Rockin the Kremlin with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 2, 2011 -- On November 14th, the multi-Grammy and CMA Award winning Nitty Gritty Dirt Band reunites with Soviet-era rock pioneer Pete Anderson, making a cameo performance appearance with them at the Emporia Granada Theater in Emporia, Kansas. In 1977, during the height of the Cold War, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band became the first American band to tour the U.S.S.R., playing 28 sold out shows.

Their unusual East/West friendship story shows how the power of music can change the world, a featured subject in the new documentary film ROCKIN’ THE KREMLIN, directed by four time Emmy Award director Jim Brown.

In the fall of 1976 the U.S. State Department, looking to influence the Soviet youth, cunningly presented the Dirt Band to the Kremlin as a folk ensemble. Opening their tour the following spring in Tiblisi, Georgia (USSR), with drums and electric guitars, playing a mixture roots rock and roll, country and bluegrass, the audience exploded in hysteria - word spread like wild fire. At five sold out Armenian bike track stadium shows, hundreds scaled the fence to get in.

The KGB tried to limit interaction with the youth and followed the band everywhere. However, wherever they played, even though it was illegal to stand up at a concert, the musically liberated Soviets danced in the aisles. It was 9 years before another American band was allowed to perform in the Soviet Union.

In Soviet Latvia’s capital, Riga, the band was approached by silenced Latvian rock pioneer Pits “Pete” Anderson. His love of American rock and roll began as a child. In 1959, he began performing illegally on underground stages in Latvia singing Little Richard songs, and became a major rock figure and inspiration to freedom loving youth. Arrested over a dozen times and beaten nearly to death, the KGB threatened to kill his daughter if he kept singing American music. He stopped and was barred from performing in 1972.

Meeting Pete for the first time in Riga after a show in May of ‘77, band member John McEuen evaded KGB tails taking a taxi and two trains to get to Pete’s little home in the country (where he had been banished). All night they talked about America, sang songs like “This Land is Your Land,” and Pete intermittently rushed over to his American wall map to point at states he would visit if he ever became “free” - middle America, states like Kansas.

By 1989, Gorbachev’s Glasnost reforms permitted more personal freedoms - allowing Pete to return to the stage and make his first album – after 30 years! Today, he is the undisputed father of American `50s rock and roll in that part of the world, and in 2009, his album “Brass-A-Billy” was voted the Best Rockabilly Album of The Year at the JPF Music Awards in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1991, Latvia achieved independence.

Pete’s defiance of communism and his story made him a national Latvian hero. In 2006, he was honored with his own Latvian Postage Stamp.

On November 14th, during the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s concert to benefit the Emporia Granada Theater in Emporia, Kansas, the band will bring their old Cold War friend Pete Anderson to join them on stage for a few songs…. in America….in Kansas….in the promised land of freedom, to shoot final footage for the film ROCKIN’ THE KREMLIN.
Kansas can be proud of being an important part of American music history.

ROCKIN’ THE KREMLIN, is produced in partnership with the Grammy Museum of Los Angeles, supported by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and will premier at the Grammy Museum’s theater at LA/Live in Los Angeles in May, 2012
WHERE: Emporia Granada Theatre, 807 Commercial Street - Emporia, Kansas 66801 (620) 342-3342.

emporia     Empria Granada Theatre     John McEuen     kansas     LATVIA     Nitty Gritty Dirt Band     Peter Anderson