Weaving Rhymes &
Making Music in
True
Cowboy Style

by Taylor Fogarty

For a guy who was 25 years old before he knew there was anything more to this world than mesquite trees, buffalo grass, barbed wire and Bob Wills, Red Steagall has sure enough made up for lost time. Who would have guessed the red-headed native son of Texas would end up a globe-trotting giant in the entertainment world with a solid career spanning nearly forty years now and still going strong.

From the White House to many a cowboy camp, Steagall continues to sing his songs and recite his poetry, picking up awards all along the way. The sixty-three year-old entertainer is a four-time recipient of the prestigious Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and has twice been named Entertainer of the Year by the Academy of Western Artists.

What is it like to have been honored by those types of awards?

"When you receive an award like that, you're representing everybody in that particular category." says Steagall. "It's an honor and it's very humbling to realize that somebody thinks that what you did that year was the best. But you have a tremendous responsibility to make sure that the next project you do measures up."

Yet saddled with all that responsibility one might wonder, what with all the projects in which Steagall is involved, from music tours and book deals to television shows and his sydicated weekly Cowboy Corner radio shownow in its eight successful season and reaching 160 markets nationwidedoes he still enjoy the pace of life in the fast lane?

"I love every minute of it, assures Steagall. Even the short nights and the long plane rides and all that stuff."

And at other times some things can progress much more slowly than any trans-Atlantic flight. Fed up with Hollywoods portrayal of the working cowboynothing at all like those who make their living at it"Steagall had an idea brewing for a television special about the working cowboy. The project, however, lingered for quite a while. Through contacts he had made while working on another project, Steagall met an executive for PBS who expressed interest in the special.

We wrangled around for two or three years and couldn't get it off dead-center, which is the case in most instances with television shows. It takes forever to get 'em up and running, says Steagall. Then finally one day he wrote us a letter back and said he was interested in doing this, but it had to be funded.

Not a problem. As soon as the Code of the West Foundation learned of it, it was exactly the kind of project they wanted to underwrite. And thats how COWBOY: THE LEGEND, THE LEGACY finally came to fruition.

The one-hour special was taped in front of a live audience in the living room of Steagalls rustic ranch outside of Fort Worth, Texas. He is joined by his own band, The Boys in the Bunkhouse, and special guest Reba McEntire. Through music and verse, the show provides a wonderfully intimate and enchanting sampling of what the life of the real working cowboy is all about, from the values ranching families hold dear, to the legacies they wish to pass on to future generations.

And it is exactly how I wanted it all to be," Steagall adds. The video is strictly my music and poetry, and then my friend Reba McEntire joined me to talk a little bit about what all that means to her.

You know, I don't have a ministry or a mission or anything like that, Steagall chuckles, but I just hope that through this some people who have the wrong idea of what cowboys are will have a better feeling about the folks who provide their beefsteaks.

Although Steagall's career has its roots in western swing, the American cowboy has always had a strong influence on his work.

"The very first songs I every learned were cowboy songs. I started recording in '69, and if you'll look back on all my albums you'll find at least one cowboy song practically on every single one of 'em. I have always done cowboy music. In the days of the Hootenanny, during the days of folk music, I sat in the coffee houses of Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico and Texas and sang cowboy songsthey called me a folk singer."

How did he feel about that?

"Oh, I loved it, because that is folk music and it is a very important part of our folk art. The Hootenanny movement started in the Ice House in Pasadena, and I started playing there when I moved to California in '65. And that's all I did was sat on a stool and sang cowboy songs.

But prior to the years of those top venue days, you might say Steagalls Western music career was rightly influenced by a tumbleweed...of sorts.

"When I got to high school, we could only get one radio station in the little town I lived in, and that was KDDD in Dumas. A fella named Cactus Smith had a radio show from 2:30-3:30 in the afternoon called Tumbleweed Temples, and he was a big western swing fanatic, so that's all he played was Bob Wills, Spade Cooley and Hank Thompson, and so I thought that's all to music there was, was western swing and cowboy music. So when I started recording I leaned more towards the western swing than I did the cowboy because at that time it was commercial. We could play dances with it."

By the early 1980s the music business was changing and country music was heading off in a whole other direction. Staying competitive in the commercial market of Nashville was difficult for anyone whose music was of the West, where the cowboys aren't of the line-dancing variety.

Steagall continued to write songs aimed towards the Nashville market, but admits, "I found I was throwing away hundreds of ideas that I would never get back."

Then in 1985, Steagall was hit with a revelation that would be a natural fit for his career. All it took was one trip to Elko, Nevada.

"When the cowboy poetry gathering came up at Elko in '85, and I went out there and saw what was happening with an art form that I dearly loved, I decided I would never throw those ideas away again. Then for five years I didn't write a song. Wrote nothing but poetry. It was as if it had been bottled up all those years."

Bottled up, indeed. But once uncorked, the words shot out and flowed like fine champagne. Of the poems he has penned Steagall has two personal favorites, one being "Born to this Land."

His other favorite, "The Fence That Me and Shorty Built" also happens to be the favorite poem of President George W. Busha fact which Steagall had learned first-hand.

That had to be a thrill.

"You bet. He's a very good friend of mine, and I went down to the Governor's Mansion one time and did a Christmas party for him. Afterwards, he had me send him a copy of that poem, and he had it reprinted and gave a copy to all of his staff."

Steagall finds delight in the way his poems and songs impact folks on such a personal level.

"I am proud of those two poems, I am proud of the message that people seem to get from them. The songs, I try to not necessarily deliver a moral or a message, but I just try to tell a story in the most exciting and informative way. To me they are two different art forms, they're two different approaches to writing. Not every poem lends itself to a melody, and not every song reads as good as a poem. Each idea lets me know if it wants to be a poem or a song.

People around the globe are truly fascinated by music of the West. "The reason for that is because the lyrics transports them to another place and time," says Steagall. "Regardless of where they live they can listen to the cowboy songs and let their imagination run wild. You know, that was the beautiful thing about radio. In the early days it was a theater of mind. You could listen to Fibber Magee and Molly, The Spider, and The Shadow, all those wonderful radio shows, and they created images for you with sounds and then you would let your mind runaway with what the picture looked like. That's what we do with Western music, and so it does appeal to people all over the world."

That same magical, world-wide appeal is also enjoyed by some cowboy poets. The art form has its roots in the closing of the West, and at one time came very close to becoming a lost art.

"When we fenced off the West, we started lamenting the passing of the West, and that was just before 1900, says Steagall. From that time period to about 1935, there were a large number of people writing and publishing what we know as cowboy poetry, poetry about this particular lifestyle. After 1935 up until 1985, there were only a handful of people publishing poetry. S. Omar Barker was especially prolific during that time, as was Bruce Kiskaddon. Now during that time period, only those few poets were ever heard. People were still writing cowboy poetry, but they'd put it in a shoe box and put it on top of the shelf in the closet, and later the grandkids would find it after they were gone."

The first Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko played an important part in preserving the art form while bringing much deserved attention to a handful of todays exceptionally stellar bards.

"Elko awakened the awareness of the fact that there is a uniquely American art form that talks about a particular people during a particular period in the history of the United States of America. From that platform came several really accomplished poets, but the one who got the most attention and the one who really made a living at it was Baxter Black.

Today, some cowboy poets seek the spotlight and attempt to follow in Baxters bootsteps, only to find out that being funny doesnt necessarily guarantee success.

Steagall explains why their efforts often come up short. Baxter created this awareness of cowboy poetry through his humorand Baxter is one of the greatest humorists this world has ever knownand so people watch him. Then they try writing a little poetry and they take old jokes and build poems around those old jokes to try to get a laugh out of the audience and try to be a showman rather than presenting an art form, all because they think that's the way it ought to be done. But Baxter set the standardand that bar of his REALLY high. Nobody else has come close to doing what Baxter does. And nobody ever will because he's unique."

Steagall offers this advice to those who wish to become successful at writing cowboy poetry.

"If you're going to write cowboy poetry, you need to write it first for yourself ...then if somebody else likes it, that's a bonus. The single most important factor in any art form is original thought. You've got to have original thought to be successful, whether you're painting a picture, sculpting a bronze, writing a poem or writing a song, it doesn't make any difference what art form you're dealing with, original thought is the single most important element. Cowboy poets need to be aware of the world around them. They need to be able to put it into a thought process that nobody else has ever done. And it gets tougher all the time."

In the meantime, fans will be happy to hear Red Steagall has a new album due out next year.

"It's a little bit more about the West and the westering movement, and not so much about stampedes, storms and wrecks," says Steagall. "I like to write about those people that I know and love. They're honest, hard-working, God-loving, dedicated family people that work on the ranches of the west."

In closing, Red Steagall has this to say to anyone who thinks the working cowboy is a thing of the past:

"When you go to the grocery story and your beefsteak is so high that you can't afford to buy it, and no one can guarantee you it's safe, then you'll know that the cowboy is gone. But until that time, don't count him out, 'cuz he's not going anywhere."

And that, folks, is just one of the many reasons why we here in the West love Red Steagall.