Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering -Alpine Texas 2020

My wife and I headed to Alpine, Texas this past Friday to enjoy the Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering being held at Sul Ross University where 30+ well known poetry and music performers would be entertaining. Red Steagall, Randy Rieman, Dale Burson, Trinity Seeley and many others were performing. This is an annual event, previously known as the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and is held the third Friday and Saturday of February. The big draw to Cowboy poetry and songsters, are performers speaking and singing with a deep feeling for life style they lived to listeners who have experienced much the same, but the verse can be appreciated by anyone.

The Alpine - Fort Davis area is in the heart of West Texas ranching country, including the famous Kokernot O6 ranch. Many good cowboys and good horses were made in this part of the country. The area is a short distance away from Big Bend National Park. A visitor could spend a couple weeks exploring this area including Marfa, just Southwest of Alpine.

A nice surprise for us was listening to and meeting a young guitarist and singer named Andy Hedges from Lubbock, Texas. He performs using nothing other than his voice and his father's old guitar. Many of the older Cowboy poets are placing a lot of faith in Andy Hedges, and rightly so, to carry on the tradition.

Andy's last performance of the early afternoon session was putting music to S. Omar Barker's poem "Into the West". We enjoyed this poem put to song so much we purchased Andy Hedge's Cowboy Songster Volume 2 which has this song and 10 others. It made for an extra pleasant trip traveling Hwy US 90 back to El Paso. I am putting a video presentation of Andy performing this song below so others could enjoy it also. And I don't think anyone would regret buying any of his CD's either.