Y9 W22 Cowboy Days

Sounds like a lot of fun to sing. :D Any chance that you could post a recording of it that we could listen to?

I can imagine all the howling and whooping that you'd get during the chorus! I'm wondering what sort of response you get to the question about where the sheep, cows and wild indians are? I'm pretty light on cowboy folklore, so I'm not sure what sort of answers you'd get. Also wondering what sort of reaction you get to singing about sleeping with your horses, right after apparently not liking women much. :shock:

Thanks for posting. My cowboy education clearly left a lot out.

Chris

The song is not really a cowboy song. It's a song about a 5-9 year old boy in the 40's-60's. The boy had fantacized about being a cowboy hero. That group grew up with cowboy movies, comics,radio and TV programs.
The theme encompases a strange kind of mythical cowboy ethic promoted by Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, John Wayne and more. If you are familiar with the movie "Christmas Story" you might recognize some of the cowboy dreams of this age group.
Audiences that are 40 and up get the song immediately.
I've done it several times for 12*18 people. The howling, yipping , yapping, baaaa's, whoops that come from the audience are gratifying.
When I do this in an amplified setting I can't hear the audience but I can see them get animated and physically engaged. The largest group I have done this with was about 300 adult men and women. I have a lot of fun with this song.

Ah, you're asking them to imitate sheep. I see what you mean now. I suppose that there were plenty of sheep ranchers back then too, but they just didn't get the same degree of mythology as the cow guys did. "Sheepboy" movies are probably fairly thin on the ground. :) Sorry to be slow on the uptake but, as I hinted at before, I wasn't brought up on cowboy movies and comics. I'm not familiar with Christmas Story, or Roy Rogers, even though I was born in the mid 1940s. Different country. I do seem to recall that we got the Lone Ranger on TV though.

I do remember audiences having a grand old time imitating farmyard animals when 'Old MacDonald had a Farm' was sung though, so I can imagine them getting right into being coyotoes, cows, sheep, etc. Good one. :)

Chris

Hi MrEWorm,

It's great to hear you get the responses your after with a crowd :D

Suggestions: Consider revising these lines for clarity.

"saved wagon trains.........Protected the settlers, defended the tribes"

This line seems contradictory.
Who did you save the wagon trains and protect the settlers from? Indians?.....Who did you defend the tribes from? Settlers?......It sounds like the makings of a double agent or traitor. :?

I rode a white stallion, with a Mexican saddle
My friend rode a pony, we didn't ride mules
I kissed the school marm once, didn't really like it.....Sounds a bit strange riding around with another man and not liking to kiss women...but maybe it's more in line with the TV presentations......fits with the young boy not wanting to kiss, but there's no hint from the lyrics themselves that the singer is a young boy...... maybe a line or bridge about spending Saturday mornings in front of the television.

Slept with my horses, I followed the rules.......When the line is put together like this, it sounds like there are "rules to follow" when sleeping with horses :?

You already know you've got a song that works for you, so take or leave the suggestions as you see fit :wink:

Thanks for sharing.

James

I sang it again last night. There were two Ausies in the audience and they didn't understand it at all. The Americans get it. Chalk it up to cultural differences.
Consider "Waltzing Matilda". This is a song about an itinerant worker carrying his tools as he looks for work and his being persecuted by a wealthy land owner in Australia.
In America most people think it is about a dancing kangaroo