When people ask my about my introduction to western music I tell them about a road trip in the year 2000 from St. Paul, Minnesota down to Tucson, Arizona with Lori (who is now my wife).

We jumped off the interstate and main highways and took a two lane road south out of South Dakota. Somewhere along the way, we were coming up into a small town. Lori said she wanted to play some cowboy music for me and put in the cd. The cd was by a group called The Desert Sons and the first song on the cd was the infectious and up-beat Bob Nolan tune, “The West Is In My Soul”.

Literally, just as the first bars were playing, we turned a corner and there were a few people on horse back and atv’s moving some cattle down main street! Of course, this was an auspicious and great first impression!

I went to see The Desert Sons perform not too long after that. They opened up for cowboy poets Baxter Black and Waddie Mitchell. The headliner was Don Edwards. By the end of the night, I was pretty hooked.

At that time in Tucson, The Sons of the Pioneers were still holding down their winter gig at the Triple C. Lori and I drove out to see them a couple time and meet these great men who were (and still are) true ambassadors of western music.

From then on I started to accumulate more and more western music cd’s. I had previously played guitar a little bit but now found music that I really, really loved. My naiveté told me, “It shouldn’t be too hard to learn some cowboy tunes! How hard can it be to play Tumbling Tumbleweeds?” Oh, sure, I laugh now.

I found Bob Nolan’s first song folio on-line and bought it. I was mainly fascinated by it as a curio that connected me to that part of western music history. But when I read the lyrics to, “Night Falls on the Prairie” I was so moved by it’s eloquence that I made it my goal to learn it. I really couldn’t play guitar much and sang worse! But, like I said, I was in love and that is what inspires me to this day.

Through my wife’s passion for horses and photography, I have come to meet the finest people. Cattlemen, musicians, ranchers, singers and poets, horse people of every stripe and the beauty of the Apache have shown me a grandeur that I thought only existed in dreams. Now, I get to experience it through this music. No matter what part if the world you are in, thank you for being someone I can share western music with.