Philadelphia, but he moved to Texas in the early 1970s and has transformed himself from an east coast suburban Jewish boy to one of the top country music performers around -- he's won nine Grammy awards as the leader of Asleep at the Wheel and maintains a full-throttle recording and performance schedule.

Ray is not a "Sauerkraut Cowboy." But he is an example of how people can transform themselves, reinvent themselves, even "live their dreams". I've talked to him several times about this. And this, of course, is "the American way." People immigrated to America from all over the world and became Americans. Texas, too, is an "immigrant state." My own great-grandparents immigrated there from what is now Lithuania.

The imaginary wild west is an immigrant state of mind. People I've met in the European country and western scene immigrate internally, for a variety of reasons, into an imaginary wild west that they make real.

Here's an article I wrote about Ray -- it's for the Jewish media, so it focuses on his Jewish background.


A Jewish singer towers over country western scene

Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber Published: 09/26/2008

CRAPONNE SUR ARZON, France (JTA) -- Think Jews and country music and you'll probably come up with Kinky Friedman, the cigar-chomping frontman of the iconoclastic Texas Jewboys, who is also a humorist, mystery novelist and failed but flamboyant candidate for Texas governor.

The real Jewish king of country music, however, is Ray Benson, the nine-time Grammy-winning leader of the country western swing band Asleep at the Wheel.

At 6-foot-7, Ray Benson has been described as a "Jewish giant" and "the biggest Jew in country."

He literally and figuratively towers over the stage in a Stetson and fancy tooled boots, with a grizzled beard and long, thinning hair pulled back in a pony tail.

"I saw miles and miles of Texas, all the stars up in the sky," he sings in his deep, mellow baritone. "I saw miles and miles of Texas, gonna live here 'til I die."

Now 57, Benson was born in Philadelphia but has lived in Austin for 35 years. He talks with a twang, plays golf with Willie Nelson, has recorded more than 30 albums and was named Texas Musician of the Year in 2004.

By his own estimate, he is the only Jewish singing star in the country western scene.

"Kinky's not a country western singer -- he's Kinky!" Benson laughed during a conversation with JTA this summer at the annual Country Rendez-vous festival in south-central France, where Asleep at the Wheel wound up a five-nation European tour.

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Cowboyland -- Italian Wild West Theme Park

OK -- Here's the link to Cowboyland, billed as the only wild west theme park in Italy. I can't wait to go, and I'll try to do so soon, if possible. It seems to be open every weekend in October.

It is located outside Voghera, and seems to be associated with the Cowboy Guest Ranch, also near Voghera, which hosts a variety of activities -- including a big rodeos -- the next in Oct. 12-13. The western scene in Italy is centered on horses and western riding. Country music (and trucks....) play only a marginal role.

There is (or was) a magazine called WesternSide that chronicled the scene (the web site is somewhat out of date) and I've attended several editions of "western games" at the ranchlike Tenuta Santa Barbara near Lake Bracciano near Rome, which included rodeo-style riding competitions as well as a variety of exhibitions, stands, etc. It's not clear from the web site if these are still going on.....

New or Newish Italian Wild West Themepark

Saw a big advertisement for a new wild west theme park in Italy. Or at least I think it's new. I may have heard about it earlier this year. It seems to be open into the fall, on weekends, so I'll try to get there -- the northern city of Voghera -- and report. Meanwhile we can all visit the website -- www.cowboys.it (am having trouble posting the link....).

Upcoming Bluegrass Fest in Bratislava

(Czech band Relief performing in 2007. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber.)


There are DOZENS of bluegrass and country music festivals, big and small, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia each year....the two Czech festivals I attended last month in the towns of Frydek Mistek and Chotebor were on the small or smallish side.

A more major festival, whose line up looks great, is coming up next month in Bratislava, the Slovak capital.

The third Bratislava Bluegrass Fest will feature top Czech and Slovak artists such as Monogram, Garcia, Peter Dula, Relief, Alan Mikusek, etc etc etc.

The web site includes clips of songs from each artist.

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.

King of Cowboy Clothing Dies at 107

From the New York Times.....Nudie without the flamboyance, perhaps


August 15, 2008
Jack A. Weil, the Cowboy’s Dresser, Dies at 107

By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Jack A. Weil, a garter salesman, breezed into Denver in 1928 in a new Chrysler Roadster to start a new life. He exceeded his hopes and became a king of cowboy couture — almost certainly the first to put snaps on Western shirts (17 on a shirt), and most likely the first to produce bolo ties commercially.

His Rockmount Ranch Wear Mfg. Company has sold millions of shirts, including at least one shipment to Antarctica, since it started in 1946. Clark Gable wore one in “The Misfits” with Marilyn Monroe, and Heath Ledger’s shirt in “Brokeback Mountain” — plaid fabric, diamond snaps and saw-tooth pockets — was Style No. 69-39.

Until Wednesday, when he died at 107 in Denver, Mr. Weil was still chief executive of the company he founded and, until just before his death, came to work daily. He was regularly called the oldest chief executive still working.

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