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Chris LeDoux
Cowboy

It started here.

He was a rodeo cowboy, who played the guitar in his spare time. He wrote songs about his life on the circuit. His music captured the romance, the freedom, the dirt and the hurt of rodeo, and drew fans who demanded tapes of his songs. And so Chris LeDoux recorded 22 albums on his own, filled with music about the western lifestyle he lived and loved.

Cowboy contains 11 of those early songs, newly recorded with producers Mac McAnally and Alan Schulman. The music is a departure from LeDoux's current rowdy, good-time rocking concert performances. Those shows, which Garth Brooks cites often as the inspiration for his own concert antics, draw ever-increasing crowds of all ages. But his audience knows his roots. "Everywhere I go there's always a handful of fans who ask, 'Where can I get the old stuff?" says LeDoux. "And I'd have to tell them,'Well, it's out of print. You can't find it.' I can remember thinking, years ago, that someday if I got a chance, I should re-record some of my favorites and try to get them right. So that's what I did."

"I got out all the old records and listened to them. I listened to see how well-written the songs were and what they meant to me and where they came from," he says. "A lot of years had passed and I hadn't listened to these songs - or even thought about them - for a long time. Hearing them again really took me back to the time and place where I was when I wrote them."

He rides the wild horses
The same bloodflows through their veins
Yes he rides the wild horses
Like the horses he 'II never be tamed
-"He Rides The Wild Horses"

As a boy, Chris LeDoux loved rodeo. He watched the bronc riders closely, then went home and tried to mimic their actions. "I took a lot of wrecks," he admits. It didn't stop him.

Now your high school buddies say man, you've gone insane.
Don 't you know rodeo is a crazy, foolish game.
But you can see in their eyes a little jealousy,
They're all workin' 9-5, you're footloose and fancy free.
And nobody really knows how you feel inside,
The road gets rough and the goin' gets tough, but you know you"ve gotta try.
And there ain 't no way they're ever gonna change your mind.
Don 't everybody know that a cowboy 's got to ride
-- "A Cowboy's Gotta Ride"

LeDoux pursued rodeo seriously from the time he was 14 years old. He competed through high school and went to college on a rodeo scholarship. He knew that it wasn't necessarily a path that led to great wealth and that the possibility of serious injury always hovered. It didn't matter. "I've always looked at it like you've got a scale," he says. "On one side you've got this desire and on the other you've got fear or reason. If your desire outweighs sanity and reason, you're going to go ahead and follow that dream." LeDoux won the world championship in bareback bronc riding at age 28.

Then in California the baby started showing
And all her clothes were getting way too small
We couldn 't spare the money to buy her any new ones
She just wore my shirt and jeans and didn 't mind at all
- "Our First Year"

LeDoux found something that mattered even more to him than rodeo when he married Peggy Rhoads, a Wyoming rancher's daughter. "It was all magic," he says. "We were broke but it didn't matter. We were living on love. My wife was, and still is, a great gal. She was able to take the hard times. Everything that we have become and grown together as comes from those experiences we went through in that first and second year."

Blue eyes and Freckles and holes in his jeans
Out in the backyard ridin ' his dreams
He 's our little cowboy until the day
The fences can 't hold him and he'll ride away
-"Blue Eyes and Freckles"

LeDoux and his wife have five children. One son, Ned, plays drums with his father's band. The oldest son, Clay, works on the family ranch, and plays some guitar. Their son, Will, and daughter, Cindy, both attend college. Youngest son Beau competes as a brone rider in high school rodeo tournaments. "It's neat to live this rodeo thing through him again," LeDoux says. "Since I understand it, I'm not telling him you ought to go to college and try to find a job where you can make a lot of money. You've got to follow your heart, and I tell the rest of my kids the same thing. I'm as proud of ail of them as I am of what Beau's doing."

I've wandered around the town and city
Tried to figure the how and the why
I've stopped all my scheming
I'm just drifting, dreaming and watching the river roll by
And here comes for me
- "Song of Wyoming"
Written by Kent Lewis

After he retired from rodeo competition, LeDoux jumped full-force into his music career. His rodeo songs were an underground success that went above ground when a young singer named Garth Brooks referred to "a worn out tape of Chris LeDoux" in his song "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)." Soon LeDoux signed with Brooks' record label, Capitol Nashville. He joined Brooks on the song, "Whatcha Gonna Do With A Cowboy?" which became a Top Ten radio hit and received a Grammy nomination. The album it appears on, also called Whatcha Gonna Do With A Cowboy?, was certified gold in 1993. Another album, The Best of Chris LeDoux, was certified gold in 1997. Cowboy is LeDoux's 33'd album - 22 recorded on his own and the rest for Capitol.

Music put LeDoux back on the road. But his touchstone was and always has been his family and his home in Kaycee, Wyoming. When he's not performing these days, he's at home tending to their ranch. "Song of Wyoming' fits me a little better now than it did years ago," he says. "It's really about a guy who's getting along in years and enjoying the things that are simple. I love being home, doing the simple things and smelling the sagebrush, seeing the blue sky, enjoying the peace and quiet."

Just like that cowboy in "Song of Wyoming," Cowboy draws its strength from a walk through familiar territory.

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