Off geographic topic: upcoming Country Music Festival in Borneo (and a mention of Tamworth)

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I know it's not Europe, but I just have to post about the Miri Country Music Festival coming up next month...on Borneo! This certainly testifies to the worldwide appeal of twang!

The festival -- reportedly the first ever country music festival in the region -- takes place Feb. 15 at the Park City Everly Hotel in Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia. (Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on Borneo.)

According to MySarawak.org the lineup includes the Malaysian band D'Renegades, the Johnny Rodgers Band (Nashville), The Corn Cake Kings (Kuala Lumpur), Eia and the Superband (Brunei), and two bands from Singapore – Wandering Mustangs as well as Mel and Joe. The program will also include games and competitions for adults and children, pony rides, line-dances and drum workshops and food stalls.

D’Renegades has been around since 1980 and it was formed by accomplished United Kingdom pianist Asif Pishori and Malaysian singer cum songwriter Ady Wow.
The duo who now resides in Kota Kinabalu had been performing at various shows and concerts.
For this coming festival, Ady and Asif had teamed up with three other equally talented musicians.
They are Ozone, Kichi and Zul and together they will get the festival goers dancing to their country rock pop tunes.

The Borneo Post online reports that another Malaysian band, Hi Breed, will also perform.

Festival-goers will enjoy bluegrass, folk and contemporary country music with an impressive mix of tempos for both the young and old.
Tickets are available at www.ticketxpress.com.my; Utopia in Kuching; Parkcity Everly Hotel and Planet Borneo Travel and Tour Services in Miri; as well as El Centro in Kota Kinabalu.

The festival is organized by UCSI Communications Sdn Bhd, a professional conference organizer, and is endorsed by the Miri City Council and supported by Parkcity Everly Hotel, Planet Borneo Travel and Tours Services, as well as Curtin University Sarawak.

Find more details here on the Festival's Facebook page

I also have to note that the vast and venerable Tamworth Country Music Festival in Australia starts in a few days.

The 42nd edition of this huge event (held in Tamworth, New South Wales) runs this year from Jan. 17-26. Considered to be the world's biggest country music fest it is a showcase and celebration of a thoroughly local scene that draws 50,000 fans or more, with more than 600 performers and 2,500 events staged during the course of the festival -- a rodeo, line-dancing, the annual Australian country music awards and more.

The line-up this year includes  some international artists including Quinn Keister of Canada, Monte Goode from the USA, Australian/Austrian group John Deer Band and Alessandro Nicoletta from Italy, but it's mainly many many local acts.

Check out the web site or the Facebook page for information about the line-up, events and more

See my previous posts about Tamworth

Australia - Tamworth Going Ahead Despite the Floods

By Ruth Ellen Gruber



Tamworth, Australia's biggest country music festival, is going ahead this weekend despite the floods devastating Queensland, but crowds are expected to be lower than in the past.

Around 4,000 people are expected to attend the opening night concert in Bicentennial Park, festival director Steve Bartlett says, but that is down on last year's event.
"At this stage we're anticipating probably about a 30 per cent reduction in numbers," he said.
Many of the regular visitors to the Country Music Festival come from Queensland, particularly regional towns like Gympie, which has been inundated by floodwaters.
Many of the main roads leading from Queensland to northern New South Wales have also been cut.

There will be festival events for flood relief. Here's what the Tamworth Web Site says:

The 2011 JAYCO TAMWORTH COUNTRY MUSIC FESTIVAL will commence this Friday for ten’s days of celebrations and over 2,500 scheduled events contrary to bogus reports suggesting otherwise.

The major events, big name acts, buskers, camping and non-stop entertainment will engulf Australia’s country music capital as it delivers its 39th event.

Whilst devastating floods and raging waters have torn through the ‘sunshine state’, the NSW inland city of

Tamworth is ignoring rumour’s that its iconic annual event will not only proceed in 2011 or that some elements standard within the festival makeup and fibre will be shelved due to minimal rains recently received across the region.

Instead, organisers are hoping the event will provide opportunity for the country music fraternity, locals and visitors to show support for the northern neighbours.

Giving the opportunity to dig deep and give generously, several major concert events have been organized as fundraising drives. Some of the confirmed events raising funds include THE QUEENSLAND FLOOD RELIEF Concert, held on Monday 17th January 3.30pm to 6.00pm at BLAZES, Country Update Magazine’s STARRY STARRY ONE NIGHT STAND Flood Relief Concert held on Wednesday 19th January at 8pm to 11pm at The Pub and LEE KERNAGHAN’S Outdoor Concert, held on Friday 21st January in Bicentennial Park.

In addition to the above musical fundraisers, Tamworth Regional Council has placed a donation bin at Festival HQ (Tamworth Regional Council Building) for the duration of the internationally recognised event as a central location to deposit and donate for the flood victims. All monies raised will be delivered to the QUEENSLAND PREMIER’S FLOOD RELIEF FUND.

“The city of Tamworth is looking greener than ever and more pristine than what most of our previous visitors would have ever seen it before. Whilst we remain dry and move ahead into our 2011 event, we urge the local community and visitors to get behind and support activities planned that will provide assistance to the Queensland communities affected”, said Councillor Col Murray, Mayor of Tamworth.

The 2011 Jayco Tamworth Country Music Festival commences this Friday 14th January 2011 and concludes on Sunday 23rd January 2011. The 39th Jayco Country Music Awards of Australia will be presented on Saturday 22nd January 2011.

Other major highlights and artists confirmed for the 2011 Jayco Tamworth Country Music Festival include Kenny Roger’s first Australian tour date, Kasey Chambers, John Williamson, Lee Kernaghan, Troy Cassar-Daley, John Butler Trio, Wendy Matthews, Beccy Cole, Adam Harvey, Toni Childs, Melinda Schneider and Adam Brand just to name a few.

Australian Country Music

There's a long and insightful article about the state of Australian Country Music at themusicnetwork.com.

The article, by Lars Brandle, argues that Australian country music need to find a younger audience to survive and grow.

The quality of Australian artists isn’t an issue. Australia’s current crop of country talent is arguably as strong and relevant as the market has ever produced. Caboolture’s golden boy Keith Urban opened at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 with his 2009 Capitol Nashville album, Defying Gravity. While two rising stars Adam Brand and The McClymonts are carving out their own paths to the U.S., striking deals with Arista and Executive Music Group respectively.

[...]

However, to the ordinary Facebook fixated Australian teen, Urban is best known as the other half of Hollywood star Nicole Kidman. And without such famous partners, the likes of Brand and the McClymonts are largely ignored outside country circles.

Smashing the time-worn perception of Australian country music will take some time, and some doing. It’ll require a retooling of the business. Australia’s country scene must tackle the online space and network TV, say executives, but save its biggest shakedown for the traditional Tamworth Festival and the annual Country Music Awards of Australia Awards.  

[...]  

Tamworth has come to epitomise the issues facing Australia’s country scene.

“If the Tamworth festival had any mind to grow the festival, it would make it appealing to young people and restock the fanbase,” argues CMC Program Director Tim Daley. Currently, more than 44% of the core audience of the festival is 55 year of age and over. According to Daley, only 14% of the CMC audience is over 55, whereas 42% is 24 and under. “It’s pretty simple,” says Daley, “you make it appeal to young people, and you restock the fanbase.”

Australia -- Tamworth Back Story

Here's an informative article by K.C. Boey in The New Straits Times of Malaysia about the Australianness of Australian country music, exemplified by the Tamworth Festival....

"MIDDLE of nowhere mate," the young man is heard speaking into his mobile phone as he drifts past the row of seats on the train to Tamworth.

Tamworth is indeed in the middle of nowhere in the larger scheme of New South Wales, and continental Australia. Yet, every year, it plays host to a festival of music that is quintessentially Australian.

It's the Tamworth Country Music Festival, since its inception in 1968 held over the three-day Australia Day long weekend in January.

There is more to country than just the music. The music, ballads and poetry reflect the ethos of the land from which the artists draw their inspiration.

In good times, people make merry. In hard times, people are drawn to the solace the balladeers represent of the "big brown land" of their dry continent....

Read full article

Australia Again -- country music as a local idiom

Here's an article from the Canberra Times illustrating how country music has been transformed -- or grew -- into a local Australian idiom, with its own cast of characters, events, landmarks, legends and music. The article deals with the Bush Ballad -- something like American cowboy songs but in an Australian context -- and an annual Bush Ballad festival and award.

Perhaps it's more accurate to look at this form of Australian country/folk music as a parallel track to that in the U.S., an independent local idiom with similar roots in European folk song? I don't know enough about it to determine the dynamics...

The song that won Anne Kirkpatrick best female vocalist at the Bungendore Muster Bush Ballad awards was so emotional, it stayed unsung in her family for years.

Even her father, country music legend Slim Dusty, wouldn't attempt it. ''It was too close for him to sing,'' Kirkpatrick said.

The song, Took His Saddle Home, tells the story of Dusty's songwriter, Mack Cormack, entrusting his prized saddle to Dusty when he was unwell.

Dusty had flown from Western Australia to be at his bedside.

''So dad took his saddle home,'' she said.

''It is a really special song because Mack was like a grandfather to me and a father to my dad, so it was a really emotional song.

''I had to sing it through a few times to get the emotion out of it because I would choke up.''

Kirkpatrick was one of the favourite performers at the muster yesterday, taking to the stage alongside other country music heavyweights Reg Poole, Glenn Jones and Terry Gordon.

The muster is in its 24th year, and while overall crowd numbers were down on previous years which was partially attributed to the heat there was a strong audience soaking up the music.

Read Full Article

Australia -- Tamworth Time. The World's Biggest Country Music Festival?

What's the world's biggest country music festival? According to Australia's ABC News it's the annual Australian Country Music Festival in Tamworth, New South Wales, which began on Friday. It's a showcase and celebration of a thoroughly local scene, with more than 600 performers and 2,500 events staged during the 11 days of the festival.

The camping sites are filled with tents and motorhomes while the streets are full of buskers hoping to be discovered.

About 50,000 people will come into Tamworth to see everyone from local country music hero Troy Cassar Daly to the Dolly Parton Tribute Show.

This year's festival is the 37th edition of the event, one of Australia's stand-out summer entertainment attractions. According to a history of the festival on the festival web site

Tamworth has been home to country music since 1973 when the city snapped up the label of Country Music Capital, stuck to its advertising guns and staged the first ever Australasian Country Music Awards.

But even before then Tamworth was hosting special country music sessions and concerts. The CCMA or Capital Country Music Association has been spotlighting new talent in country music for 40 years from Tamworth. There's a deep heritage and culture of country here.

It had come on the back of the radio tradition of playing hillbilly in the middle of the night and a radio transmission signal reach all over eastern Australia and even to New Zealand.

It was Max Ellis and John Minson and their marketing mates from radio station 2TM who pushed the new brand.

Reading the web site is like reading a report from a parallel universe: the language is English and the pictures of guitar-strumming dudes and dudettes in cowboy hats could be from the U.S., but the names of the performers are other specific references are totally down under.

Keith Urban -- From Outer Rim to Inner Circle

In 1997, Australia's not-yet-country-superstar-husband-of-Nicole-Kidman Keith Urban told the Sydney Morning Herald:

"I was raised on 100 per cent American country music. My intention has always been to improve the quality of Australian country music and to use the quality of American country music as a benchmark for that."

Urban may or may not have improved the quality of Australian country music, but he did move to Nashville and become an international star, crossing, as his biographer Jeff Apter put it "the great divide that separates rowdy outback pubs from the red carpet of the Grammys."

The Sydney Morning Herald now has an article reviewing Apter's new book, Fortunate Son: The Unlikely Rise Of Keith Urban, that tells how one of Australia's most famous cultural exports did it, moving from the backwoods to the center and making compromises to achieve success.

This is a story about the tension between artistic integrity and commercial success. It is the story of how individuality was crushed and an Australian country singer became a superstar. Oh, yes, and got the girl in the final reel.....

When Urban arrived on the Australian country music scene he was a true renegade. At the time country music was about bush ballads sung by Slim and Smoky in very Aussie accents.

Urban, looking like a countrified version of Billy Idol, wanted to reinvent the genre...

So, after Tamworth [Australia's major country music festival] rather begrudgingly acknowledged his talent (he had won a Tamworth Golden Guitar award for best new talent and, at 16, had won best junior male vocalist), Urban headed for Nashville.

What no one realised at the time was that Urban was so driven and focused that he was prepared to stay in Nashville until he succeeded and, as he would eventually discover, he would do anything, including making a truly Faustian deal with his record company, to achieve success.

To understand the choices that Urban confronted it is necessary to realise that country music in the United States is an eternal battle between pop country and trad country.

New Zealand -- Bust Them Broncs Down Under

Shades of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman....

It's reported that some 5,000 people attended the rodeo in Waimate, New Zealand....now in its 53rd year...

(OK, OK, their movie, which I haven't seen and based on the trailer and reviews I doubt if I will, is "Australia, " not "New Zealand", but Australian rodeo cowboys took part in this event.......)

TEST OF WILLS: Ashburton rider Brad Caley was holding on tight during the Open Bareback event at the Waimate Rodeo on Saturday.

About 200 riders from New Zealand, Australia and Canada showcased their skills with a stand-out performance from Lawrence rider Simon Roughan in the Open Saddle Bronc.

Weekend visitors were also entertained by steer wrestling, craft stalls and plenty of tasty tucker.

Read Full Article