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The Chunes Gig Guide Web App is now available for Android phones such as Samsung, HTC, Hua Wei and LG.
To install the app open an internet browser on your mobile and go to http://www.chunesofbroome.com.au/bgg/mobile/. When the page finishes loading go to Menu / More / Add Shortcut to Home to put the app icon on your home screen. After that you will have one-click access to the gig guide on your mobile.

Hot Australian country act The McClymonts will launch their highly anticipated new album, Two Worlds Collide on Friday, at a special show in their hometown Grafton.
It will be the final show of their current Hits and Previews Tour of Australia and their last before leaving for yet another tour of America.

Trio elder Brooke said she was looking forward to unleashing the new material, which she said for the most part, represented a much deeper side of herself and sisters Samantha and Mollie.

‘‘Every record you get the chance to make you want to try and make it better than the last – or even try and grow from the last – and I really think with this one we’ve achieved that,’’’ she said.

‘‘And we’ve all grown up too. It’s been two years since the last record, the girls aren’t babies anymore – even though I think they’re still young – and they’ve had some life experience and that really showed in the songs that they were writing, and I’m the same as well. We really just have a great body of work here.

‘‘It’s probably a bit more mature and the lyrics are a bit more honest. There’s not as much up-songs on the album as before, but we’re really happy with the way it’s turned out.’’

Samantha agreed with the notion of maturity, but stressed that going in to the project there was no grand plan to create the music from any particular mindset.

”I think that when we went in and layed out all of the songs the ones that we liked were the more personal ones and songs we felt a bit more connected to,” she said. ”And I think that’s what fans want too, they want stories and to be taken on a journey.”

McClymont tragics have no need to fear with talk of depth and maturity. The new album’s 11 tracks are an unmistakable fit with the rest of the catalogue – chock full of catchy choruses, slick harmonies and the odd high-heel kick to the chin.

‘Broken Brights’ marks a departure for Stone, and not just from recording with his long-term musical co-conspirator Julia. The album, produced by Angus, is also proof that he can deftly shift between genres without compromising his signature sound. While title track ‘Broken Brights’ is a return-to-form for Stone — it’s a nostalgic, dreamy tribute to our youth — ‘Bird On the Buffalo’ is a livelier composition, incorporating distorted guitar riffs, which also make an appearance in the notably rockier ‘It Was Blue’. That string-laden track in particular is proof that his compositional skills transcend the preconceptions you might have about his musical style.
In the recording process, Stone has captured memories and imaginings from his pilgrimage around the planet. What he says about going solo could easily sum up the experience of listening to ‘Broken Brights’: “It’s a whole different trip.”

If you are chasing tickets to see John Williamson at the Broome Convention Centre, get moving. They are selling really fast, so pop into Chunes and grab yours. $54 adults, $52 Concession & $33 kids.

Yes, the shop is open today – til about 1.30pm.

Come in and say hi

The new Chunes Gig Guide Web App is free for anyone with an iPhone. It puts the Gig Guide into your pocket and should work on all models of the iPhone.
To install the app go to www.chunesofbroome.com.au/bg2/ in Safari on your iPhone. When the page loads press the Bookmark button, the middle button at the bottom of your screen, and then “Add to Home Screen”. This will place the Gig Guide icon on your home screen where it behaves exactly like any App, with the proviso that the phone must be on-line to access the Gig Guide.

Web Apps are an independent of the App stores. They can be designed and distributed from independent websites via Safari. As mobile phone operating systems improve Web Apps should eventually become more compatible across all platforms. There are no particular security issues with Web Apps as they use the same technologies already being used on the web; HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

Want to have a memorable party – check out the party lights at Chunes! Chunes Disco

The 13th Message Sticks festival aims to open a path between cultures, writes Saffron Howden from the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Opera House requires more than eyes and ears from its audience this week.
”You should smell it first, hear it and then listen; that rhythm, that old rhythm. It’s like a heartbeat,” the new artistic director of the annual Message Sticks festival, Rhoda Roberts, says. ”It’s warts ‘n’ all.”

In its 13th year, the festival, which begins today, is moving beyond its traditional focus on film for the first time to showcase indigenous Australian stories through dance, song, discussion, photography and politics.

Images captured by ASIO of Aboriginal activists huddled beneath a beach umbrella on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra four decades ago are on display to mark the anniversary of the Tent Embassy and the birth of modern-day indigenous arts.

Archie Roach, Shane Howard and Neil Murray line up to perform songs that forever changed and shaped mainstream indigenous politics and opened a dialogue between Australia’s black and white, including Took the Children Away.

”Prior to that song, I don’t think an awful lot of Australians realised the stolen generations was true,” Roberts says. ”It’s almost an anthem for some Aboriginal people. ”There’s something about your country that you can’t articulate. They’re able to articulate it [for] a Western perspective.”

Roberts, a Bundjalung woman from northern NSW with a distinguished career curating mass events such as Sydney’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, has infused the 2012 Message Sticks festival with a strong ”two-way” ethos – featuring artists able to communicate with both their own indigenous communities and the wider Australian population and interpret between the two.
”If you’re really serious about connecting, then you do it through the arts,” she says.

Ernie Dingo, best known for taking prime-time television audiences to exotic holiday locations over the globe as a presenter on Getaway, will stand before a more intimate audience on Friday night in the Opera House studio and tell his personal story as a Yamatji man from Western Australia.

”People know Ernie as taking them to a great holiday destination,” Roberts says. ”This is about getting to know the Dingo story, the traditional life he lived as a young boy.

”I think it’s nice to [get to] know someone they’ve probably known as a TV show, as a man.” Roberts has enlisted other ”two-way” people to engage young and old in the festival. Alec Doomadgee, a broadcaster who became the spokesman for his family when his cousin Mulrunji ”Cameron” Doomadgee died in police custody at Palm Island in 2004, joins journalists John Pilger and George Negus, and movie reviewers Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton to discuss the black screen, the Tent Embassy, the intervention and Aboriginal politics.
”Their communities depend on them [people like Doomadgee] so much and I don’t think people realise the responsibilities they have,” Roberts says. ”They’re interpreters.”
Determined to fill the seats beneath the white sails with young people, she has also enlisted the likes of Casey Donovan, the young Aboriginal singer whose voice stole the show in Australian Idol, but who didn’t fit the modern pop star image.
In Message Sticks, ”the diva” from Nambucca Heads will perform a tribute to Mama Cass Elliot.
”Here’s a young girl – she was so shy,” Roberts says. ”She was only 16 [when she did Idol]. She got criticised because she didn’t talk. But the Aboriginal community got behind her and really developed her. She really is the diva – in a good way.”
The Black Arm Band collective, which will include Archie Roach and Tim Rogers from You Am I, brings the curtain down at festival’s end on Sunday night in the concert hall with the dirt-song project, a musical conversation between the performers that uses indigenous languages to talk about the connections between people and the land.
”We never speak and we never talk our language,” Roach tells the Herald. ”[With] dirt-song we’ve got the chance to showcase songs in our own languages and dialects.
”A lot of people don’t realise … that we’re still recovering our language,” he says.
If Message Sticks festivalgoers enter the highly politicised world of indigenous arts, Roberts hopes they leave educated.
”Hopefully a little bit more aware, hopefully a little bit more compassionate,” she says.

Message Sticks is at the Opera House until April 1.

Harris, Billy Sherrill, Ricky Skaggs and Dwight Yoakam have been chosen to receive the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award honoring individuals who are pioneers in the country music genre.

Emmylou Harris brought a graceful delivery, beautiful harmonies and a wealth of exceptional material to her career in country music. She was discovered at a nightclub in Washington D.C., then provided her signature vocals to Gram Parsons’ seminal recordings. On her own, she arrived on the country charts in 1975. Over the next decade, she racked up 21 Top 10 singles, including five No. 1 hits. The Trio album with talented friends Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt earned the 1987 ACM Award for Album of the Year. Harris was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

Billy Sherrill produced many of country’s most famous names and wrote numerous classics throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The Alabama native joined Epic Records in 1964, where his credits as both a producer and songwriter included David Houston’s “Almost Persuaded,” Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl” and Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man.” He also served as a producer on George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (which earned Sherrill an ACM Award for Producer of the Year), as well as Johnny Paycheck’s “She’s All I Got” and Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn.” He joined the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010.

Ricky Skaggs energized country music in the 1980s by taking his traditional sound in a lively new direction. Over that decade, the Kentucky native charted 19 Top 10 singles, including 11 No. 1 hits. Rather than writing his material, he gathered first-rate songs by the likes of Guy Clark, Bill Monroe, Webb Pierce, Mel Tillis and Cindy Walker. He was named the ACM’s 1981 Top New Male Vocalist and received five ACM Awards for Touring Band of the Year. Since that time, Skaggs has focused on bluegrass music and now leads one of the most respected ensembles in the genre.

Dwight Yoakam captured the imagination of traditionalists and new listeners alike by giving hillbilly music a modern twist. Born in Kentucky but based in Los Angeles, Yoakam debuted with a twangy cover of Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man,” which led him to the ACM’s 1986 Top New Male Vocalist trophy. In all, Yoakam landed 14 Top 10 hits – some he wrote (“I Sang Dixie”) and others he revived (Elvis Presley’s “Little Sister”). Along with acclaimed albums and music videos, Yoakam proudly partnered with Buck Owens on the endearing 1988 duet, “Streets of Bakersfield.” He remains active in music and film.

Past recipients of the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award include Alabama, Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash, Charlie Daniels, Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, The Oak Ridge Boys, Dolly Parton, Charley Pride, Jerry Reed, Tex Ritter, Marty Robbins, Kenny Rogers, Mel Tillis, Randy Travis, Conway Twitty, Porter Wagoner, Hank Williams, Sr., Hank Williams Jr. and Bob Wills, among others.

Grammy winner and best-selling R&B/pop crooner Lionel Richie is returning to the music scene, but it’s a slightly different scene this time.

Richie sold 20,000 copies of his new country duets CD, “Tuskegee,” in just one hour during a live concert event on the Home Shopping Network on Friday.

The CD is new, but the tunes are not. Rather, “Tuskegee,” named for Richie’s Alabama hometown, is a greatest hits collection with a twist: Richie’s doing countrified covers of his own hit songs, paired with country stars.

He sings with Blake Shelton on “You Are,” for example, and with Kenny Chesney on “My Love,” Rascal Flatts on “Dancing on the Ceiling,” Willie Nelson on “Easy,” Kenny Rogers on “Lady” (a song Rogers previously covered for a solo hit), Tim McGraw on “Sail On,” Shania Twain on “Endless Love” and fellow country crossover artist Darius Rucker on “Stuck on You.”

Richie, who’ll also be a judge on ABC’s upcoming singing competition series “Duets,” tells Rolling Stone he’s been drawn to country music for some time. “Conway Twitty wanted me to come years ago and ‘be country,’” Richie said, “but I was too busy being a Commodore. Then Kenny Rogers wanted me to go country, but I was too busy being the ‘pop’ Lionel Richie.