Italy -- Coming UP -- OWSS/SASS European End of Trail

The annual European "End of Trail" cowboy action shooting championship will be held in northern Italy August 9-14. Organized by the Old West Shooting Society (OWSS), which is the Italian branch of the American Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), it will gather competitors from France, Germany and other countries.

The meet will also memorialize "Martex" -- the president of OWSS who died last summer of a heart attack at the opening of the SASS End of Trail in Nevada.

The meet will take place at the shooting range in Gualtieri, between Parma and Mantova.

Great Britain -- resources and western theme towns

A good resource for information on country and western music and westerner scene events in the UK is the web site http://candwinfouk.ning.com/   It also has a Facebook page

Recent posts include material on two Wild West theme towns in Britain:

Laredo Western Town

Laredo is situated in Kent, 25 miles from the center of London.

Contact us by E-mail Click enquiries@laredo.org.uk

Tel: Cole on 07947 652771 or Tel: J.T. on 07947 645506


From the web site:

The town portrays the American Wild West, as it would have been in 1860 to 1890. The town has 24 buildings including Hotel, Saloon, Marshals Office, Courthouse/Church, Blacksmith, Livery, General Store, Gunsmith, Wells Fargo, Photographer, Assay Office, Bank, Doctor, Undertaker, Texas Rangers, Mining Company, Dentist, Printer, Eating House and more, Complete with Boardwalks Hitching rails and Western Street.

Inside the buildings the decor is all Western, Lighting is by oil lamps and candles, wood burning stoves for cooking and heating, using all the equipment which would have been used in this period.



At Laredo Town a group of 30 / 40 Western enthusiasts meet regularly at weekends and dress in authentic western dress of the period. Laredo Western Town is claimed to be the most authentic in ENGLAND & EUROPE . In Town there is a Stagecoach, Wagon, Chuck Wagon, Canons, and all types of Western Props and items that would have been used in this period.

Deadwood Western Town

'Wattlehurst Farm' Kingsfold Horsham West Sussex RH12 3SD

Tel : 01306627490 email: Info@deadwood.org.uk

From the web site:

Deadwood town members are proud that ' Brian Betchley ' the farm owner has kindly given his permission to have the town on his farm , and look forward to many many happy years at wattlehurst. You can visit Deadwood on open weekends between 10 am and 5 pm, and look around inside the buildings and meet the towns folk, who love to chat about the history and creation of the town . There are also some Authentic weekends at Deadwood, when westerners camp in authentic tents on a field just outside the town. Wattlehurst Farm Also Has Dance week-end's , where visiting band's provide entertainment for all in the barn All visitors are made welcome and invited to camp over night with their authentic tents on the authentic field

Country Music -- Catching up on international developments

At the Country Music Association's annual Festival in Nashville last month, a group of journalists discussed the state of country music outside the United States.

The CMA web site ran this report by Tom Roland on the meeting:
 

We call it “Country Music” — but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s just for one country. That lesson was easy to draw from this year’s CMA Music Festival, where visitors came from as far off as Chile, Japan and Scandinavia: a total of 21 nations on five continents.

Their embrace of music whose values reflect America’s rural heritage and national pride poses questions that might best be answered by members of the foreign press, who were also more evident than ever at this year’s Festival. They were particularly easy to notice early on the morning of June 10, when three of its distinguished representatives gathered for a breakfast discussion.

“I was playing ‘Boondocks’ in my show,” said radio personality Dirk Rohrbach of Bavarian Broadcasting’s public broadcasting channel Bayern 3, in reference to Little Big Town’s first hit. “People kept calling and emailing, ‘What is that? Can you play that again? That’s great, that rockin’, edgy song.’ I suppose they didn’t listen to the lyrics, but it doesn’t really matter because the harmonies are so great and the sound is so different from pop radio.”

Yet even with the United States in what may be considered a state of greater political isolation than in years past, its essence, as expressed through the lyrics of Country Music, still connects with listeners throughout the world.

“People dream about your country,” insisted Georges Lang of RTL, France’s largest commercial radio network. “We don’t talk about politics. For the average French people, America is a dream — highways.”

“People in Australia who don’t know much about Country Music, I tell them that it’s about relationships, love, family, community and all sorts of things,” added Tim Daley, programmer for Australia’s Country Music Channel (CMC) on TV. “Those are the things that naturally appeal to people with children, so these people tend to be a little bit older.”

In this respect, at least, Country Music listeners around the globe have something in common with those in the United States. In Germany, for instance, Rohrbach identifies three general groups that gravitate to the genre: people intrigued with the American cowboy icon, middle-aged fans who seek an alternative to harder rock music and younger listeners drawn to the pop-influenced sound that underscores many current Country hits.

“I always envisioned this one big festival where the Springsteens and the Pettys and the Mellencamps, who are still huge in Europe, would bring Country acts like Trace Adkins, Brooks & Dunn and Keith Urban,” Rohrbach said. “You name it. Put ‘em on one stage and people would react. There’s no difference.”

Though Country obviously plays well in other territories, it also bears a stereotype, which is one reason why the term “Country,” according to Rohrbach, has been replaced by “highway rock ‘n’ roll,” a phrase that suggests the freedom of the road and an edgy attitude while avoiding old stereotypes and connotations.

“It’s really important, talking about Country Music internationally, to focus on a mainstream audience,” Daley pointed out. “You don’t go after Country fans. There aren’t enough of them. You don’t have the NASCAR crowd. You want to be on the biggest TV shows. You want to do the promos. You want to do in-stores at the best record stores. You have to approach it like it’s mainstream. You don’t go in looking for a sliver of the audience. You want to cast as wide a net as you possibly can.”

Doing this overseas is apparently easier than at home in the States. Instead of the intensive radio tours that new American artists frequently undergo, an artist could reach as many as 80 million people by visiting as few as 10 radio stations in Germany and France. And it might take just one radio visit in Australia, where the CMC claims to have sewn up about 75 percent of the Country activity.

Ultimately, the artists who make the biggest impact overseas are the ones who treat that market like a door prize: Must be present to win. Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Keith Urban and Dwight Yoakam were all mentioned as artists who built an audience by going abroad early in their careers and following up, on average, with international tours every couple of years.

“When you talk about Country, you talk about artists like Waylon Jennings, like Willie Nelson, because the [younger breaking artists], we just don’t know them,” Lang said. “I know them, because I’m coming to Nashville, but there is little communication between Nashville and Europe about the new Country. I’m quite sure that they will love this kind of new Country, but they don’t know a lot about it. They cannot read about it or see it.”

That’s one of the biggest reasons why the foreign press was on hand at CMA Music Festival. Daley and Rohrbach were making their second trips, and Lang has attended approximately 25 times. They care deeply about the genre and they’re doing what they can to bridge the distances between Music City and their hometowns.

“We’re so passionate about the music,” Rohrbach noted. “We’re over here to talk to the artists. We’re spending our time, our money and we invest that because we love the music.”

Meanwhile, in a related development, British radio personality Brian Clough has been awarded the CMA's annual international broadcaster award. The award ceremony took place in, uh, May.... but I am just getting around the posting on it.

The Award was presented to him in Durham, England by Bobbi Boyce, CMA International Consultant.

“I’m still trying to come to terms with the honor given to me by the Country Music Association and ponder as to why I should be rewarded with such an accolade for something that has been a great enjoyment to do for the best part of my life,” said Clough. “A sincere thank you to all those folks who thought I was worthy of the award, and a special thank you to all the artists for providing some of the greatest music around.”

Clough was introduced to country music as a teenager in the ’60s while listening to artists such as Don Gibson and Roger Miller on the radio. For 30 years, he has presented and produced country music radio programs at such places as the Independent Metro and Great North Radio Group, Harmony Radio, Century Radio, DLR, NLR, and Smooth Radio. Readers of a national magazine once voted him one of the top six country presenters in Great Britain. He has written a country music column for The Northern Echo, one of Great Britain’s largest daily regional newspapers, for 26 years, and also serves as the entertainment editor for www.euvue.co.uk.
 
The CMA International Broadcaster Award recognizes outstanding achievement by radio broadcasters outside the United States who have made important contributions toward the development of Country Music in their country. Previous winners are listed at CMAworld.com.

Read full story HERE

And, states a CMA press release,  last month in Nashville, Australian concert promoter Michael Chugg of Chugg Entertainment was given the Jo Walker-Meador International Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement by an individual or company in advocating and supporting Country Music's marketing development in territories outside the United States.

"To receive such a wonderful award from CMA during their Festival week in Nashville was a great honor, and will take pride of place in my office in Sydney," said Chugg. "To be able to play a part in spreading music to the world is very special, and I thank the Board of the CMA on behalf of all the Australian Country Music fans."


Chugg is one of the most experienced and respected concert promoters in Australia, with a career spanning more than 45 years. He received the CMA International Talent Buyer/Promoter of the Year Award in 2006, has won every major music and entertainment award possible in Australia, and currently serves on the CMA Australian Advisory Group. Chugg has been involved with establishing Australia as a strong live touring market for international artists, and has promoted or co-promoted tours with Brooks & Dunn, Dixie Chicks, Willie Nelson, Sugarland, Taylor Swift, and Keith Urban among others. Chugg Entertainment will co-promote a Tim McGraw tour with Entertainment Edge later this year. 

Country Music -- Scholar Bill Malone gets award and discusses his work

 Bill Malone speaks at the International Conference on Country Music, Nashville, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bill Malone, the author of the seminal resource "Country Music USA" discusses his work as a historian of country music. Malone was this year’s recipient of the Charlie Poole Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award.

Malone completed his studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He was studying history and said his work was controversial at the time. “While I was doing this, I really didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “Nobody was doing anything like this at the time. There were very few studies in popular culture, and history was one of the most conservative disciplines. Country music was also commercial, and commercial was a bad word in academia.”Scholars believed the only music worth studying and preserving was the music done in homes and churches with no commercial intent, Malone told the audience. He also said he wanted to prove through his work that old records that came out in the 1920s and 1930s were repositories of folklore and worth preserving and studying.

Read full article here

Malone was joined in his discussion by musician and music historian Henry Sapoznik. Though Sapoznik may be best know for his pioneering work in klezmer music, he is also an expert on bluegrass and country. He is Vice President of Piedmont Folk Legacies the organization that runs the annual Charlie Poole Music Festival and the forthcoming National Banjo Museum and Center in Eden, North Carolina. He is a four time Grammy award nominee, his first in 1990 for “Partisans of Vilna” the first Yiddish recording to be nominated for a Grammy, two for his 2005 production of "You Ain't Talkin' To Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of American Country Music" for Sony Columbia/Legacy and again in 2008 for his co-production of the 3 CD anthology "People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs 1913-1938." His most recent CD anthology “Ernest Stoneman: The Unsung Father of Country Music” was nominated for a 2009 Grammy for Best Historical Notes.

Sapoznik recently was artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin and will take up a position there next year as director of the new Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture.

The Country-Bluegrass Divide

The Wall Street Journal runs a thoughtful piece by Barry Mazor about country music and bluegrass crossover.

For years, successful bluegrass acts have expected to play their own well-traveled if relatively isolated circuit of festivals, arts centers, and regional events and fairs. For its first decade—well into the 1950s—the genre was simply a charged-up kind of country string-band music, likely to be seen and heard wherever country was. Early stars—Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, the Osborne Brothers and Mac Wiseman among them—were regularly seen on country package tours and had hits on the country charts. Now the Grascals and Diercks Bentley, two acts with CDs released this spring, are again venturing across the bluegrass-country divide.
One artifact of bluegrass's formative years is the charging yet plaintive "I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome," co-written by bluegrass originator Monroe and country icon Hank Williams. A potent new version of that 1949 number appears on "The Famous Lefty Flynn's," recently released by bluegrass stalwarts the Grascals. It features both regulation bluegrass instrumentation and harmonies, as well as honky-tonk steel guitar by the great Lloyd Green and a lead vocal by Hank Williams Jr. The musical integration is unmistakable. The Grascals have opened for Mr. Williams before tens of thousands of people in arena-size venues, tangible evidence that if bluegrass and the more tradition-minded side of mainstream country are not precisely going steady in 2010, they're clearly dating again.

Read more HERE

Asia -- The Unpopularity of Country Music in the Philippines

I came across a very interesting, long blog post about how and why country music has not attained popularity in the Philippines....

it is not a lack of enjoyment of country music but awareness in the music-listening younger generation of the Philippines, who do love their Taylor Swift but are unaware that she actually does two versions of her songs—the original country version, complete with “ twangs “and banjos, and a radio-friendly pop version.  We won’t argue which version is better but we will point out that the original was 100% country. A catchy melody and identifiable lyrics lures you in no matter what genre, generation, or continent.

Enter a new artist with a familiar face—Miles Poblete or as she is simply known online worldwide, Miles. Miles was the much-publicized winner of the prestigious Metro Pop star search competition in 1999. She was also a GMA mainstay from 2001-2003, a very visible personality on popular weekend variety show “S.O.P” and youth-targeted “Click Barkada.”

However, during the time of her launch, like most of us entering Freshmen year in college and even surviving through the Sophomore year, unsure of our major, Miles only knew she loved singing but did not know what her true place in the Philippine Music industry was…yet. Of course, between 1999 and 2010, Miles did leave Philippine show business to pursue her studies, even earning a B.S in Tourism from University of Santo Tomas.

Read full post HERE

New Zealand -- Gore Country Music Festival

This a geographical stretch, but here's news of a country and western music festival on New Zealand's south island, the Gore Country Music Festival. According to the article on the 3news web site.

Gore has long been New Zealand's home of country music. Today’s crowds were not disappointed by the talent on display, despite the shortage of genuine looking cowboys.

          Read full article

The Festival web site notes that since 1976 the event has culminated in the New Zealand Gold Guitars award:

This event attracts artists from around the world and continues to grow in stature and popularity. Audience levels reach over 5,000 and the entries in all sections and events total 700 competitors. Visitors to Gore leave with fond memories of the ‘Southern Hospitality’ and along with the locals, just soak up the Country Music atmosphere.

The festival begins on Monday prior to the weekend with a walk up concert and the week continues with inductions into the Hands of Fame, Songwriting and the NZ Country Music Awards for the RIANZ Best Country Album and APRA Best Country Song finals.

The NZ Gold Guitar Awards are held annually on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Queen’s Birthday Weekend. Each day auditions are held in two venues. At the auditions judges choose finalists in the various sections. The Junior and Intermediate finals are held on Saturday night and the senior final night is Sunday. The 40 Plus finals are held prior to the Professional Artists Showcase concert on Sunday afternoon at the end of the auditions.

The New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards are open for artists who have not recorded a product for sale. Contestants may enter as an individual, in a duet and/or as part of a group. Contestants compete in either the junior, intermediate, senior or 40 Plus sections, depending on their age. There are a variety of sections, including male and female solo, gospel, traditional, country rock, duet, yodeling, vocal group, group NZ composition and instrumental.