At Home on the Range
Cowboy poet Larry Maurice will “grab a chunk of sky and let the night stars lead the way” Thursday at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage during opening night festivities for the Santa Clarita Cowboy Music and Poetry Festival.
As a member of the Campfire Cowboys, Maurice will transport city slickers “back to the time of the buffalo when the land was new” as he recites thought provoking cowboy-themed poetry accompanied by Dave Stamey singing Western ballads and Sourdough Slim, who combines quirky yodeling with original and traditional cowboy music. The rest of the festival takes place at Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita.
Although an imitation campfire will help set the evening’s mood, the “Cowboys” are for real--all three have worked on a ranch and two still do. Each member is well-known independently in Western music circles, but they have performed together on and off for six years as the Campfire Cowboys.
“The campfire is the cowboy’s locker room,” Maurice said. “It’s like in sports when you play hard, you form a special bond--at the end of the game in the locker room you make a joke or snap a towel--you’re among friends.”
Although Slim will not be snapping any towels at this campfire, he will twirl a rope while dancing a jig, yodeling and playing the accordion.
In between original songs, such as “Yodeling Cowboy” and “Ride that Bronco Buckaroo,” Slim likes to toss in a few humorous anecdotes in the tradition of Will Rogers.
All the material the “Cowboys” perform contains standard elements of cowboy music--rhyming poetry, self-effacing humor, a story with a beginning, middle and end, a theme and moral or lesson open to the listener’s interpretations.
“The things I write about don’t necessarily relate to being a cowboy,” said the 50-year-old Slim, who taught himself to yodel by listening to Jimmie Rodgers records. “They’re all presented in the context of three cowboys up onstage talking about everyday life with experiences everyone can identify with.”
Most of Maurice’s poems are somewhat autobiographical, he said.
“I don’t write anything that’s not true; something has to come from a personal experience to jar me into writing a particular piece,” Maurice said.
The cowboy screen legends of his youth were a particular inspiration, he said. Maurice, 54, has written tribute poems about John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. He said he learned a sense of values from the good guys in the white hats.
“Cowboys believe in things like keeping your word, mobility, being true to yourself and others, freedom and a sense of appreciation,” said Stamey, 42.
In “Montana” Stamey sings about his gratitude to his father for “giving him Montana.” His father’s decision to move the family to Montana was an important turning point in Stamey’s life.
“It gave me direction as a young boy--it exposed me to the cowboy rural lifestyle,” Stamey said. “My father was just following his dream and in so doing helped me. You touch people in everything you do. We should appreciate what folks do for us whether it’s intentional or not.”
Stamey, who works as a horse wrangler at the 10,000-acre Alisal Ranch in Central California, said he believes the simple themes of cowboy music are relevant in today’s world.
“Our world has become so technologically advanced and complicated--people have so much on their plates,” he said. “Western music allows them to go back to something simple so they can get in touch with their roots. I hope people try to celebrate western heritage as a shared culture, as a state of mind.”
BE THERE
Santa Clarita Cowboy Music and Poetry Festival opening night Thursday at 8 p.m., Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Wells Fargo Theatre, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles. $15 for museum members; $20 general admission. (323) 667-2000, Ext. 243. Santa Clarita Cowboy Music and Poetry Festival, Thursday-April 1, Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio, Santa Clarita. See https://www.santa-clarita.com/cp or call (661) 286-4021.