Southern Flinders Music Festival

 

Most of you know this festival as the NCMA Port Pirie Country Music Festival. The timing of Port Pirie Festival clashed with the popular Mildura Festival and it was becoming increasingly harder for the Pirie people to compete with the budget and increasing popularity of Mildura. The obvious answer was to change the Pirie date. After much agonising the committee cancelled their event last year and shifted it to May 10th to 17th 2004. As the event will have a whole new appearance they also renamed it to highlight the local area.

 

The new look event will incorporate a talent quest, bush poets, gospel, and workshops. A new innovation, the SA Youth Music Showcase, will incorporate workshop tuition on vocals and instrumentals and feature a special showcase. Since the closing of the Whyalla Festival, Pirie has incorporated the popular SA Linedance Championships which will includes competitions, workshops and special presentations. Buskers will be encouraged to work in the streets and the Sunday will include a Multicultural Festival displaying music, food, dance and stalls.

 

Artists confirmed at this stage include Wayne Law and his band, The Costa Brothers, Laura Downing, Donella Plane, The Sherrahs, Garry Burrows , Marie Haslemore and Louise Haden. This promises to be a great festival and is a very important part of our state’s junior development program via it’s talent quest. For further information you can contact secretary Roma Sampson on 08 8633 4417 or the Port Pirie Regional Tourism & Arts Centre on 08 8633 8700.

CMR (Country Music Radio) Back on Air

 

After a four year break Tamworth's legendary night-time country music radio program returns to Saturday and Sunday nights this weekend.

 

Also returning is top country broadcaster Nick Erby, who will host CMR (Country Music Radio) from 6pm on Saturday and Sunday nights on 21 SuperNetwork stations including 2SM Sydney and 2HD Newcastle. The program will cover northern and western NSW plus southern Queensland including the key Country Music centres Gympie, Toowoomba and Tamworth.

 

CMR (formally known as Hoedown) was broadcast from Tamworth for 35 years up to the beginning of 2000 and was the

catalyst for the establishment of the annual Golden Guitar Awards and the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

 

The re-introduction of CMR at weekends was initiated by SuperNetwork owner Bill Caralis, who has upgraded the facilities at 2TM to accommodate the network programming.

 

CMR will highlight country music's latest hits plus interviews and features. The program will cover all of country's major events, including a big coverage of the upcoming Telstra Tamworth Festival in January. There will be live broadcasts of the Toyota Star Maker Quest final (celebrating it's 25th year) and the 32nd Toyota Golden Guitar Awards (country's annual record awards).

 

Nick Erby is country music's leading broadcaster, who has been producing and hosting country radio and television programs for over 30 years.

 

"I am delighted to accept Bill Caralis' invitation to re-launch CMR, and particularly pleased that he is allowing me to do it from Tamworth - Country Music Capital" Nick said.

 

CMR will have a 45 track current playlist, playing current radio singles in three rotations. Other tracks from current albums will also be played, including bush ballads, bluegrass and "troubadour" type material. The format will also feature the biggest hits from the past 50 years.

 

A number of features highlighting the music, including an album of the week and the weekly countdown of the Country Tracks Top 20 (Sunday) will enhance the playlist music.

 

Stations broadcasting CMR (Saturday & Sunday from 6pm) are

 

Sydney 2SM 1269AM                   Armidale 2AD 1143AM

Newcastle 2HD 1143AM             Inverell 2NZ 1188AM

Tamworth 2TM1287AM              Goondiwindi 2VM 89.5FM

Toowoomba 4WK 1359AM         Walgett  2VM    106.7FM

Darling Downs 4WK 963AM        Mooree 2VM 1530AM

Gympie 4GY 558AM                    Gunnedah 2MO 1050AM

Tweed Coast Radio 97 972AM     Cobar 2DU 972AM

Gold Coast Radio 97    104.1FM   Lismore 2LM 900AM

Grafton 2GF1206AM                   Taree 2RE 1557AM

Mudgee 2MG 1449AM                 Parkes 2PK 1404AM

Dubbo 2DU 1251AM

Page 2

Prelude

February 2004

The SA Council for Country Music is supported by the Government of South Australia via Arts SA

Country Music   Radio broadcaster Nick Erby