Wylie & The Wild West, Hooves of the Horses (Western Jubilee, 2004)
Wylie Gustafson is a real-life, actual cowboy. He has a ranch in eastern Washington State, and he's a world-class trainer and rider of cutting horses. Not only that, but he's one of only a handful of artists around today still actively creating music that puts the "Western" back in what used to be known as country and Western music.
On his ninth album, Wylie & The Wild West present a song-cycle of love songs to The Horse. With only a handful of exceptions, the sixteen tracks on Hooves are all about horses in one way or another.
Three of them -- the title track, "Equus Caballus," and "Saddle Broncs and Sagebrush" -- are pieces of cowboy poetry by other writers that Wylie has put to music. A couple more -- "Manolito" and "A Good One" -- Wylie wrote about two of his own cutting horses. He covers two Bob Nolan (Sons of the Pioneers) songs, "I Grab My Saddle Horn and Blow" and "Happy Rovin' Cowboy," and one long and stirring ballad by Tom Russell, "The Sky Above, The Mud Below," about the fate of a pair of horse thieves. Three more Wylie originals, "Out Here," "Leather Lover" and "Mmm ... Montana," are homages to the cowboy life. Let's see, that leaves "Marie," a love song from the point of view of a widowed cowpoke, and "Rockabye Lullaby," which I suppose could be sung to a horse. The only deviations from the main theme are Johnny Cash's "Luther Played the Boogie" and Buddy Holly's "Every Day," both rockabilly staples.
This is the first Wylie & The Wild West record I've heard, so I can't judge it in the context of the others. I saw the combo perform at a festival a few years back, and it was riveting. They held a crowd of all kinds of folks, from blue-haired grannies to spike-haired punks, enthralled for forty-five minutes. The band was hot and swung hard, with virtuoso performances by the guitarist, fiddler and pedal steel player, and plenty of vocal histrionics from Wylie himself. He's a top-notch yodeller -- but you'd hardly know it from Hooves. He only cuts loose once, on "Happy Rovin' Cowboy" (which, by the way, is a more straightforward rendition than was offered by the Holy Modal Rounders on their 1999 reunion disc, Too Much Fun).
And you don't get to hear the band cut loose much on this CD, either; there's not much wild in this Wild West. It's mostly a pretty mild affair, even the Holly and Cash supposed rockers. One exception is the instrumental, "76 With a Miss," in which the players get to swing a bit. Elsewhere, there are some nice Tex-Mex accents (Spanish guitar and mariachi horns on "Manolito") and some jaunty trumpet and dobro runs on "Saddle Horn." "Mmm... Montana" is a jazzy Texas-style shuffle that could be compared to several of Guy Clark's songs about the Lone Star State. But the album never seems to break out of a sedate medium tempo for very long. And, to tell the truth, I don't much care for the romantic sentimentality of most cowboy poetry, of which this record has plenty. But it has a big following, and draws large crowds to annual gatherings at Elko, Nevada, and other places around the West, so it obviously has a certain amount of appeal.
To put it in perspective, though, Hooves of the Horses is a sterling example of today's cowboy-style Western music. It's beautifully recorded, the musicians are all excellent, and Wylie has a very appealing voice and delivery. Fans of true country and Western music are sure to enjoy this heapin' helpin' of Western romanticism.
You can learn more about Wylie, his ranch, his music and what the heck a cutting horse is, at this Web site.
