May 6, 2020 – Take Me Back to the Range: Selections from Western Jubilee Recording Company(2020) Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
I find myself listening to more cowboy music than I have ever listened to before. I find it so comforting. Cowboy music retains some of the authenticity of bluegrass or honky-tonk or other kinds of hard country music that I love but without the edge that those musics have. Cowboy music just kind of rolls along. It evokes wide-open spaces that are unavailable to us as we shelter in our houses. Who isn’t longing for the lonesome prairie? Who doesn’t relate to the sentiment “Don’t Fence Me In”? My new infatuation with cowboy music started with this great new collection and continued with cowboy songs from Michael Martin Murphy, who appears on that collection.
So come join me, riding on the range, with nothing but a horse, the big sky, and those li’l dogies for company.