Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Howdy everyone!

Can you believe it's January and the Gathering is less than 6 weeks away? We are getting so excited to see you all, and to hear what our storytellers, poets, and musicians create this year.

Our November newsletter featured the second seven Texas performers who are returning the Gathering this year. If you missed it, you can read it online. We are highlighting all our performers in our newsletters this year. After starting with those who are new to the Gathering, we are moving through those who are returning.

Now, here are the first seven performers from outside Texas, in alphabetical order.

Born in the San Joaquin Valley of California, Juni Fisher spent her early years training horses, as well as working on cow-calf operations. She now tours the country full time, delighting audiences with her original songs, storytelling, and guitar playing. Juni has written songs recorded by many other artists; published her debut novel (Girls from Centro) in 2018; and has numerous awards for performance, albums, and songwriting. She competed in the National Reined Cow Horse Association's Celebrity Cow Horse Challenge in 2012, winning the championship, and these days finds time between concerts to ride and show her cow horse futurity prospect.

Amy Hale is an award-winning author who lives and works on Spider Ranch, a 50,000-acre cattle operation in the rough terrain of Central Arizona where the goal is to raise food in a sustainable manner while working in tandem with government agencies. Amy and her husband, Gail Steiger, who cowboy together on the ranch, are sought-after presenters of story, spoken word, and music in venues all over the country. While Amy writes about the specific places she inhabits, she inspires readers to find and inhabit their place in the world. She also mentors writers and creatives in all mediums through her groups and workshops, using the power of daily writing. You can hear Amy interviewd by Andy Hedges on Cowboy Crossroads, episode 36.

For more than two decades, Brenn Hill has stood under a cowboy hat and behind a microphone on countless stages entertaining audiences, blending his voice with bending guitar strings in a performance style all his own. The songs he sings are also mostly his own, earning Brenn recognition as one of the premier musical chroniclers of cowboy life. Many of his early compositions—"Call You Cowboy," "Roundup Fire," "Burnin' Hair"— reflect a love for and knowledge of the West well beyond his years. While his long-lived love for the West and cowboy ways continues in his more recent compositions, like a skilled, seasoned poet he uses lyrical language to peel back the layers of life to reveal a deeper, more meaningful, more affective, more effective, understanding of our world. Brenn lives with his wife and three children in Hooper, Utah. You can hear him on Cowboy Crossroads as well (episode 60).

Carson Houser is a young rancher, bull rider, and cowboy poet from McClusky, North Dakota. Raised working alongside his father on their cow-calf operation, Carson developed a passion for western art and music, which led him to writing his own poetry as he documents his life and experiences as a cattleman and rodeo cowboy. His style is greatly inspired by the music of Chris LeDoux and Kyle Evans, and the poetry of fellow Dakotans Bill Lowman, Rodney Nelson, and Yvonne Hollenbeck. In September of 2021, he published Branding in the Rain: A Collection of Ranching & Rodeo Poetry, and released his first CD Another Iron on the Fire in July of 2022. Carson was the 2023 recipient of the Buck Ramsey Award from the Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering, presented to an "individual who demonstrates significant promise to contribute to the cowboy canon including poetry, music, and story."

Randy Huston writes and sings about the modern-day lifestyle of the cowboy. He is a fourth-generation livestock producer, and partners with his father on their ranch in New Mexico. He started breaking horses for wages at the age of 14 and spent many years in rodeo arenas through high school and college. He's written some of the most widely recognized of contemporary cowboy music, and his songs have been recorded by some of the "stars" of this genre. His albums include Keepin' The New West Wild, There's A Hole in Daddy's Rope, Cowboys and Girls (with daughter Hannah Huston), and Times Like These (2022). Cowboys and Girls won the 2015 award for "Outstanding Traditional Western Album" presented by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

Ross Knox grew up on a small cow/calf operation in Prineville, OR and always knew he wanted to be a cowboy. At the age of 16 he quit school and headed for Nevada to work on the big outfits. He cowboyed all over the western states for the next 15 years, working in Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, California, Texas, and Montana. Then he took a job packing mules with supplies to Phantom Ranch on the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Ross was head packer there for almost 17 years, and in that time logged more miles horseback than any other human being. At the age of 20, Ross began to write. Originally he wrote stories of his time in a MC cow camp and out on the Owyhee Desert, then began sharing them at festivals. He has performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko most years since it was created. Known for reciting the classics, Ross also writes original poetry from his life experiences and has more than 100 poems committed to memory. He has also released a CD collaboration with musician Trinity Seely, The Horse in the Middle. He was interviewed in the 3rd episode off Cowboy Crossroads.

Deanna Dickinson McCall writes about the West with settings in both the past and current day. Deanna is from a long line of ranchers, people who revere the land and livestock, and love their livelihood. Deanna and her husband spent 22 years raising their 3 children on a remote Nevada ranch without electricity or phones. Besides ranching in several states, she's ridden for paychecks, sold feed, and received cattle at sales yards to make ends meet when necessary. The stories she writes are generous slices of this life. They are tales of gritty existence, simple honest love, a code of honor still upheld, and beating overwhelming odds. Her poetry opens a door allowing you deep into her world, often touching a heartstring as she writes of the ranch life and people she loves, or sparking laughter as her wry humor rings true. She now ranches with her husband in the Oklahoma hills; runs Cowboy Hill, a live music venue; and is the Academy Manager for the Academy of Western Artists. You can hear Deanna on her Cowboy Crossroads interview from 2022.

With so much talent in town, Alpine will be hopping Feb. 20-22! Get your tickets and lodging reservations now.

All the best,
Kay and Gene Nowell
Co-Chairs
Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering

P.S. Here's the ticket link again. See you next month!

P.P.S. Here's the full 2025 schedule for your browsing pleasure.

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