Not long ago we brought you a story about Stephen Mougin playing in Slovakia. The tour is done, Stephen is back in the states and on the road with Sam Bush again, but he sent us some reflections on the state of the bluegrass scene in Eastern Europe.

Stephen tells us the concerts, in which he performed with Slovakian pickers, were a blast. He shared some thoughts about the various bands he came in contact with while there.

The band šSidlo played traditionaly oriented songs. They have a GREAT lead singer (apolgies for not remembering or knowing how to spell the names….) and a GREAT tenor vocalist. The young fiddle player is an extremely talented young man and he truly understands the bluegrass genre.

He also told us about a new, up and coming band, Grass Country Drive. (more…)

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story last week about Czech bluegrass band Druha Trava, who are touring in the US and Canada through the rest of September.

The Gazette’s Nate Guidry interviewed Robert Krestan, who founded the group in 1991 about how he came to become interested in bluegrass living in the Czech Republic. Krestan talks about the difficulty in studying the music during the 1970s when it first caught his attention, as his homeland was then under Soviet domination.

“It was difficult early on because bluegrass was considered subversive,” said Krestan. “It was an American music, and everything American was considered subversive. We tried to get tapes and recordings of American bluegrass music, but it was extremely difficult.”

You can read the full story on the Post-Gazette’s web site, and find Druha Trava’s North American tour schedule on the band’s site.