The yodeling cowboy is back.
Wylie Gustafson takes a break from riding herd on cattle and horses to bring his cowboy stylings, Western music and yodeling to Lynnwood on Feb. 14.
It’s hard to find time for music at his Cross Three Ranch in Dusty (population 11), Wash.
“I usually set aside a day a week to write. Weekends are usually reserved for playing and sometimes we’re gone a full week. When I’m gone, the cattle fall under my wife’s minion.”
It doesn’t take long, though, before Gustafson is champing at the bit to be back on 120 acres with 40 cattle, 12 buffalo and seven horses (“I need a computer and a cell phone like all good cowboys.”).
Gustafson had to move away from ranching to realize what he wanted, taking off for Los Angeles when he was 18.
“I thought I wanted to get away and see the world, that it would better out there than all day sitting on a horse in freezing temperatures and living with all the vagaries of being a cowboy.
“But I realized that that was the life I enjoyed the most … I put up with the hardships for the freedom and the peace and quiet. I couldn’t even live without horses at this point.”
His cowboy life is the source of his music.
“It’s really important for me to balance the two and be able to have my ranching life inspire my musical life. A lot of my music is born out of everyday life that I live on the ranch, riding herd or feeding cattle or roping. I feel I know about that and I can express it without having to fictionalize my songs.”
Cowboy music “rises above the language barrier,” he said; that includes the yodeling, what he calls a universal language.
Every culture has a yodel or a break in vocalization, Gustafson said. In the Alps, it was a form of communication between goat herders and shepherds because the sound carried a long distance.
“The story goes that an Austrian singer in Oklahoma was in a Western swing band in the 1930s. One night an instrumentalist was sick so he had to sing during a break and yodeled it.”
Gustafson yodels to his audience and his buffalo: “I yodel to my buffalo … I have conditioned them to come and eat some grain.”
He doesn’t expect cowboy music to disappear, but acknowledged that it won’t top mainstream charts, either.
“You have to look for cowboy music. Once you find it, there’s a quality there that keeps bringing people back. I don’t think cowboy music will ever be widely popular but there always will be a place for it.
“Our audience is by no means a cowboy-hat type of audience. It’s an urban audience finding something in our music they can’t get anyplace else.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
