Celts, bluegrass, and the Czech connection

Peter O. Ruby with All Bells & Whistles at the 2008 European Bluegrass Festival at La Roche-sur-Foron, France

One of the people your editor had the pleasure of meeting at the European Bluegrass Summit in Germany two weeks ago is Peter O. Ruby, leader of the hard-driving Czech bluegrass band All Bells & Whistles.

Peter's website uses joomla! software to present information in several languages, and it deals with many things besides his own band (look, for example, at the video footage of a very young Ricky Skaggs playing on TV with Flatt & Scruggs). One section is devoted to the Celts in central Europe - Peter says:

The Celts, a topic 'hiding' far right as a last top menu item, is dedicated to the topic of the amazing and obscure world of Central European Celtic population, and as the bluegrass has also sprung basically from the Irish music of the early American immigrants, I do not consider this topic to be so remote that it should not stay here.

Check out the Celtic (and largely Gaelic) links section of the website here.