COWBOYS AT STEAMBOAT MUSIC FEST 2025…
Folklorist and songwriter Hal Cannon, together with working cowboy and buckaroo poet Waddie Mitchell, recall putting up some two hundred or so metal chairs in an auxiliary room at the Elko Convention Center in 1985. They only hoped someone would come to the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering. As it turned out, they were about 1800 chairs short in this first-of-its-kind event that featured working cowboys and cowgirls, ranchers and ranch wives from the Great Basin and beyond.
2025 commemorates the fortieth National Cowboy Poetry Gathering with many other events like it evolving through four decades across the United States and Canada. Though many of the genre’s founding and iconic artists have passed in recent years, such as the legendary Alerberta Singer/Songwriter, Ian Tyson, Cowboy Poet and Humorist, Baxter Black, and the beloved Texas troubadour, Don Edwards, ‘The Gathering’ is alive and well and features a roster of poets, songsters, songwriters, and storytellers from across the west that are young, old, and in between. Most that still boast a strong connection to the land and lifestyle they sing of. All of which are dedicated to telling the authentic story of agriculture in the Great American West.
I’ll be joining two of the genre’s leading artists, Texas Songster and Reciter Andy Hedges of Lubbock, TX, Ned LeDoux, singer/songwriter and son of legendary Rodeo Rocker Chris LeDoux, next January 6 – 11 at “The Music Fest at Steamboat” in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Music Fest, also in its fortieth year, features over 200 hours of live performances in an array of Texas, Red Dirt, and Americana artists from across the country. And the addition of the Cowboy Music stage seems only fitting.
For Steamboat Springs, Colorado, was a Cowtown long before it was a ski town. The pristine valleys and sweeping mountain slopes that surround the area have been dotted with cattle and sheep since before the town was founded in 1900. In fact, early settlers began livestock production operations across the Yampa Valley as early as the 1870’s. Many of those original homesteads are still owned by the same families. The Steamboat Springs Chamber reports that “by 1913, more cattle were shipped from the Steamboat Springs railroad than any other single point in the United States.” It is a proud history for the area and cowboy culture runs deep as evident in many ongoing events in the area such as The Cowboy Downhill Races and The Steamboat Pro Rodeo. Visitors to the area would be hard-pressed to deny the influence that the iconic character of the cowboy, ranching, and western heritage has on Steamboat Springs and its surrounding communities.
Cowboy crooners are not strangers to The Music Fest at Steamboat. Past years have featured the likes of Albertan Rodeo Rocker Corb Lund as well as Andy Hedges. It is in fact Andy Hedges that can be partially credited for creating this presence. Hedges is constantly pioneering the cowboy genre and its firmament of artists through his various procurement efforts at events like the Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, Texas, and The Hill Country Cowboy Gathering in Fredericksburg, Texas. His most recent recording, Roll On Cowboys, released in 2022 is a collection of duets that plays out like a who’s who of the modern cowboy genre. Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Tom Russell, Andy Wilkinson, Corb Lund, Dom Flemons, Waddie Mitchell, Pipp Gillette, Brigid Reedy, Rod Nelson, Andy’s daughter Maggie Rose Hedges, and me, Brenn Hill, all flank Andy on at least one and often two selections from the recording. The project was so well received that Andy and his rough-and-ready bunch of cowpoke artists were featured at Carnegie Hall in mid-town Manhattan, New York, last March 22nd, where they performed the recording to a sold out crowd. The diverse audience welcomed the Roll On Cowboys crew with open arms and ears and the night was a teeming success. Magical even, as most concerts are that fill the sacred halls of Carnegie.
In addition, Andy Hedges has garnered over two hundred episodes of his podcast, Cowboy Crossroads, which features interviews and stories from working cowboys and cowgirls, ranchers, cowboy and cowgirl artists, poets, songwriters, and characters from across the cowboy cosmos. It is the west both old and new and its many episodes give great insight into western lore and show the diversity, ingenuity, and fortitude of those committed to keeping the mystique of the Great American West alive and well.
And as our small but mighty genre grows steadily around the globe, we artists within it continue to portray in our performances and recordings the family that we most certainly are. Ned and Andy are friends and colleagues, men that I look up to and admire as artists and authentic western characters. We are true to the code of the west and though our art evolves, the values therein are the same today as they were when those pioneering ranch families first broke ground in the great Yampa Valley of Central Colorado back in the late 1800s. For our songs come straight from our hearts and souls and you can be sure that there are some broken bones and hard-earned scars that account for at least some of the inspiration we credit.
In the words of Western Folklife founder Hal Cannon, “cowboys sing because it’s natural for them to sing.”
So come as you are to the Cowboy Stage at The Music Fest at Steamboat next January. All are welcome. Just know that we aim to wake that little bit of cowboy or cowgirl that, like everyone, is in you. And once you taste the real west, you’ll never be the same.
See you at The Music Fest !!
- Brenn Hill–Singer/Songwriter, Hooper, Utah
