Wyoming
Country Music

Wyoming's country music identity is the most directly cowboy of any state. Chris LeDoux from Cheyenne was a bareback bronc riding world champion who sold cassette tapes of his cowboy songs from the back of his truck before Garth Brooks mentioned him by name in the 1989 song "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)," and overnight turned a rodeo-circuit legend into a national name. LeDoux's music was about the actual rodeo life he lived, which gave it an authenticity that most country music can't claim. He passed away in 2005, and his legacy in Wyoming remains significant.

Cheyenne Frontier Days, held every July, is the world's largest outdoor rodeo and one of the most storied western events in the country. Country music concerts are built into Frontier Days programming at the arena and outdoor stages. The Silver Dollar Bar in Jackson has been a honky-tonk and country music institution for decades in the shadow of the Tetons. The smaller cities across the state, Casper, Gillette, Rock Springs, have bar scenes rooted in the oil, coal, and ranch economy that produced country music's traditional audience.

Moving to Wyoming, country and western music feels built into the landscape. The cowboy and rodeo culture is not nostalgia; it's current industry, current lifestyle, current identity. The music that accompanies it is the real thing. The state doesn't have Nashville infrastructure, but it doesn't need it. Country music here lives in the same relationship to the place that it did before the recording industry existed: it's the music that belongs to this work and this land.

Wyoming's country music culture is rooted in rodeo and cowboy life rather than commercial Nashville. Chris LeDoux, a two-time PRCA world champion bareback rider from Kaycee, is Wyoming's patron saint — he sold millions of cassette tapes out of his truck before Garth Brooks namechecked him and launched his mainstream career. Cheyenne Frontier Days is the world's largest outdoor rodeo.

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