It was nearly 36 years ago to the day when Ranger Doug and Too Slim were born upon a Nashville stage on Nov. 11, 1977.
Sure, they'd spent a few years before that living by their given names, Douglas B. Green and Fred LaBour. But as the Riders in the Sky — card-carrying singing cowboys following in the sure-footed steps of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers — a man like Douglas B. Green could become the "Governor of the Great State of Rhythm. He could be the "Idol of American Youth."
And so he did just that. On arch-top guitar and baritone vocals, Ranger Doug has spent the 36 years since joining his now four-piece band for more than 6,000 concerts in all 50 states and 10 countries. His group has garnered a weekly show on TNN and a Saturday morning series on CBS. And among a long list of additional credits, yes, Riders in the Sky buddied up with Toy Story's Woody by performing the song "Woody's Round Up" for Toy Story 2.
Longtime Hear Nebraska readers might remember these four rootin'-tootin', boot-scootin' musicians from their Love Drunk video filmed at the old schoolhouse in Avoca, Neb., too (watch below). On Wednesday, Riders in the Sky return to Nebraska — a state that Ranger Doug praises for its pioneer charm — for a concert at the Lied Center in Lincoln. Take note: Halloween costumes are welcomed and can be entered into a Lied Center-facilitated contest if concertgoers arrive 15-30 minutes early to have their get-up judged.
To preview the show, we spoke with Ranger Doug as he was in Baton Rouge, visiting his daughter who started at LSU this fall. With just as much spur-spinning spunk as his band injects into their music, he spoke about the history of the singing cowboy, how Franklin Roosevelt loved "Home on the Range" and why any state with a town named Wahoo earns a Riders in the Sky badge of approval.
Hear Nebraska: You've written about the singing cowboy and have carried on that tradition through Riders in the Sky. Tell me what values you think the singing cowboy represents in popular culture today, and take me through a bit of its backstory.
Ranger Doug: Well, I would say it came to popularity during the Depression. I think for people in that era, what better way to get away for a bit than to imagine yourself under a big sky, answering to no one but yourself and singing songs with your friends. It's a wonderful, rich, evocative and musically complex style that had sort of drifted away till we brought it back. It was gathering dust in a nostalgia corner.
I hope we made it a living thing again, something that people can relate to today for many of the same reasons: We've had economic hard times, and everybody has trouble with their mortgage and their surly teenagers, one thing and another. It's nice to get away for an hour and a half (laughs), imagine yourself under the big, wide-open spaces, answering to no one but yourself and singing songs with your friends.
HN: I read a short excerpt from Singing in the Saddle in which you talked about how singing cowboys might have started, with the men tending to cattle simply singing to their herd. With that as an example, what compelled you to reach back into history and dig into the context of the music you were playing?
RD: I was always interested in documenting that kind of thing. In college, that's what they train you to do in a way: Be thorough, take your notes and organize your bibliography. Anything I was curious about I just wanted to know more and more about, and collect information on.
HN: Then knowing that background, of the song or the style in general, how do you think that informs a performance?
RD: In a lot of ways, it really doesn't. It's fascinating to know that Jack Thorp was collecting cowboy songs in 1908 and wrote "Little Joe" about an incident he heard about. That doesn't change the way you would perform a song. That's just my own curiosity.
HN: Now, shifting to a different subject, you and the Riders performed "Song of the Trail" for a video that our publication ran a couple years ago. I'm curious what you remember from that shoot, anything that stands out.
RD: Well, it was really a fiddle-oriented thing, but Woody said, "You guys, come along with us. I'll do this workshop and you guys play with us." We said, "Sure." We love to see young people and people curious about traditional music. Our mission is to foster that, I think. So yeah, we just had a lot of fun out there that day.
HN: And I like to ask bands or musicians who travel the world 'round, what about Nebraska differentiates itself from the rest of the states, whether that's the music, the landscape, the people.
RD: Well, it certainly has its pioneer charm. I'm trying to think if I wrote any songs while driving through Nebraska. We certainly drive through Nebraska a whole lot, and that's when I usually do my songwriting. I can't think of any offhand. But it's a wonderful pioneer state, and you get that feeling of the wide-open spaces as you head westward in the state.
There's the ghosts of the pioneers and the wagon trains still off to the side. You just imagine that. It's imbued in the landscape somehow. And of course, the great cowtowns: Ogallala, all that stuff. Any state that has a town called Wahoo is our kind of state.
HN: You mentioned you do most of your writing on the road. Do you draw a comparison between writing songs on the road and how cowboys used to write during their long spells of free time?
RD: Very much so. I think you will find and folklorists will tell you that every community where men are isolated, they develop a literature of songs. There are lumberjack songs. There are several books on lumberjack songs. There are sea shanties of course. And cowboy songs are just a natural thing for people who spend a lot of time in semi-isolation and have to come up with their own form of entertainment.
HN: And moving to the present-day, how has technology shaped the way you think songs are written. Cowboys didn't have the quick access to millions of songs that we do nowadays. Does that change how music is conceived?
RD: Well, I think that the ability to listen to other kinds of music… I don't know how other people write songs, but if I hear a snatch of something, three or four notes that are really interesting, then that starts a whole different chain of thought in my head.
And so, being able to listen to, heck, if you get XM Radio, you can listen to Count Basie, and you can listen to Hank Williams and Bob Wills and The Sons of the Pioneers. It's all there for you. So having a lot of music available and your iPhone full of music available to listen to, in some sense, it's a great source of inspiration for writing.
HN: Can the opposite be true as well, where the ability to hear so much music can be overwhelming?
RD: The fact that so much is there would seem to be oppressive. There are only 12 notes (laughs). But I don't know, certain combinations of things just lead to something different that hasn't been before. Everything, of course, is a little bit derivative, but unless you're John Cage and have 15 minutes of silence, just the fact that there is so much out there, somebody comes up with something you haven't heard before. That just starts a chain of creative thought in your mind.
Home On The Range from Riders In The Sky on Myspace.
HN: Moving to Riders in the Sky's most recent album, the title track is "Home on the Range." What qualities do you think that song has that's given it such longevity?
RD: Well, it became a national favorite when Franklin Roosevelt of all people called it his favorite song. It was written in the, I think, late-1870s by a guy named Brewster Higley, who was something of a Kansas pioneer, and it was written in Kansas about Kansas. So that's your next-door neighbor. You got the sense that it means as much to Nebraska as it means to Kansas, or really any place that has a range.
I don't know, it's just one of those enduring favorites. When we did that album, Wilford Brimley basically picked out all the songs that he liked. "These are my favorite songs, guys, can we do 'em?" But we've recorded it before, I think twice, just because it's one of the classics that people expect and want to hear.
HN: Having recorded the same song before, do you actively try to approach it differently on new recordings?
RD: Not wildly different, but often, yeah, we change the harmony parts around. I like to think we've improved a lot through the years, and so, especially with a song like "Home on the Range," which we recorded back in the '80s, we'll take it and sing different verses maybe, or just do it better.
HN: OK, I understand. Now, one quick question before we close: What advice do you have for younger musicians just hitting the road for the first time?
RD: Don't leave your wallet in the dressing room.
HN: That's all for questions. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
RD: I just consider myself the luckiest guy on the planet. Spent 36 years, spent a lifetime of playing the music I love and bringing it to people and keeping it alive, and putting five kids through college. We all are very grateful for our health and for people's acceptance.
Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska's managing editor. Ranger Doug is welcome to be his grandpa. Reach Michael at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.