Stockyard Country Music Festival (England)

Country Music Festival this coming weekend in England....

UK -- Cowboys and Cowgirls to Perform for Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A group of cowboys and cowgirls from California will take part in celebrations in May to mark Britain's Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, performing a 6-minute wild west show at Windsor Castle.

Reports the Visalia Times-Delta:

Queen Elizabeth II will celebrate her Diamond Jubilee — 60 years of reign — with a 90-minute show focusing on equestrianism throughout the world. And representing North America is a group of cowboys and cowgirls who will look to impress the queen with an entertaining, yet authentic look at the American West. "The queen was specific, she wants real cowboys at her party," said Clay Maier, who is organizing the North America portion of the show. "We've been working on this for two years to get it right. We want to be authentic."

The article says that to "ensure authenticity" the group performing May 13 will include 12 Native Americans, five cowboys, four Texas longhorn cattle, four trick ropers, an Abbot-Downing Concord stagecoach and four pinto horses.

The performance will hark back to Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show's command performance before Queen Victoria  on May 11,  1887, during celebrations that year marking Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West, including his full crew of 97 American Indians, 180 horses, 18 buffalo, and, of course, Chief Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, was the central attraction in London's American Exhibition in Earl's Court. Two days after its opening, Queen Victoria visited the exhibition for a private showing of the Wild West.

That the event did not take place in Windsor Castle, requiring Her Majesty to travel to see it, was remarkable. Cody thusly explained in a press release: This show "was altogether too big a thing to take to Windsor Castle, and as in the case of Mahomet and the mountains, as the Wild West Show could not go to the Queen it became absolutely necessary for the Queen to go to the Wild West Show if she desired to see it, and it was evident that she did."

As Robert Rydell and Rob Kroes put it in their 2005 book Buffalo Bill in Bologna: the Americanization of the World, 1869-1922, it was the first time since her husband Prince Albert had died 25 years earlier that Victoria had appeared at a public event.

Her attendance at the Wild West show was news everywhere in the English-speaking world, and the fact that she made her apperance in the context of the celebrations that marked the Jubilee Year of her reign only added more weight to the occasion. And what an occasion it was. When the show began and a rider entered the arena carrying the American flag, Queen Victoria stood and bowed. The rest of the audience followed suit, while British soldiers and officers saluted. As Cody described the moment:

"All present were constratined to feel that here was an outward and visible sign of the extinction of that mutual prejudice, amounting sometimes almost to race hatred, that had severed two nations from the times of Wahsington and George the Third to the present day. We felt that the hatchet was buried at last and the Wild West had been at the funeral."

England et al -- February International Country Music Festival Line-up Expanding

Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The program for the International Festival of Country Music to be held in February in London's Wembley Arena and other venues is expanding -- Charlie Pride and Asleep at the Wheel have been added to the line-up.  Acts now include headliners  Pride, AATW, Reba McEntire, Ricky Skaggs, and Lonestar, as well as supporting acts Narvel Felts, John McNicholl, Jo-El Sonnier, Will Banister, George Ducas, Sandy Kelly & George Hamilton IV, Raymond Froggatt, and Tim McKay.  

The Festival kicks off  Feb. 26, 2012 at Wembley -- scene in the 1970s and '80s of famous country music festivals  -- and then travels to Belfast, Zurich and Germany.

Returning to Wembley after more than two decades thus really marks  a symbolic return of big-time country music to the mainstream arts agenda -- and signals a revival of popularity in the genre. As the web site says:

The International Festival of Country Music introduced country music to the British public almost 45 years ago.  The shows, promoted by the legendary Mervyn Conn, ran for 23 years from 1969 to 1991 at Wembley Arena.  Hugely popular, the shows always featured the biggest stars of Country music fans were treated to outstanding performances by artists including; Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette, Jerry Lee Lewis, Crystal Gayle and many more.

Now after a gap of 20 years the Festival is back, and one thing that has not changed is world class line-up.

International Festival of Country Music founder Mervyn Conn said: “I’m bringing the International Festival of Country Music back after over twenty years due to popular demand. The regard for Country Music has grown significantly in the UK since the first year I promoted this event and I believe that now is the time to reintroduce this once hugely popular event to converted fans of country music and to a new and emerging group of country music lovers”.

Reba McEntire comments; “My band, crew and I are really looking forward to going back to Europe to play our music. The last time we performed there was in 1999! We have been very busy for the last 10 years doing the REBA TV show and concerts in North America. Now, we are so excited to be able to travel abroad and do both our new and old songs for our European audience, who has always been so good to us.”

England -- Wild West ranch vandalized and robbed

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In the English town of Hartlepool, thieves ransacked and robbed a wild west enthusiast's private cowboy ranch of £3500 worth of items in his collection of Americana.

Ged Parker, who runs Hartlepool’s Wild West Legends Re-Enactment Society, turned up to his site on the outskirts of town yesterday morning to find it had been ransacked.

Thieves had gone through all of his belongings and stolen much-loved authentic pieces, including saddles, bridles and clothes that he had imported from the USA.

They also made off with expensive tools, tried and failed to use a trailer to steal a vintage tractor and made a mess of the field off Dalton Back Lane where the group keep their horses.

Ged, who founded the society three years ago, called the thieves “mindless idiots” as they also left gates open for three horses to roam free – despite it being just yards from the A19 dual-carriageway.

. . . .

The society has more than 40 members who regularly visit their very own prairie town on the outskirts of Hartlepool.

It was set up by Ged and his friends to recreate life on the range and he hoped to use it to educate people about American history.

 Read full story HERE