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Western
Music Awakening |
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Western
music is stirring from its long slumber, and a whole new
world awaits
by
Jesse Mullins, Jr. |
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They
used to call it “country and western.”
Could someone tell me where the western went?
Did it stray from the herd like some poor dogey
That wound up tangled in a barbed wire fence?
—Joni Harms |
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NAN
COULTER, DALLAS, TEXAS.
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DALLAS,
Texas—The spacious, posh confines of the new Eisemann Center for
the Performing Arts held a capacity crowd as Michael Martin
Murphey’s Cowboy Songs cut loose, an innovative and stylish
stage production of modern dance routines backed by classic cowboy
tunes performed by Murphey and his band.
Earning rave
reviews, Cowboy Songs received accolades as something
“exuberant,” “rousing,” and “saucy.” Its choreography
was deemed a direct-line descendant of the work of George
Ballanchine, Twyla Tharp, and Martha Graham. “Cowboy Songs did
the cowboy culture proud with a bang-up show that left you cryin’
for more,” observed the Dallas Morning News. “You knew it was
good when the shrieks and whistles poured forth. The excitement
was not just for the dancers. They were fabulous, but so was the
music by guest artist Michael Martin Murphey and the Rio Grande
Band.”
Murphey himself
seemed elated afterwards as he signed autographs in the lobby. He
has performed the program in a handful of venues, including the
magnificent Bass Hall in Fort Worth.
But Murphey’s
latest coup is just one of a growing number of breakthroughs in a
field—Western music—that shows signs of taking off. Red
Steagall’s Cowboy Gathering, held annually in Fort Worth,
attracted huge crowds in October. Other shows report upswings in
attendance. And on the music front there is a crop of fresh faces
who are making people stop and listen. Myra Pearce, Kata Hay,
Ginnie Mac, Dave Alexander, Tammy Gialason, Kacey Musgraves, Brenn
Hill—these are not household names yet, but they are working on
it.
Western music’s
mainstays are staying with it, too. The man who might be deemed
the dean of cowboy singers today, Johnny Western, spoke to
American Cowboy two months ago from Wichita, where he is a radio
personality on KFDI, and said at the time that he had recently
“done Williamsburg [Western Film Festival] in March and it was
absolutely huge. And of course Carnegie Hall selling out [for the
Prairie Rose show] was fabulous and the impetus from that rolled
into Charlotte. It’s just like there’s a real groundswell.”
Western, best
known as the writer and performer of the smash hit theme song
“The Ballad of Palladin,” for the classic television Western
series Have Gun Will Travel, is one of the most accomplished
cowboy singers living today.
Says Western:
“The Gene Autry [Okla.] show is selling out every year, and so
is the Autry [Museum] show in Hollywood.” Both are shows at
which Western, a former Gene Autry bandmember, performs. “These
things are sold out way in advance.”
Radio airplay
seems to be the last hurdle for full respectability.
 “I hear it all
the time, all the time,” says Dan Roberts, singer/songwriter who
toured as opening act for Garth Brooks on the latter’s Fresh
Horses tour a few years ago. “They say, ‘How come we don’t
hear this on the radio? Why doesn’t radio play that?’ It’s a
mystery to the general public why radio doesn’t play [cowboy or
Western music].”
Roberts and his
bunch—his musicians and promoters/marketers behind the
scenes—are part of a new breed. They are independents, breaking
their own trails because the mainstream music industry would
ignore, if it could, any genre other than pre-ordained, heavily
marketed ones.
Yet Roberts has
three efforts that are said to be in Grammy contention this
year—all of them tied to his new Viva La Cowboy release. He’s
coming off the best year he’s had since launching his own label
five years ago. A recent single of his, “Swinging ’Til We
Can’t See Strait,” a swing music tribute to George Strait, has
been in the top 20 of the Texas Music Chart. “It’s getting
about 1,500 spins a month in Texas and Oklahoma, he says.
The chorus of the
title track of Joni Harms’ brand new CD release, Let’s Put
Western Back in the Country, says it all.
Let’s
put the western back in the country
Hello out there, we’re still here.
We ain’t dropped off in the ocean… not yet
Rode off in the sun and disappeared…
Harms says people
come up to her all the time to say that they wish they were
hearing more of this kind of music on the radio. “That is one of
the most rewarding parts of [performing in this genre],” Harms
says. “People come up to you and honestly say, ‘Thank you for
staying true to making this kind of music.’ ” 
“I have a
co-writer in Nashville, Wood Newton, and we were talking about
how, in a way, my music is too Western for country, and in some
ways too country for Western,” says Harms, of Canby, Ore. “I
like swing and full band productions and sometimes the Western
Music Association fights a little of that, and fights the
Nashville thing, and yet Nashville is a big part of what I am. I
love being on the Grand Ol’ Opry. I’ve spent a lot of time
there… I was on Capitol, Universal, and Warner Brothers [record
labels]. I believe they know how to make music there that is radio
ready and can compete with anything else that is on the market.
But the Western Music Association has talked about getting more
Western into the country [music] too. Wood and I just felt that we
turn on country radio and we miss the Western influences.”
She adds: “I
believe that you have to spend money to compete with all the other
music out there. If we’re going to really go for radio airplay
and get this to a larger audience, it’s going to have to be well
done.”
It was this kind
of thinking that led Harms to become the first artist in the
stable of the new Wildcatter Records, headquartered on the
Wildcatter Ranch, a resort and dude ranch now in development
outside Graham, Texas. The chief executive officer of Wildcatter
is Mickey Dawes, a Western music performer himself and former
president of the Western Music Association.
“Right now my
focus is to really put what I consider contemporary Western music
out in the forefront,” Dawes says. “Joni would be the poster
child for that. Hers is a mix between classic country music and
Western music. She represents that better than anyone I’ve seen.
I want to push Western music that has a high commercial content to
it, because for you to get any mainstream market penetration, you
have to have commercial viability. You have to start out with a
wonderful song, and then have full instrumentation and high
production values.”
In order to get
this package before the public and into the public consciousness,
one has to be “aggressive and selective in who you put out
there,” Dawes says, and in Harms he feels that Wildcatter has
the right artist.
“Joni is one of
very few people in the Western market who routinely appear on the
Grand Ol’ Opry—Riders in the Sky is another,” he says.
“Now, there is a nostalgic market for simple acoustic cowboy
music, and it will always be there, but if you really and truly
want to introduce this music [genre] at a social level that gets
right to mainstream America, you have to have the total package.
There are songwriters and there are musicians and there are
singers, and Joni is the culmination of all three. As an added
bonus, she has the highest level of credibility when it comes to
Western content, because she is sure-enough cowgirl… She is a
modern-day Dale Evans. She raises cattle, she raises Quarter
Horses, she holds numerous rodeo queen titles, and you put a
guitar in her hands and she can make that thing sing. And she has
the heart and soul.”
Was
it travelin’ on a stage out of Denver
That never made it into Santa Fe?
Was it ridin’ on a train held up by Jesse James
Who took the gold and made a getaway?
Bobby Newton,
publisher of Rope Burns newspaper and organizer of the Academy of
Western Artists, says that Western advocates are mobilizing.
“We’re hoping
to take Western swing and Western music back into the mainstream
public,” Newton said. “The music is not something
suggestive—we give the public an art form that paints a portrait
of a positive America and a positive future. And it reflects the
cowboy image, which is above reproach. The only people who don’t
like it are the people who have not heard it lately. We’re
seeing a new generation of performers arise—they’re doing a
new contemporary music that is still in the style of Bob Wills and
Roy and Dale and Gene. But we’ve seen that when younger
audiences are exposed to Western music and Western swing, they
love it. They say, ‘Where has this been?’ ”
The bottom line,
Newton says, is that it works. “Our records sales are up; our
artists are working more; they’re getting more notice. It’s
all on the upswing, and we’re close to breaking through, back
into the popular mode. Fort Worth has helped.”
By “Fort
Worth” he refers to the AWA’s annual awards ceremony,
informally known as the Will Rogers Awards, held each year in the
Fort Worth area. This show has grown swiftly in popularity—so
much so that it has outgrown its venue.
“We’re moving
to the Doral Tosoro,” Newton says, referring to a five-star
resort and country club complex across from the Texas Motor
Speedway, a few miles north of Fort Worth.
“We’ll put
the chuckwagons right out on the golf course,” he says.
“We’ll have performers from all over the United States and
Canada. A large trade show, too. We’re expecting about 1,000
attendees for the awards show, and we should have 100 to 150 trade
booths. As far as active performers there, should have three to
four hundred. [Not all will perform—though some 80 or so will be
showcased.] And I expect from 30 to 70 chuckwagons. We’re having
a poetry ‘rodeo’—with judges and a round robin format. A lot
of performers will come to look around and to network. We’ll
also have a lot of disk jockeys. Our membership is up almost 300
percent over two years ago. We’re getting more studio musicians,
writers, producers, etc., in addition to entertainers. We’re
going to throw a party, and if a convention breaks out, so much
the better, but we’ll create the environment where everybody
enjoys themselves.”
He pauses for
breath. “You either grow or you die,” he says with a laugh.
The AWA Awards
are slated for July 9-13, 2004, with the awards show itself slated
for the 13th. For information, call (580) 389-5350 or visit
www.workingcowboy.com.
 Mickey Dawes is
another who is GTT—Gone To Texas. Dawes moved there to run the
new Wildcatter Records, the label for Joni Harms.
According to
Dawes, “If you look back at the time when Western music and
Western movies were at their height, people were struggling to
find heroes, and when those performers were at the top of their
game, we had Western heroes and high quality song content, too.
Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans—these people would make
records and movies and personal appearances, so these Western
heroes were put into American society in a variety of ways. I
think we are at a point in time, here after world events like
Sept. 11, when people are looking for heroes again, and not
necessarily heroes who are sports figures who make millions of
dollars a year.”
Royal Wade Kimes,
a headliner name in the cowboy and Western music field, would
agree.
“Country music
went to the bottom of the well, and now with these big labels
merging it’s not going to get bigger. They’re downsizing,”
Kimes said. “They’re cutting acts and personnel. It is leaving
the door wide open. I said five years ago that Western music is
the only genre of music that hasn’t exploded in the last 60
years, and now there is so much interest in it. If it can get good
leaders, it can be the next best thing to happen in America. And
it will be like it never happened before, because there’s nobody
around who remembers it much.”
Kimes, another
artist whose music has been recorded by Garth Brooks, went to
Nashville years ago and ended up sleeping in his car. But he
learned. And he went independent, forming the Wonderment label. He
and his band, the Packing Iron Posse, are so cowboy they wear
six-guns—.45s—on stage.
“The Western
acts out there now are better than they were four or five years
ago,” Kimes says. “I believe that the artists and the music
industry as a whole will look for the best independents who are
putting out the best music. Things are changing fast. The way we
know the business today, well, in three to five years it won’t
be the same. Everybody is going to download their music—a song
at a time, or buying whole albums. But it’s changing in favor of
the little guy, like the Western singers who have labels of their
own. They’ll have to work at it, but it’s going to happen.
“The
independents are becoming a new frontier,” Kimes concludes.
“It’s going to be like it was in the beginning of the music
business, when the independents ruled. History repeats itself, and
here we come.”
Let’s
put the western back in the country,
You can either sing along or lend an ear
Well pardner it’s your choice—won’t you listen to the voice
Of the sons and the daughters of the pioneers?
AC
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