Americana Festival in UK

Nashville, TN July 16, 2011:  The Americana Music Association is proud to announce a new collaboration with The Sage Gateshead.  As the leading U.S. Trade organization for the Americana music genre, the AMA has signed on as a sponsor for the 2011 SummerTyne Americana Festival, July 22-24, an annual event produced by The Sage Gateshead, with the goal of helping the organization gain a greater understanding about Americana music.  The AMA will continue to produce the Americana Music Festival and conference, presented by Nissan, and its Honors & Awards program in Nashville, Tennessee this fall.

“SummerTyne has become one of the, if not the, premier Americana live event in the UK,” AMA board president David Macias says. “It gives us at the Americana Music Association a fantastic forum from which to educate people about the music we love.”  Macias will attend the event this year and give a talk on ‘Defining Americana, a whistle-stop history of the genre, from Country Blues to Rock ‘n Roll’. The AMA has also worked with SummerTyne Americana Festival programmer Tamsin Austin offering creative input towards shaping the festival content to reflect the most current activity on the U.S. scene. “With the rise of popularity of Americana in the states, we are making a concerted effort to bring this great music and an understanding of the community to places around the globe,” said Mark Moffatt, Chair of the Americana Board International Committee, adding “The Sage Gateshead and the UK are perfect partners for us to spread this message.”  The working relationship will extend throughout the year, and will also help The Sage Gateshead build bridges in the U.S. to help them broaden their reach with various musicology communities there in order to fulfill their educational mission.

The Sage Gateshead will have a strong presence at this year’s AMA Festival and Conference. They will co-host a concert and event with Thirty Tigers, one of the leading companies in the genre, home to such acts as Beth Nielsen Chapman, Elizabeth Cook, Jason Isbell, Amy LaVere, North Mississippi Allstars and Kathy Mattea.  “I attended the Americana Festival and Conference last year and it was fantastic,” says Austin, “the AMA is very much an artist led rather than industry led event and is all about the music. It was very interesting to see a whole genre of music represented so perfectly and in microcosm alongside the mainstream American music industry. The event is on a similar scale and with essentially the same ethos as our event – to promote great Americana music. Having a presence at this year’s Americana event in Nashville will give us an opportunity to tell people what an amazing event we have here and a place to interact with artists, managers, and agents. Our goal is to make every year’s festival better than the last, and having a stronger presence at the Americana Music Festival and Conference will help us in that goal.”

The Americana Music Association is a professional trade organization whose mission is to provide a forum for the advocacy of Americana music and to promote public awareness of the genre to support the creative and economic viability of professionals in this field. Dedicated to building and promoting the Americana genre and the individuals who participate in that industry, the Americana Music Association works closely with artists, labels, radio stations, retailers, print media, festivals, agents, publishers and more to help organize and build the infrastructure necessary for the Americana genre to achieve success both creatively and financially.