Riders In The Sky

    40 years ago.  No laptops, no cellular phones, no Google, no downloads, no Skype, no Tweets, no Apple, no Microsoft, no texting, no electric cars, no Uber.  A different world.  But there were three young men with drive and wit who wanted to keep a special music alive.  They believed in preserving the heritage of Western Music and presenting it to a new generation.  They believed in entertaining, and they did so… entertaining themselves as well as the audience!  And they believed in creating original Western Music to continue the tradition, not just seal it in amber as a museum piece.  What they did not realize at the time was that they would be doing the same thing 40 years later.

    40 years ago, Ranger Doug, Too Slim and the late Windy Bill Collins played that first date on the bitter cold evening of November 11^th, 1977 at Herr Harry’s Frank N’ Stein Rathskeller in Nashville, and small listening room dates followed.  By August of the following year demand was building, and while Windy Bill left, Woody Paul joined, and the true professional beginnings of the band began at the Kentucky State Fair, where the trio played 10 days for $2500- and bought their own rooms and meals out of that!