Will Dudley: News

2007 is toast; gone the way of the dodo, and there has been much to think about.

I finished another semester of higher learning? on the campus of Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, and am facing another year before completing the program I should have finished 30 years ago. Somehow, though, I don't think I would have appreciated it nearly as much if I'd done it then. It's so much more fun to go back to college after a 25 year career on the road. There are drawbacks, but those are fairly minimal, and at the worst, a minor distraction. I like being around fresh minds, and enjoy the workout my brain gets from having to work again at remembering trivial (yet somehow uniquely important) bits of information that I know I not only won't ever use, but will forget 30 seconds after the quiz. I have found a lot of enjoyment writing short stories, (next article, "Shaman," is an example) and the English language is way too beautiful, but frankly, revisionist history and the education of the younger minds in areas like foreign policy scare me. Having been to war and seen "the elephant," I have to wonder at the sanity of macro politics and the idea of an American empire. Still, it's important to know what the fools in charge are stealing, who they're killing and raping, and what their justifications are for such necessary actions.

In my life, not much has changed. I'm booked through summer at a number of guest ranches, and am looking forward to finishing school next fall. My tentative plan is to book a six month tour beginning Jan. 2009, preferably in places I've never seen before. Canada, Ireland or Australia come to mind as possibilities. It's warm in December in Australia, but Ireland is where my side of the Dudley family came from, and I always loved hearing that accent; plus I'm a huge fan of Van Morrison and Guinness. Hmmmm....

I'd like to recommend four CD's to my fans, (or anyone else who reads this) one being Levon Helm's "Dirt Road" CD, another being Allison Krauss and Robert Plant's CD, the Eagles' new "Long Road Out of Eden," and the fourth being Tracy Grammer's EP "Book of Sparrows." And of course, anything by Tom Russell, who writes better songs more consistently than any other singer songwriter I ever heard.

"Well, it's dark in here.
I can't see the sky.
But I got this here blue wing and I close my eyes.
And I fly away, beyond these walls.
Up above the clouds where the rain don't fall
On a poor man's dream."
(Tom Russell)

Shaman



I can’t move forward. I just don’t know how. I feel like I can barely breathe sometimes. It helps if I have a routine, so I hike, and target shoot a bit with that old bow that Grandfather gave me. Out on Red Rock Road the dog and I and the antelope play. That road goes way out on the plains; almost far enough to forget. It’s a routine that I just can’t ignore, so I go out and set up and shoot on Thursdays. Last year I did it every Thursday, even in the winter, except the one time it snowed so damned much they shut the highway down clear to Kansas. Now that was a blizzard. The dog likes the snow. Hell, he loves it. He gets excited when he sees me go to get the bow, too. When it’s cold and still out on Red Rock Road, things almost slow down enough to gain a sense of peace. I like to camp out there now and then. Camping and cooking in the cold is a trip. There’s an old trail leading to an abandoned mining town where I’ve pitched my tent so often that Buckshot keeps a bowl there. Solitude; I can cry out loud or whisper, share silence or conversation with the dog. Not a tree in sight on the plains out there; it’s the plains, and there’s just not much growing; reminds me of my life. I might not hear a sound other than the huffing of the dog and myself or our feet crunching through week old snow. I pretend I’m a warrior or a mighty hunter tracking dinner for my family or protecting them from some unseen enemy.
Yeah, right. I’m no hunter; unless you mean hunting for the catsup aisle at the Safeway. I’m no warrior either, not even close. Being raised out here I know how to find the antelope, and generally where to look if I want to search for the bear, or the elk and deer that live up in the mountains. I’d as soon shoot them with a camera, though, and I don’t go looking for them very often.

Grandfather and father, when he was alive, raised cattle out on these plains. I help Grandfather every way he lets me these days, he has been my closest friend for as long as I have been alive. I tell him I still love her, and he says I will see her again, but I don’t think so. I think I’m dying inside. “Grandfather,” I say to the night sky, and I wonder how it is I’ve never known his women, or how he never leaves the mountain in the winter. I know he’s in the mountains. I say his name like a mantra, because just because it grounds me. When I feel like I’m floating away, Grandfather can help me, so I ask him to help me again. He spends a part of every summer down here on the plains, but this is February and he will never be here in February. I’m out here shooting arrows into an old bale of hay and walking around in circles talking to him, accompanied by a dog that won’t fetch. Good thing, too, cause that dog pisses me off pretty good sometimes. We hike, and I shoot. Then we fix supper and I shoot while the sun goes down. He hangs around and gets the back of his ears scratched. He doesn’t do so bad in the bone and scraps department, either. I feed him a dry dog food, and soak it in hot water, which makes him kind of a gravy. Buck sits there while the water cools off enough not to burn his tongue. He burned his tongue a few times when I started feeding him like that, but he learned soon enough to sit patient and wait until the food is cool enough before he dives in. Today I was pondering the notion that no matter how hard I try, waiting can be the most difficult thing; having the dog around helps.

* * *

The latch lifted on the door, and Grandfather walked in, followed by his constant companion, the old German shepherd.

“He was hoping you might come up this weekend,” Grandfather said, smiling. “You’re early.” I looked at the old man, and watched as his dog walked over and sniffed Buckshot’s butt, then stuck his head into my lap. I put my hand on the top of his head, and scratched him behind the ear. “I took a sick day. I could tell he was missing me,” I replied. Grandfather looked at me for a long moment, then said, “You used to smile more, Jim. We’ll have spaghetti tonight, and play some poker. I thawed some elk meat for it this morning. You can stay the weekend, right?” He walked back out to the front porch, looked across the valley toward the western pass and watched the sun set. I didn’t answer, he knew I’d stay. I brought him some comic books and sweets. He’s partial to Superman and Archie, and today I brought him a Superman and a Snicker bar, and some honey for his tea.
We range our cattle in the high country in the summers and down in the Apishipa Canyon in the winter. Grandfather likes his winter solitude, and won’t come down and help me with the herd in the winter. I’m glad, because that old man’s not just slow, he tends to wander off. I think he does it on purpose, and just doesn’t like cattle in general. He tells me the earth is alive, and that there is no difference between reality and dreams. I don’t know if these are Comanche notions or what; he also likes the Cubs and eats oysters and flirts at the supermarket. He’s a skinny old man, but he acts like a teenager when he sees the right set of curves behind the
checkout counter. He likes living up on Cordova Pass, that’s for sure. He says it used to be Apache country, and laughs because he’s a Comanche. Blanca, just west of us, is one of the 4 corners of the Navajo nation, and grandfather’s fond of mentioning that too. The Spanish Peaks hide the valley of the Cuchara River, which also pleases grandfather greatly, because that’s our home, and the river comes right out of the ground up there on Cordova Pass. The Spaniards named this range Sangre de Cristo, but to me these mountains are the Sacreds. The Ute called the Spanish Peaks “Wa-ha-to-ya”, or breasts of the earth. This area is sacred ground to a lot of tribes. Grandpa says the mountains talk to him. “Sure,” I tell him, and smile. When Grandfather smiles, his gums appear in the gaps between his teeth. The sight of this always makes me smile. I don’t have a clue what he looked like when he was my age; he has just always been Grandfather.
We both had a cup of hot tea. When I go to my grave, I hope he is still around. He is old; old like Yoda, and to me he has lived forever, like these mountains. When I was a boy, dad showed me how to throw a baseball. Grandfather walked me to the top of the west peak of the Wa-ha-to-ya and back for the first time, and he was old then. He told me once that he was there when my son was born, though, and that makes him crazy. I don’t have any kids. He’s been telling me that all my life. I don’t understand him, but I love my Grandfather. He keeps me grounded, and he can make me smile with just a look. When I’m around him, Kay doesn’t appear in my mind and break my heart every twenty minutes, just every hour or so. I guess I’m getting better, but if I found a way to sleep for one night without wishing she was here or if I could just stop dreaming she was beside me again, I might smile again. She is gone. Grandfather smiles, and I save my tears for the pillow.

We shared a meal, and spent the evening playing poker, a game Grandfather taught me when I was far too young. Poker is how he likes to visit. He asked me how work was going, and I handed back two cards. “I don’t really know, I’m a little distracted this year,” I replied. There is nothing I can hide from him, so I tried to smile. Grandfather smiled back at me with a look that said ‘I know your soul,’ and put his hands on the pouch around his neck. He closed his eyes for a moment. Taking some kind of dust from the pouch, he blew it off his hand at me. Then he said some words I thought might have been either Comanche or maybe just bullshit, and lit the old pipe and passed it to me. I didn’t have to ask him what was in it; we’d both been calling it medicine forever. Dad hated it when Grandfather lit this pipe. He used to shake his head and leave the room. Grandfather said to me once “Maybe it skips a generation.” Grandfather smiled when I took it. Not that I believed much in what we were doing, I just knew that Grandfather believed it helped me and that was enough. Besides, it was some of the best dope I’d ever smoked. He reached back into his pouch and pulled out a coin with a hole drilled into it. The hole had a black braid going through it, which he tied around my neck. “You should wear this, it will help,” he said. I looked at it; there was a feather etched into one side. The other side was etched into a woven circle, and the circle was divided into quarters. “Thanks, Grandfather.” He knew I was lost. But he has been my compass forever, and I need to be around him. We drank a bottle of his brandy, smoked a little more, and I wandered off to bed sometime after ten; I slept in a bed in a house I’d known since I was born.
* * *
I woke up staring at the sky, lying on my back. “Where’s the ceiling?” I wondered, and my heart skipped. I wasn’t where I went to sleep. I was wide awake, lying in waist tall grass. I went to sleep at Grandfather’s house. “Maybe I’m dreaming,” I blinked. I reached up and rubbed my eyes, sat up and looked down at my clothing. “Sure is warm,” I thought to myself. “And this grass is high. Where is Grandfather? Where am I?” I feebly called him, more of a whisper than a yell, but he wasn’t there.

I was wearing a homespun shirt I’d never seen before. I didn’t recognize my hands. “These hands are hard; and pale,” I frowned as I began to speak right at them. “I’m visiting Grandfather in the mountains, and these aren’t even the mountains. These are the plains, and that’s as plain as plain can be.” I laughed at my own nervous humor. It’s supposed to be February, and I’m feeling a summer breeze. “Maybe I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming,” I thought as I sat in the tall grass knowing I was not dreaming.
A horse stood nearby, grazing; he was paying no attention. This was my horse. I knew this, but I also knew it wasn’t. It was just there, and mine. “Surely I’m dreaming. Am I crazy?” I wondered. I had no idea what was happening, but I decided not to panic. Closing my eyes, I spoke to the heavens and asked for guidance. Nobody answered, as usual.
The horse wore loose hobbles around its feet, and a braided halter and bridles the color of its own tail. I went from prone to squatting, uneasy about standing and looking around. “I need to get back to the mountains” I said to myself as I walked over, reached down and removed the hobbles. I made an immediate decision to head up to the valley where Grandfather lived. It was the right thing to do. “He’s a pretty horse,” I thought. He was tall and long and he seemed to know me. I looked around in the tall grass, pondering the situation. “No cell phone. Hell, there’s probably no service out here anyway,” I thought to myself. Taking hold of the bridle, I turned in the direction the horse faced, and stared out across the prairie. It was an ocean of prairie grass, and beyond that the front range of the Sangres spread out before me on what seemed to be a cloudless spring or summer morning. I judged the mountains to be about 30 miles from where I stood, but things looked different. I recognized the mountains, but there just weren’t any signs of any kind of civilization. I thought for a moment that it could be that I was just not looking in the right place, but then I got this feeling that Dorothy must have had when she landed in Oz. I strained my eyes and looked all around for any sign of something that looked like civilization. I came up empty; not so much as an airplane contrail.
I turned to look at the horse, and started talking. “So where’s the highway, big guy?” I looked down at his unshod feet. “I’ve been in this part of Colorado all my life, and I’ve never seen grass this tall,” I whispered to no one as I stared in disbelief. “Now it’s as far as the eye can see.”
Next to the horse was a bundle. I looked closer, and there was a Henry rifle in the scabbard next to it, with the initials J.W. carved into the stock; not my initials. A bow and arrows, leather stirrups and a robe made of antelope or deer hide that had been brushed and smoothed and tied into a bundle were lying on the ground. There was a leather cartridge belt wrapped around the hide, and it was close to full. I bent down to look at it, and my hair fell across my shoulders.
“Jeee-zuss,” I cried. “Red hair!” I went to bed with black hair, and I wear it short, in spite of how Grandfather disapproves. Thinking about him, I wondered if he was somehow a part of this. “Grandfather, what have you done?” I cried to no one.

* * *

Grandfather’s home is just west of the mountains. My family’s been in the valley over there since before the Spaniards came, so Grandfather tells me. The more I know him, the more I wonder. I know the valley, though. It is my home; my only home, no matter where I stray.

I set the stirrups across the back of the horse, loaded the pack and headed off toward the mountains. Things being so strange, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I let the horse have his lead. Of course he knew the way.
We moved with the wind chasing us. About midafternoon, I spotted a deer, and an hour later was skinning dinner and quietly congratulating myself on my skill with the bow and thinking that this knife in my boot is a damn sharp and big skinning knife. I found a dagger strapped inside the sleeve of my shirt, and it left me wondering who this white guy is with the red hair, little hands and good eyesight. “He needs a bath,” I thought as I took in the aroma of clothes that smelled like a bad combination of too many places between washings. It sank in that I was no longer in the world I went to sleep in. If Buck were here I’d say we weren’t in Kansas anymore just to hear myself call him Toto. I haven’t seen another living human, but I did cross a wide trail extending south and east. Something inside me believed it had been cut by a herd of bison. I kept moving. Dusk found me on a river I recognized as the Huerfano. Making camp in a grove near the bank, I hobbled the horse, built a fire and stripped down and stepped into the water. “Man, I stink,” I thought as I shook my head and threw the clothes into the water as well. I bathed and washed my clothes as best I could. A short time later I was eating venison and inspecting my traveling kit butt naked near a warm fire while my clothes lay in the grass nearby drying.
* * *

The rifle is a beautiful piece. It is a .44 rim fire, with a deep grained walnut stock. It’s well oiled and familiar to me. The knives are all well honed and clean. The big one in my boot has a bone handle, and the one on my hip is a match for it. The tips of the arrows are forged iron, and the bow is well made and powerful. It looks handmade, though I have no idea what kind of wood this is. My clothes are functional, the pants are leather breeches of some sort, and the boots are some sort of moccasins that come up to mid calf. The scabbard for the knife on my belt and the rifle both look like deerskin, and are hand stitched. There is a flask, and it’s either half full of brandy or my nose went south. “Mmm,” I sighed as I drink from it.
Wrapping myself in the robe, and totally worn out, I fell asleep fast.
When morning came, I built a fire and sizzled some venison while inspecting the horse a little more closely. “You’re a sturdy beast,” I told him. He seemed to like my company. I had a lazy breakfast and left in no hurry, keeping the same direction and moving off of the plains and into the Cuchara valley. Not knowing where else to go, the horse and I headed toward Cordova Pass, and I started feeling very lonesome. I wandered in my thoughts, and Kay was there again. She was a woman to miss, and my thoughts stayed on her even as I perused the landscape and saw it for the first time again. A prominent butte stood off to the west as I headed south and up toward the pass. Grandfather had always told me to speak kindly to the mountains on my way into the valley and I would have a safe journey. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I flourished the brandy flask on the way up the valley and toasted the strange and beautiful rock outcroppings that run like spines up the Spanish Peaks. Not a sign of civilization had appeared, though I had passed what looked to be sign of other horses.

My pony and I moved onto the Front Range without crossing the interstate, without seeing any homes, and with no people in sight; not a fence, not a footprint. Coming into the mountains from the east like this should have taken me through Walsenburg, but it just wasn’t there. I took the trail home up the Valley between the Spanish Peaks and the Trenchera mountain pass. The town of La Veta and all the ranches were gone, not that there was much there to start with. The only trails were animal trails. “Grandfather,” I whispered, praying that the cabin would be there. “Lord, let there be water and game,” I thought to myself. It was there the last time I was up there, but then Walsenburg and La Veta were also there just yesterday; and the interstate, and the highway, and two lakes and a reservoir which are now one lake and no reservoir. I headed to the place I’ve always gone in times of trouble, but I was not confident. Just lost, confused, and coming home to the only place I knew to go, but like that other gringo, John Denver, sang, “ I’m coming home to a place I’ve never been before.”
Coming up the pass, the horse picked up its pace and we turned up a trail into the canyon where I grew up. A cabin and barn and corrals came into view. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the place, and suddenly seriously wanted a drink, and I wasn’t thinking water. I turned the horse out into the corral and brought the gear into the cabin. Tossing the saddle over a saddle tree just inside the front door, I headed straight for a trunk next to the back wall. Inside the trunk, between the lace and the bedding and beside Grandfather’s derringer case and the matched set of dueling pistols was a case of brandy in bottles older than any I’d ever seen. I knew it would be there, and it was. Taking up the first bottle and the notebook next to it, I poured a flagon and opened someone’s journal. It was an old journal, with the same initials on the leather binding that were on the rifle: J.W.

* * *
The name on the inside of the journal was James Whitman
March 20, 1820
The fight was fair, and I hit the mark, causing the son of a bitch great pain as he died. I can only hope my sister appreciates what I’ve done for her. I’ve made her a widow, and I can never be received by my family in Charleston again, but neither will that bastard husband of hers. That does bring satisfaction.


April 7, 1820
Louisville: A three day poker game, I won a fair amount. The men and women here on the river are not to be trusted. More than a few look as if they would happily murder me for pennies; I am keeping a low profile, assuming that there could be wanted posters on me.

April 12
There is no law here on the river. One of the women traveling to New Orleans was found dead on the lower deck of this floating whorehouse and casino. The Captain said a few words and committed her body to the river. It is unclear how she died. Still, the Captain wrote it in his log as an accident. I am looking forward to New Orleans, and expect the gambling there might be a little less dangerous.

* * *


Jesus, this is good brandy. The cabin is nice, too; it’s a pretty fair sized abode with a pantry built off of the back porch. There are sacks and barrels in the pantry; it is stocked for a long stay. In the back is a built in closet, with a trap door and what looks to be an emergency exit. On the shelf over a small dresser in the cabin is another pistol. It is a .44 caliber cap and ball Colt, one of the more deadly pistols of the mid 19th Century. “It can get you into trouble but it can’t get you out,” I thought to myself as I looked at it. There are dishes, and they’re heavy; some kind of crockery or stoneware. There is also a large array of ironware and cooking utensils, a small set of silver spoons, forks, and knives in a wooden case, and a barrel of water next to a bowl on a stand. It looks like a primitive sink. There is a cutting table; I know this because of the scars on it; a clock rests on the mantle. Some might call it a grandmother clock, but it isn’t ticking, and somehow this bothers me. I feel out of touch, and although I seem to be falling in the right direction, I am way off balance, struggling to comprehend, and having difficulty keeping my mind wrapped around the changes I’ve gone through in the last two days. Sitting in the cabin, reading the journal, the weirdness of the whole situation finally settles in on me. I have two memories; one is waking up while the other is fading. I know where I am, but I’m not sure who I am. “Grandfather,” I whispered.
Behind the cabin and tucked against a hill is a smokehouse with a half a side of deer and an elk hanging. There is a large amount of split firewood back there also, another large pile in need of splitting. Looking further, I found a garden area that did not look neglected. A large, double bladed axe leaned against the back wall. Inside the cabin was a buffalo hide robe and some kind of a mattress on a frame about a foot off the floor. Under this bed I found a fair amount of powder. There was also plenty of lead and above the door, a large caliber Sharps rifle. Two different war clubs hung on the walls, and a tomahawk hung on pegs within easy reach. I don’t even own a can of pepper spray, and whoever lives here and leaves this place wide open is armed to the teeth; I have a notion it’s me. I’m trying to be cautious, but I’m also thinking brandy. There are two hats on a hat rack, and a bear skin on the floor. The sacks and barrels in the pantry are filled with beans, dried barley, oats, some sugar and salt, and a large amount of honey and tea leaves. There are put up preserves. There is no coffee, but there is sugar. “God wants me to be a tea drinker,” I think to myself. First, though, I am going to drink brandy, enjoy the fire, and sleep.
* * *

Grandfather came to me in my dream. “This is your home,” I heard him say. “Sure it is, grandfather. It’s the only sacred ground I’ve ever known.” Then he showed me how to make the fly fall where the trout is looking, and he was younger than I ever remember, and we stood on the banks of a cool mountain stream. I saw his gums through the gap between his front teeth when he smiled, and the dream deepened. . “Who is to say what is real?” he asked. I slept fitfully, and woke up with a hangover.
* * *
Watching the sun rise, I waited for water to boil for tea. After a cup, I staged an invasion of the pantry and finished with a fair breakfast of corn and oat meal and bacon with more tea. Sitting on the porch, I noticed a woman walking up the trail, leading a pony carrying a light pack. Her eyes were black and beautiful, her stride confident. Across her right cheek ran an angular scar that for a short length; her dress was not that of a maid, but men’s breeches. Her teeth were straight and fine and her gaze deep and disarming to me. She looked directly at me, and no sign of hesitation, but one of recognition, was there. Removing her pony’s rigging, she turned the animal into the corral with my horse. As she walked across the yard toward the porch, I stood and walked out to meet her. “My man,” she whispered, as her arms reached over my shoulders and she wrapped me in her warmth. “Grandfather says he will keep your dog. They get along very well, but he says that the dog won’t fetch.”

Summer went like a snowman in July. I started with a goal, I wanted to play a hundred gigs in a hundred nights. It's even more fun when you can get paid for it a hundred times. I started on May 27, and ended on September 19th, on a seven night cycle. Sundays I'd go to the North Fork. I knew it was five o'clock on Sunday when I turned right off of Highway 285 and slipped down that old dirt road to Karen and Dean's. The routine was one the North Fork and I have been comfortable with for ten years or so. I show up, be polite, have dinner with them and usually about 40 guests. Sometime after dinner, the children of the guests and some of the grown up kids too all take a hayride which ends up at the campfire where they all have chocolate and marshmallows and coffee and sit on logs while I sing for an hour or so, tell a few cowboy poems, and ask them to join in on a chorus of "You Don't Have to Call Me Darlin', Darlin.
Time flew, I was having fun. Sundays turned to Sundays in September, and the trees began to change. Then on the 21st of Sept., I did a gig with Juni Fisher, from Franklin, Tennessee at the Rainbow Trout to finish the Dude Ranch season, it was a success pretty much all the way around. About Juni, she's written some of the funniest and also prettiest cowboy songs I ever heard. Because she lives in Franklin, she has the bonus of the use of some of those world renowned Nashville pickers, and her CD's are great. She's pretty good on the live circuit, too, I'm thinking. I enjoyed working with her very much. The Powderhorn Ranch finally told me that the two weeks I performed there for the unisex groups were their gay and lesbian weeks, I had to wonder how dumb a guy could be to not see that. One of the other ranch owners said I didn't have any "gay-dar." OK. How bout them Rockies. I predict a joyous October for Colorado baseball fans. Speakin' of Rockies, I met Rocky Blyer, a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers when Terry Bradshaw was quarterback. He was vacationing at the Rainbow with his grandchildren, getting a little trout fishing in here in America. Earlier this summer I had the opportunity to be involved in a reality television show for the Women's Entertainment channel on cable. I performed the song "Trying to Rope the Moon," it's going to air mid October on a reality dating show.

I didn't hit any deer or elk this summer with my trusty Jeep, although motoring through these mountains I did have some pretty close calls. Strangely, three of them came on the same night. I was headed home to Huerfano County over Monarch Pass on a moonless night, and went between two elk on Highway 50. It happened so fast I didn't have time to be scared. About fifty miles further up the road, between Cotapaxi and Westcliff, a deer jumped off the road in front of me, then turned quick and doubled back, missing my passenger side by about an inch. I saw a rabbit do that once, and I ran over it. I don't understand that about these wild critters. Later on up the road, and outside of Gardner, I almost hit another deer. Just one of those lucky nights when everybody saw it coming and got out of the way. Usually elk are off the highway when I see them, and the mule deer here in Colorado are just plain unpredictable.
On August 27th I started at Western State College in Gunnison. I did two semesters at Adams State last year in Alamosa, but my living arrangements were dicey. While I'm attending Western State I'm living on the Waunita Hot Springs Ranch, trading board for helping out, cleaning the pool and trying to keep the fox out of the chickens. There is one very neat thing here that I discovered, and that is these two goofy turkeys that roost on the fence of the corral where they keep the mare and her colt. When the sun goes down, they go up on the fence and sleep there. I expect they're waiting for it to rain so they can look up and drown. I named one of them "Thanksgiving" and the other "Christmas," although around here I suspect they're more like pets.
I'm taking 15 hours this semester, and enjoying it for the most part. I was going to take Sunday off, but Nike and Taz, the two laborador retrievers, took off up the canyon and got into a porcupine on Saturday night, so I spent Sunday taking those quills out. Man, that's a chore, but I have to say, those dogs took it pretty quietly. The rancher, my host and friend Ryan says they'll never learn, and his wife Tammy says I shouldn't feel sorry for them. If we keep Nike on a leash, they both stay home. Apparently the dogs both know where the porcupine lives, and Nike keeps taking off and going up there. They must have had 200 quills in them, all total. Taz had them in his mouth. Nike's nose looked like a pincushion, and he sat there real polite. I was thinking, this dog knows this drill. It's the only time I've ever thought that a dog is better off tied up, but I think in that dog's mind, with regard to the porcupine, it's "HIM OR ME."

I've been writing short stories, I may post one or two here.

I hope my autumn and winter are as blessed as my spring and summer have been.

Just woke up, it's a Saturday morning in Walsenburg, I drove in late from Gunnison, and Tammy and Ryan and Danny and Ev and I are going to be doing some different covers at the Waunita Wranglers shows. I'm thoroughly excited. Here are the way the ranches are shaking out... Monday night, there were 45-50 folk around the campfire at the Tumbling River, and the river was up, running fast, and it looked like excellent fishing. There were two ladies looking for the Bighorn with their binoculars, they bed down in a meadow on the next mountain over, and are easy to watch, and loads of fun to see around sundown. Tuesday I took a horse up into the mountains near the Tarryall, then entertained a group of kids and their parents in the lodge at the Tarryall River Ranch, it was a stellar day. I drove home late that night to Walsenburg, and on Wednesday around noon I took off toward Alamosa, I was thinking it was kind of breezy... I crossed La Veta Pass against a sustained wind of somewhere near 50 or 60 miles an hour, in fifteen years I haven't faced wind like that, and this is in an area where the winds can knock a semi off the interstate. There was no electricity at the Rainbow when I got there, but who needs it? It came back on while we were having dinner, and it made for a very interesting evening performing my cowboy songs for the guests. On Thursday night I was up in the Powderhorn Valley near Lake City, and entertained a large group of men only. This was the first time I'd ever met so many men without the company of a woman any where other than the ranch staff. There were no kids, and my show reflected the audience in an interesting way. I was less cautious in performing, comfortable in my own shoes, and enjoyed the evening greatly. An artist from Germany was there, he invited me to one of his showings in Santa Fe to be held Sept. 15th, his name is Helmut Lohr, he is originally from Dusseldorf to New Mexico via New York City. He made me a sage smudge, it's drying and I intend to burn it when the time's right. Last night I played the Waunita Hot Springs again, overjoyed because last week Ryan said the sale didn't go through, and that he was looking at taking it off the market and exploring the option of a partnership with the ranch that borders theirs. It's perfect, in my simple view, and I hope I play there for many many years. Last Saturday was the Echo Canyon, and Sunday was the North Fork. At the Echo, the bear came by on his way to the trout pond, he likes to fish, too, and at the North Fork I saw friends old and new, and sang around the fire after the hayride. Karen and Dean allowed me the hospitality of their ranch on Monday as well. The truth is, and seems to be borne out every day of my life, that the guest ranches in Colorado mirror their owners, who across the board have shown why this state is the return destination of so many vacationers, summer and winter. OK, now I've had me tea, opened me mail, and wrote in me diary. My best friend from my wilder younger days is getting divorced after 28 years of wedded bliss. Gotta be his fault, or is that just a guy thing? I got some emails from a Doctor in Kerrville, she says I have an incurable case of the Rockin Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Blues. She also says those feathers that are growing on my feet are kinda cute. I like 'em, too.
I'm never alone, I love my extended family within the association, and my energy and life are a part of these mountains and deserts here in the southwest. My conscience is my co-pilot, my heart is my navigator... Yup, we're goin' the right way...

I left Colorado on the 14th of May this year, I had two days in Phoenix at the South Pointe Hotel entertaining a group from Wisconsin, on the 16th and the 18th. On the 23rd, in Kerrville, Texas, I entertained at a house party hosted by a teacher from Schreiner College, and it was an amazing experience. Songwriting isn't something I do with great confidence, but always with dedication, and for the simplest of reasons; I don't want to write something that's going to make me look as dumb as I feel most of the time. When I listen to the songs that move me the most, I wonder how I could ever hope to write something half as beautiful, but if I didn't try, I'd be ashamed of myself. I hope the folks in Kerrville enjoyed my visit, I look forward to seeing my new friends there again.
Part of the trip to Kerrville was the Kerrville Folk Festival. I wasn't booked to play there, but 9 years ago I was a "new folk", and I went back to support Tracy Grammer, who was part of a "new folk" duo in 98. Since then she's become a folk singer of renown, something I believe she richly deserves. It rained, and I lost my favorite guitar strap, but I had a wonderful time hanging out and sleeping in my little tent during the frequent storms. I made some new friends, I'll call them Wild Bill and Shakespeare and Jamie and Coney and Jamie's boyfriend, I think his name was Scott, at Chez Rebel, where the best home cooking at the festival was warmed. Something occured to me this year, and I have to write about it. It took me from sometime around 1989 or so until now to get this joke. It has to do with a song I wrote called "The Itty Bitty Outlaw". I played it years ago at a guitar pull in a round with Townes and Doug Dillard and Guy Clark in a bar, and Guy said "How are you ever going to live that down?" I didn't get the pun until this year. The song's about an outlaw who's only 3 foot 2, and he says.. " how are you going to live that DOWN? " For twenty years I didn't get it. This year I got it. Gee zis, I'm slow. I was never sure what Guy meant when he said that, and wondered if my feelings should be hurt, or not. I think not. Isn't it goofy the things we ruminate on for twenty years?
When I got back to Colorado late Saturday night on the 26th, I crashed hard, having driven straight through from Kerrville to Walsenburg. The next morning I called my friends at the North Fork Ranch near Denver, and was reminded that their season started that night, and that I had a weekly summer booking that was due to begin straightaway. Two days later I was part of the filming of a reality show about cowgirls meeting a cowboy. Thing was, they had to teach this cowboy how to ride a horse. I did, however, sing a song I wrote on the show. I sang "Trying to Rope the Moon", and was told it woud air some time in the fall.

Down this blacktop road there is
a town I used to know
It had a general store, and a bar next door
where the farmers liked to go
The houses all lined main street
in a three block Rockwell scene
It was surrounded by an ocean
of corn and summer green

Down this blacktop road,
traffic's kind of thin
Anything that happened here,
happened way back when
Cause the farms were sold,
and the store just closed
And the young folk moved away
As this part of America
became part of yesterday

Down this blacktop road
there is an unused railroad line
And a station no one's left from sinse 1969
There's a two room school where the golden rule
was taught once to the young
There's a church, but it waits empty,
for another time to come.

La Vida Bob would steal and rob along the valley way
Twin pistols hung beside him, the unwary were his prey
The marshal sent the posse out to do what posses do
La Vida Bob he did his job, and robbed the posse too

La Vida Bob, look at you you’re trouble thru and thru
You know the laws you’re breaking will all catch up to you
They’ll shoot you down some day… you know you’ve got to pay
But you don’t think about it, you just go your merry way

La Vida Bob had his job, and I’d say he did it well
He’d kiss the ladies, rob the men, and sent a few to hell
Ladies rode that troubled road just a hoping he’d come by
The sheriff rode that road as well, and swore that Bob would die

La Vida Bob had a red bandana his horse was long and lean
His pistols they were lightning, ivory handles thundering
The sheriff and his deputies just could not bring him in
Every time they thought they had him, he would slip away again.

One afternoon La Vida stopped a lady on her way
He stole her gold and diamonds, but he lost his heart that day
That night he rode up to the hacienda wherein she did dwell
He called her to the shadows, and that is where he fell

And now they say the valley way is safer than it was
LaVida Bob's long in his grave, a victim of his flaws
And in the mountains where she lives, his pistols hang as trophies
Shot down by Josephina, better known as Marshal Sophie.

Good Morning, Denmark. Good morning, Ireland, and Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Germany and France, and a big hello to Mongolia. God bless each and every one of you for your exuberance and dam near genuine happiness when you hear my music... I am just thrilled at the thought of visiting you all 10,000 at a time. My music, of course, as much as it means to all of you, means little to me beyond being a vehicle I can use to discuss Me, Me, Me!! And of course, what an interesting topic I am. All seriosness aside, though, thanks for the wonderful emails, and for supporting my continued education thru the purchase of these wonderful songs for your ipods and digital download files.

If you're going to Arizona this year, say hello to the sunshine.
Say hello the late night rides and the blush of the warm red wines.
Tip your hat to the cacti, as they raise their branches and wave
To a world of strangers moving across their grandfathers' grandfathers' graves.

If you're going to Arizona this year, give a smile from the passenger side.
Make a friend and keep them,
When you leave, don't say goodbye.
Just say hello the next time you need the sun they have to spare.
Say hello to Arizona I'll be wishing I was there.

I played last night at the Echo Canyon Guest Ranch in Cuchara, and the guests were all Coloradans on getaways from Denver, Colorado Springs, and other urban areas, save one couple from Jaw-ja (Georgia, if you're not from there). It's been an interesting summer, to say the least. I've been singing seven nights a week, I went from Memorial Day to sometime in July non stop, I had a day off on August 22, and things quieted down just before Labor Day, when two of the seven ranches contracts ran out, giving me two days off a week to go with my new fall schedule, which is that of a student. It's kind of hectic right now, I have a full load and am planning on not stopping until I get at least a teaching certificate. My plan is to teach and sing, and I know exactly how to go about it. Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado is a beautiful place. Today I spent part of the afternoon listening to a woman named Christine Keitges singing Mozart, Debussy, Gershwin, and other classical stylings. It was a faculty recital, she is Dr. Keitges, a voice instructor among other things, and a very talented mezzo-soprano. I doubt I'll be singing opera any time soon, but I certainly enjoyed listening.

I learned a lot about myself this year, and decided that the rest of my life should be dedicated to teaching children. There aren't enough men out there doing their jobs. There needs to be more involvement with kids without dads, little boys who barely know what it
means to be a man. I've been a coward all my life, I've been selfish, egocentric, and filled with the amazement of myself. I can bring a smile, I can manipulate an audience, I can spread joy through song! I almost had it. I wasn't doing it for anyone but me! I love singing, it's the most wonderful gift, and it brings me extraordinary joy to lift my voice melodically. It's just not enough. I could bring myself even greater satisfaction if I knew that at the end of the day, I made a difference in some kid's life who might need a whole lot more than just a song. A song can inspire, for sure, but the gift of CARING ABOUT THE WELFARE OF OUR FUTURE, giving of my experience to a child is what I didn't have the courage to offer.
I'm going to be 55 on my next birthday. If I never sang again, I'd still be the luckiest guy on earth. If I don't pass on the best of myself, I'm a failure. I've been passing on what I thought was, but it's just been me smiling at my own reflection in the water. It's time I did something more for some of those who need it most.

The Colorado Dude and Guest Ranch season has come again, and 2006 is going to be a busy one for a lot of real fine ranches. This year I've added the Tarryall River Ranch to my list of clients, and last night I played there for the first time, but not until after a dinner that rivaled any of the finest restaurants in the world. Rocky Mountain Time at this time of year is at its most beautiful, and seeing it from the Conejos or the Arkansas or the South Platte Rivers and the forests and mountains and valleys between Aspen and Albuquerque is something I am truly grateful for. Jason Robert's biography "A Sense of the World" came in the mail today, and I can't put it down. It's the story of James Holman, a British citizen and blind world traveler who lived during the time of the revolutionary war. I think I'm beginning to read an amazing and incredible story.

A great place to read this book might be the front porch of one of the guest ranches here in the Rocky Mountains, miles from city strife.

Is the life that you've been living just a crazy race?
Has the world around you lost its mystery?
Do you search your memory looking for some long lost space?
Do you think there's somewhere else you'd rather be?

Put your watch on Rocky Mountain Time
There ain't no traffic jams up around the timberline
You want some peace and quiet? I know how to find it,
Come on out and rest your mind.

Doe the work that you been doing only wear you down?
Do you feel the need to get away a while?
I know a place where you'd have to listen hard to hear a sound,
And there may not be another soul for miles.

Put your watch on Rocky Mountain Time
Find yourself a river bank
and cast your line.
You want some peace and quiet? I know how to find it,
Come on out and rest your mind.

Put your watch on Rocky Mountain Time
Catch yourself a rainbow,
Get out and hug a pine
Ride a horse
Feel the force of
Mother Nature and
Father Time
Come on out and rest your mind.

It's the end of May, two days before my summer schedule begins, and I just got into Southern by God Colorado from from Seattle and a visit with my sister and a reconnection to family and long time friends, something I needed much more than I knew. While in the northwest, I made my way to Bainbridge Island to hear a concert at the their community center with my sister Deb and her husband Frank. Tracy Grammer and Jim Henry did a wonderful job of entertaining the crowd, and it felt so good to be a fan!! There is no finer balm than listening to such wonderful acoustic music. For the uninitiated, Tracy and Jim bring some of the very best folk music in America to their audiences. Her last CD, "Flower of Avalon", received more airplay from folk stations than any other CD released in 2005. It's my good fortune that she and Jim have tentatively agreed to participate in my next project. I am grateful beyond words for this, and
tomorrow and Friday the 26th will find me recording the beginnings of that project in Alamosa, Colorado, with my friend Don Richmond.
I am hopeful.

I am in Colorado until October, and will continue to do my very best to bring a bit of the west into the lives of the people who come to vacation at the ranches where I'll be playing. I want to say a special hello to Taylor from Kansas,
Ted in North Carolina, Scott in Mongolia (yes, Mongolia), and Randi, who's graduating high school this year in Gunnison.

One thing is true, I will miss Arizona very much, and am looking forward to new beginnings in Wickenburg in October.

One of my songs, "The Ballad of William Dubois" was used this year by an eighth grade class in Arizona, part of an exercise in creative songwriting and poetry. I want to thank Ms. Brooks, the teacher who thought enough of my writing to use the material. I am indebted to her.

For those on their way to Colorado, I'll be singing Sundays at the North Fork in Shawnee, Mondays at the Tumbling River in Grant, Tuesdays at the Tarryall in Lake George twice a month, Wednesdays at the Rainbow Trout near Antonito, Thursdays at the Powderhorn Valley Ranch, Fridays at the Waunita Hot Springs near Gunnison, and Saturdays at the Echo Canyon Guest Ranch in the Cuchara Valley.

Home

Traveling at the earliest hours, I left Wickenburg under a huge full moon.
I got into Colorado and was close to home by 3 in the afternoon on Saturday. Just off of Catchpole Road on Hwy. 84, The Out West is where fine custom western saddles are made, and home to Annie and Mose, Waddie and Terri and Bob. Waddie's a Corgy pup, and Annie and Mose are a couple of pals in the corral, a paint and a friendly old quarter horse.
Terri and Bob are there for the critters, Bob makes custom saddles, and living just west of Wolf Creek, the view of the mountains is just one side of astounding. Terri made me feel right at home, and she and Bob fixed a fantastic pork roast and we all had linguini, beans, and a cobbler and ice cream dessert.

Some people put a candle in the window
Some people go out and tie one on
Some people do nothing
But you've got to do something
When it happens to you, you've got to find a way to move on.

Been there, done that, bought the t shirt.
When the truth is all there is to see, it does hurt.
I might be a mountain,
I might be a willow tree
Sometimes I'd give anything to be anyone but me.
You see, I've been there, done that, bought the t shirt.

Some people run down the street stark naked
Some people go out and mow the lawn
Some people cry rivers
Some beg for forgiveness
When it happens to you,
you've got to find a way to move on

Been there, done that, bought the t shirt
When the truth is all that's left to see, it does hurt
I might be a mountain,
I might be a willow tree
Sometimes I'd give anything to be anyone but me
You see, I've been there
Done that, bought the t shirt.

Jon Dublin 10/27/52 - 2/18/06 - March 3, 2006
I have a story to tell; it's a short one filled with love. My younger brother, a foreign service officer stationed in Iraq, died on the 18th of February. His name was Jon Dublin, and when we stood side by side, there was no mistaking that we were brothers even though our personalities were as different as Root Beer and Doctor Pepper. I wrote the following poem about Jon and me years ago. We used to fish in the Middlefork River in Champaign County, Illinois, when we were only eight and seven years old. The biggest things we caught were crawdads, minnows, and the occasional catfish. The main reason we fished was so we could jump in the river and cool off on those hot summer days. Looking back, we were swimming in shallow water barely to our knees; but those days were some of the happiest of my life. We'd put baloney and cheese on an old fishing hook, then tie it to a string and a stick, and that's how we fished. This poem is for my brother Jon—dedicated to his memory with every piece of my heart wishing he were still among us:

Jon and I were nine years old.
We were headed to the fishin’ and the swimming hole,
A bucket of worms and an old cane pole,
We were both forever young.

It was a two-mile hike down to the river,
Thru the fields and cattle pastures.
We’d take half the morning just to get there,
Me and Little Jon

Hey, Little Jon,
Little Jon.
The corn is high beneath the summer sun.
Morning’s hot and the river’s cold, and we ain’t ever growing old.
Forever young, both me and little Jon.

I’d talk mom out of a dollar,
And we’d head uptown for an ice cold Root Beer,
Then disappear down towards the river,
Easy as you please

We’d cool our feet in muddy waters,
Bait our hooks with big night crawlers,
Listen to the sounds of summer,
Drifting thru the trees

The boy I grew up with is gone.
He’s on a wall in Washington.
I got a 15-year-old son
Who answers to his name.

My hair is thin, and my youth is gone;
But thru the eyes of Little Jon
The river’s running on and on.
Me and Little Jon

Little Jon, Little Jon,
The corn is high beneath the summer sun.
The morning's hot, and the river's cold,
And we ain't ever growing old.
Forever young, me and little Jon.


How Summer Looks to a Cowboy Singer - March 3, 2006
You don't get rich driving up and down these mountain roads. You just pray you make it.

Keep yer eyes peeled on the road out in front of you and hope that guy in the other lane ain't drunk or half asleep. Somebody's out to get you; don't you forget it. Don't lose your concentration. Drink the water cold; keep the windows half down. I love my little Jeep Cherokee. It gets the job done. I have 132, 850 miles on it; I'm hoping for 300,000— and if I continue
treating the car like the friend it is, I'll get there.

When I get to my gigs alive, I say a silent prayer. I see myself being hurt sometimes in my imagination, and I try to remind myself not to drive too fast, act belligerent toward other drivers, or fall asleep. I don't run any red lights, and I respect the yellow ones. Man, I love this job.

My name's Will. I don't drink much but a few beers or a glass of red wine every now and then, and I live this
marvelous existence of a cowboy singer.

There's no way to anoint a cowboy singer; I just are one—too crazy to work, too restless to keep still, too busy noodlin’ on this guitar. I got fired down at the feedlot and left with no choice. I never did care much for the smell of that place, anyway—or the tornadoes every spring—and I had a desire to move to the mountains during hurricane and tornado seasons! Sounded good when I thought of it, so I left West “by God” Texas, moved myself and my horses to
Southern “by God” Colorado, and took this job dude wranglin’ one year long ago and far away.

Pretty soon I was singing for the dudes and packhorses and drawing low wages and fantastic tips for singin’ whenever the hell they seemed to want. So I quit wrangling for just one boss and got these jobs singing one night a week at different ranches and for different outfitters. Good work if you can get it, I guess. It didn't hurt any to do that video with Charlie Daniels and Ian Tyson; and then those boys from the Burrito Brothers and the Byrds and the Nash Ramblers pickin’ on my first record was kind of a stroke of good luck. You might say I stumbled into this line of work.

Some things have to be believed to be seen. I read that on a card. Or in a magazine.

I have gigs out near Denver and Phoenix and in Texas and New Mexico and Nevada as well. I don't think there's much call for a cowboy singer in Milwaukee or New York or Atlanta, but in Shawnee, Colorado, and Wickenburg, Arizona, and Billings, Montana, and Elko, Nevada, they can't seem to get enough of singing about horses, cows, and hard work.

Not to change the subject, but I just went to the kitchen and looked out the window. There was this fat lady across the street holding the hand of another fat lady with her hair tied up in such a way as to remind me of a Polynesian—Samoan or Hawaiian. One was wearing a mu mu. They both got into an old Oldsmobile, and the bumper scraped as they backed into the street. I don't think those ladies would do well on a horse.

Another wonderful distraction occurred on July 31st of 2005. I was right at the top of Monarch Pass. It was a Friday night, and I was driving home to Walsenburg, Colorado, when I saw an elk at the edge of my headlights turning away. He was incredibly huge! He had a rack like a great crown; and it occurred to me that some elk are called Monarch Elk, and this one was at the summit of Monarch Pass.

It's called that, I think, because the mountains from this vantage are formed in a ring like a huge crown of mountains, miles high, laid on the earth. That must be true. It's far too beautiful, if there is such a thing, at the summit of Monarch Pass. Under moonlight, and when snow tops the peaks, it's like a jeweled crown. But this was summer, and I was thinking that this might be the king of elks coming up to survey his kingdom—to view his crown and feel the strength of the earth, his own mother.

Praise the Lord, here comes another freaking song:

I gambled and won, and I lost and was gone.
There are a very few winners I've known.
I been a sinner and saint; I am blessed ‘cause I ain't
But an orphan in search of a home.

I rambled from Austin to Denver to Phoenix,
To Hell's Gate right down to Wherever.
The wide River Styx to the jail on Fort Bliss,
(nothing and) no one's forever...

We could die in Tsunamis or crash on the levies,
Or be cursed with a plague; no one knows.
If you come back from that last trembling gasp
Buddy, tell me so both of us know.

My horses are strong, and my past is all gone,
And my future's a tale I don't know.
Lightning could strike; I could fall off a bike,
Or die on the curb in the snow.

But I'm breathing today, and each night I pray,
When I go, I'll be happily, peacefully gone.
I'm blessed by my friends; I know life never ends.
It just changes from darkness to dawn.
As time and the earth roll on.

The Life and Hard Times of Will Dudley - February 23, 2006
I was a rebellious middle child, third of six. I have four sisters and once had a brother. My father was a sergeant in the Air Force SO…when I was 17, I joined the Navy. At 19, I was married; at 20, I was in the Tonkin Gulf, off of Vietnam, doing my part as a veteran of that war.

At 22, I was widowed. Her boyfriend was driving; it happened near Seattle. I was in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of Iran, on that day in 1974, and it took 13 days for the government to get me home. I missed the funeral. I got out of the Navy the next year and got drunk for two years.

When I was 25, I was singing in the bars in Seattle, starting to write songs, and learning how to be a troubadour. When I was 27, I was doing the same thing in Chicago, where the wife was from and where she
is buried.

More than anything, I wanted to keep singing. I played folk clubs and tried to find a direction. I met Steve Goodman and saw a light. He had recorded an album in Nashville, "Somebody Else's Troubles", so that's where I went. A good troubadour writes songs, and the place for learning that craft was Nashville for me. I went there, and a long, slow disintegration began.

I eventually dropped out of college and met thieves, con artists, drug dealers, and strongarm men—all claiming to be songwriters of great talent— all wanting to be the next big thing out of Nashville in the country music biz. I met Townes Van Zandt and Taz Digregorio. Townes was a ghost of a man already dying from too much life when I met him; Taz was Charlie Daniels' piano player. They both wrote great songs and took music seriously enough that they made sure I knew that dedication is lifelong—and that's not a joke. A musician serves a master.

When I was 28, I enrolled in a Baptist College in Nashville, studied the music business and continued writing songs. I carpentered, waited tables, sang tableside in restaurants for tips, sometimes drank too much, and learned as much as I could about the music business in that state.

Taz showed me the reality of the work ethic of dedicated musicians. He drank heavy sometimes and was no saint, either. He and I were recording one night in the studio at the Baptist College with a fifth of
Jim Beam under his piano and a six-pack on ice. Security busted us. They frown on liquor in Baptist Colleges, not to mention the heathen southern rock coming off that piano. I stayed in school a year or so longer in spite of another marriage and a divorce and my ability to take every wrong direction possible.

My mentors and sometimes friends were ASCAP execs Merlin Littlefield and Bob Doyle, songwriter and publisher Glenn Martin, and Glenn’s sons Tony and Troy. Tanya Tucker introduced me to life on the road, and I knew and admired songwriters Otis Blackwell and Mack Vickery for their advice and friendship. I am in awe of Billy Joe Shaver both as a human being and as a songwriter. I met Larry, Rudy, and Steve Gatlin while singing tableside at the Stockyard, a restaurant owned by Buddy Killen, a publishing magnate from Alabama. I sat at Otis Blackwell's table the night Otis was inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame. It was there I met Kristofferson the first time.

I was there when Tanya wore one of the Gatlin brothers' underwear under an outfit she wore on stage at a nationally-televised CMA award show. It was like a private joke. She was wearing Larry's red jockey shorts and singing with Kris Kristofferson and Wille Nelson in a segment about Texas. It was an autographed pair, and the Gatlins are Texans, too.

I worked as an extra in "Ernest Goes to Jail" and was a friend of Jim Varney. I dated one of his ex-wives; she was a pistol. I met a lot of good people during those years and had no idea how lucky I was.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer named A.K. Roberts introduced me to Johnny Cash. His exact words upon introduction in Cash's dressing room backstage at Opryland were "John, this is my friend Will Dudley. He wrote the best cowboy song I ever heard." I didn't say anything, and I don't remember much more than shaking his hand. Johnny Cash was the only man I ever met who left me awestruck and speechless. The song Kal was referring to is "The Cowboy's Last Wish."

I turned around and I was 40, so I went to Texas and sang on 6th street for a year. Nobody over in Nashville had recorded any songs I had written, and I mean EVER. But I had songs published with Tazmanian publishing and CoHeart Publishing, and I began to see that I would always sing regardless of what else I did. CoHeart was Glenn Martin, Willie Nelson, and Hank Cochran when they took my songs. When I met Willie backstage at Opryland, I already knew his son Billy and his nephew, Fred Fletcher, who both spent time in Nashville. Freddy was a drummer and a good guy who understood how to focus.

I may have been finding every wrong direction back home possible, but nobody could accuse me of being too damn smart about much of anything. I was squandering opportunities right and left. I was singing in nightclubs and restaurants and writing songs, but mostly I was meeting people and raising hell. I met hacks and geniuses, and I began to understand the concept of Karma: that what we do IS who we are, and that our deeds follow us.

I liked Willie's people. They treated me with respect and are fun to be around. Within the writing community of Nashville, I'd been listening to publishers who were asking me how I was going to live down writing these cowboy songs. Glenn Martin encouraged me just by listening. In Texas, the man on the street to know was Poodie Locke. In my view, Poodie is synonymous with “party.” He was Willie's man.

I had done some singing in studios and even starred in an hour-long music video. I was a better singer than a writer, and the fact is I was learning the hard way how to write songs from the very best songwriters in America while hearing tales from the wildest of storytellers. I stayed in Texas for a year and a half. I would have stayed longer, but I was arrested for fighting with some guy who had the nerve to call himself a pedal steel player. I was dumb enough to hire him, so it was definitely my bad.

After a little jail and a little fine, I went back to Tennessee. About the first thing that happened there was that I met John Prine. I needed some work, and I ended up doing some carpentry for him and his manager Al Bunetta. I don't know if it's anything to brag about, but I worked on Garth Brooks' first house, too. He toted some wood for me; his first wife was pregnant with their first child at the time. She was a nice lady. I don't remember much about Garth other than he toted the wood and was polite.

I was too dense and distracted to see what an amazing writer John Prine is, and he's a hell of a good guy as well. I hooked Bunetta and Prine up with a guy from New Zealand who booked Prine on an Australian tour.

I did some recording, spent time with some crazy creative people. When dad died in 1990, I had been living on the street in Austin, Texas, singing, partying too much, sleeping any damn where, getting busted for fighting, and generally screwing up. Dad died at the end of 1990. We had tried to be friends but never could quite get there. I think he was proud of my singing and writing but just didn't know who that guy was that had been his boy Billy. I did stop smoking cigarettes the day he died. I’ve never touched them since, and I thank my father daily for giving me that strength as he left the planet.

When dad died I quit singing for three years and moved up to Washington and built birdhouses on the Olympic Peninsula. I became acquainted with my nephew, Christian, who was growing up there without his biological father, my brother Jon. In the last years of her life as well, my beloved mother visited with me there from South Carolina. She stayed for three weeks, and Mary, the woman living with me, detested her. My mother had a beautiful singing voice and played a piano. She reawakened the muse in me, and my life has been one of determination and singing since. A lot of people sing to hear themselves. I hear my mother's voice in my very soul when I sing, and I know she is with me.

I sang cover songs for a while in country music bars in the Seattle area but then moved to Colorado in December of ‘96 and started singing cowboy songs for tourists at dude ranches and resorts. I approach it as a business. The music video I had done in Nashville was a cowboy video. It had presented me with Charlie Daniels and Ian Tyson, Becky Hobbs and Fletcher Jowers, all true-heart musicians singing the music in their souls. The video and a CD financed by a Nashville music attorney were my passport to the resorts and guest ranches in both Colorado and Arizona.

I cut my hair, cut back my drinking to an occasional beer, and reinvented myself. This was an opportunity to live in a place large enough for my curiosity—a place where I could be tempted less and give back and honor more. I had grown up in little towns near Air Force bases and in Europe. In South Carolina and in Germany, we lived on the base itself, and I felt confined. Here in these mountains, that's impossible.

I quit trying to destroy myself when I came here. I love this place, the lifestyles, and the people. The songs I write here mean more to me. The weaving of the Hispanic culture into America begins in the southwest, in this very hard land where I live. The tragedy of the indigenous people of the United States has left a very large scar here.

I was born on Chanute AFB in Rantoul, Illinois. I grew up in France, Germany, Oklahoma, Illinois, and South Carolina. I've wandered from the east coast to Seattle to Chicago to Nashville to Austin to Seattle to Colorado. Moving to Colorado is the best thing I ever did. I can spend my life outdoors, singing and meeting great folks from all over the world. I travel the most awe-inspiring scenic byways in the country and get paid for it.

The light that Steve Goodman showed me so long ago is shining a little on me these days. While in Nashville, I recorded a CD. While in Colorado, I've recorded four more. I am an Irish gypsy on my dad's side; his sister taught music and guitar in Minnesota. My mother, though gone now since 2000, still has the most beautiful singing voice I have ever heard. I've learned that life is hard. But this, too, shall pass, and we may not be back. My plan is to savor every available second.

On July 18th, 2002, I was involved in an off-angle head-on collision, was extricated unconscious and barely alive, and helicoptered to St. Anthony's in Denver with broken bones in the double digits. Rehabilitation took well over a year. I survived intact and can still sing as well as I ever did. It is a gift. I am addicted to tea and honey and have been since I stopped smoking in 1990.

So...I'm an old hippie cowboy son of a sergeant military kid who was born on an Air Force Base somewhere in Illinois that isn't there any more. My lifelong ambition is to keep singing and traveling. I try to live by one of the lines in a song I wrote about Woody Guthrie: "Spread a little hope, and then ramble on." Doing that is its own reward.

My siblings, who followed my father's military lifestyle, detest me, generally refusing to acknowledge my existence, occasionally bringing a little pain to me by omitting me from such family events as deaths and births. I and my youngest sister Judith will be forever close to each other and generally ignored and vilified when mentioned by others in my immediate family. There is no forgiveness in my family and no room for a cowboy singer. This was evidenced once again in the fact that five days ago my brother died of heart failure, and the one to tell me was his ex-wife Deb who understands that I am no more welcome at his funeral than Saddam Hussein would be.

For those who would like to know, my oldest and most detached sister, Janice, as well as my most hateful sister, Catherine Helms, live in Charleston, South Carolina. I wish them well and forgive them for their narrowmindedness. My youngest sister, Judith, and my most ignorant and easily-led sister, Zoeanne, live in or near Tacoma, Washington. I haven't spoken to Zoe in 16 years; this is a matter of her choice. She is faced with leukemia right now and will hopefully learn that love begins with self, forgiveness begins with self, and that I will always be there for her. Judith knows that about me already.

Through the years, I have learned that my real family is the ranchowners and fans throughout the world whom I have met, entertained, and left smiling. As I continue to record and perform throughout the world, I can feel my family's appreciation thru every email and every smile I am lucky enough to receive in return for my small contribution. So thank you, all. If you're out there and you like cowboy music, I will find you if you don't find me first.

The Best of All Winters - February 14, 2006
Hello, my friends... This last month has been interesting, to say the least. I've been working for the KL Bar and the Rancho de los Caballeros, entertaining at their cookouts and in their saloon. On the 10th of this month (February), I rode on a float in the Wickenburg Gold Rush Days Parade. I played a piano in the back of a pickup truck for the whole parade route. Behind the truck, on a float that looked like a saloon scene from the old west, there were four gamblers, two saloon floozies, and a bartender. The only thing missing from my part of the costume was a garter for my sleeve. Maybe next year...

Today, on Valentine's Day, I'm going to sing at a wedding at the Kay El Bar Ranch in Wickenburg. The bride and groom are both in their 70’s. The bride said that if I sing "Back in the Saddle Again", the groom would enjoy that. She did stipulate, however, that I shouldn't sing it during the ceremony. I'm all for that.

I spent two days this month up in Elko, Nevada, at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering. There I met and picked with a very talented dobro player from Pasadena, California; his name is Dan Ames. He was there to accompany other pickers and said he works in a bluegrass band over there in California, name of "Smokewood". If I was looking for good cowboy music in Pasadena, I'd be looking for Dan Ames and Curly Musgrave.

I was only in Elko for the Monday and Tuesday prior to the big weekend to-do, but I did have a chance to meet some of the South American Gaucho band guys. I think they were from Brazil. They were having fun for sure, and one of those guys knew the accordion better than my mother—and she was no slouch on that instrument.

I had a beer with Charlie Seeman, the Folklife Museum Director, and we discovered that we both have a great regard for Chris Skinker who Charlie hired years ago to work for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville where he worked prior to becoming Director of the Elko Folklife Museum. I also had the pleasure of Waddie Mitchell's wry company for an hour or so over beers in the saloon adjacent to the Folklife Center gift shop.

All in all, I'd say the beginning of this month was wonderful, the middle has been outstanding, and since I'm booked pretty well thru April and will be way busy in May preparing for a full schedule for the summer, I'd have to say I can't find a thing in life that deserves a complaint. NOTHING. ZIP. NADA.

Wait a minute; there is one thing: I got accused of being a snowbird and a part-time Arizonan ‘cause in 10 years, I haven't summered in Phoenix. I don't necessarily consider myself a bird of any sort, but I did wonder to myself, "Why under God's blue sky would I ever want to summer in Phoenix when I have so much singing to do in Colorado?” I believe it's impossible to drive thru the mountains in Colorado or Wyoming or Montana or New Mexico or Arizona without falling so completely in love with Mother Nature that you end up hugging horses, watering trees, and weeping in wonder at not just the magnificence we are surrounded by but at the rate we are destroying it. God forbid I should ever have to live under a smoggy sky and work in a box. Even the most beautiful cities I've ever seen—cities as magnificent as San Antonio, Missoula, and Paris, France. can't compete with the Sangre de Cristo mountains and the solitude and warmth of Arizona's Sonoran Desert and their Valley of the Sun. So if I had one thing to say to everyone in the world, it'd probably be, “Hey, slow down. Enjoy your children, love your roses, and be kind to animals, vegetables, and minerals.”

Even my love life—that old dead horse—has shown signs of some sort of revival. So while all my friends in Vermont and Florida, Illinois and Colorado, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and Texas and Iowa go through their respective winters and lives, I do the same in Arizona. I hope their winters are as beautiful as mine has been, that their days are as filled with wonder as mine have been, and that their nights have been bringing them peaceful dreams.

Who Was That Guy? - January 18, 2006
I just can't get this Stephanie Davis song out of my head. It starts out, "January's always bitter..." and it's just not. I know...she's talking about the temperature. And she is in Montana where it's a whole lot colder than it is here in Arizona in the Valley of the Sun.

So I entertained the Indiana Co-operative folks at Los Caballeros and sang for the vacationers at the Kay El Bar. It was a beautiful starry night at Yucca Flats Saturday night; the moon didn't rise until long after dark, so in the first hours the darkness was deepest. Eight o'clock was the darkest hour of the night; stars were magnificent, and you could see the Milky Way in a way only possible far from city lights. The moon rose an hour later, full and bringing light enough that some of the stars bowed out, and by ten o'clock, a deep silver blue light made black shadows across the desert sands. Chairs were gathered around a large bonfire, and since they were from Indiana, I sang Hoagy Carmichael songs and anything I could think of that Willie might have sung. There weren't any kids there, so I did the adult version of "A Boy Named Sue", a tune smithed by Shel Silverstein, made famous by Saint John the Cash. Ropin' Bears, a poem by Squire Omar Barker, takes on its own life around a campfire, and sometimes even the coyotes join in at the right time. I think the folks from Indiana are going to go home and tell their friends all about Wickenburg hospitality and the mild Arizona winters in the Sonoran Desert between Phoenix and Las Vegas—home of Joshua trees, Prickly Pear, Yucca plants, and...Hey, who was that guy who was singing those cowboy songs? Why didn't he do any Toby Keith?

Start With a Song - January 13, 2006
So, it being Friday 13th of January, I got up and wrote an article into this journal and it promptly disappeared. Bad luck from the git-go. That hadn't happened to me in such a long time. I know it's got to be in this computer somewhere, but I also know Freddy Krueger's waiting in there, so I ain't going. So happy new year from the coward of Arizona who would just rather boldly go for a walk in peace...

So winter rolls on, and a new year comes in, and a few more gigs down the road, a little more time passes by, and I woke up singing this on Gloria's birthday. Kal must have put this in my head; he would pick a beautiful day like today, and it is beautiful. But it's also Friday the 13th... Still, it's his wife's birthday. Here, Gloria, I'm sure this is for you...

My cowboying days, they were wild, they were crazy,
But those days have long passed me by.
I tried to be true; I gave one heart to you.
I'll see you somewhere in the sky.

Farewell, mi compadres, Adios, Corazone.
Goodbye to the cool evening breeze.
My horses are saddled; my old pals are waiting,
And my spirit is restless to leave.

There is snow on the mountains, all down through the hills, and some trees that won't see early spring.
The owl has been watching, tonight closer still.
In my dreams he's a calling my name.

Farewell, mi compadres; Adios, Corazone.
Goodbye to the cool evening breeze.
My horses are saddled; my old pals are waiting,
And my spirit is restless to leave.

When you see the young man who stood at the stairs, and watched you walk into his life,
Step out and greet him and give him the smile,
That won him in days gone by.

Farewell, mi compadres; Adios, Corazone,
And goodbye to the cool evening breeze.
My horses are saddled; my old pals are a waiting,
And my spirit is restless to leave.

Thanks, Kal. So he's riding with Cash and Waylon. I think I'll ride with Kris and Willie for a while.

A Singer's View of 2005 - December 30, 2005
Hey, Amigos y Amigas... What a year it's been, and I want to tell you about it...

Last January I left Colorado for Arizona and a series of gigs I had lined up with the Rancho de los Caballeros and the Kay El Bar in Wickenburg. When I got here, my season was lined out, and set up until May. But business was just the beginning of this eventful year.

I got to Arizona on January 14th, which happened to be
the birthday of Gloria Roberts who was married to my friend Kal, a photogropher of great reputation in the country music business and part-time cowboy actor. I met Kal in Nashville in the mid ‘80's, and when I got to Arizona, I discovered that he and Gloria were living here just a short distance from where I was working as a singer. Not really living...you see, Kal was dying of cancer.

This had happened to my next-door neighbor and friend John Applehunt in Colorado—and only two months before I got to Arizona. So I closed out 2004 saying goodbye to my friend John, and I was beginning 2005 in the same way.

So I stayed with Kal and Gloria. I moved into a trailer on their property and tried to help as much as I could. Kal had introduced me to Johnny Cash years ago, and although I tend to treat things lightly, meeting Johnny Cash was the single most memorable event in my life—and Kal had done that. I needed to thank him for that and a whole lot more.

The cancer that was killing Kal was prostate, the same cancer that killed my neighbor John. It's highly treatable these days, but Kal was an independent man who lived life on his own terms; I knew he hated
doctors and avoided them whenever possible. He died on March 21st, the first day of spring, shortly before his second grandchild was born. There was peace in his passing, and he's buried near Okemah, Oklahoma.

I miss my friend. He won a Pulitzer prize in the ‘70's for "spot photography" and so made his career. He shot the very best black and white photo I ever saw of not only Ray Charles but of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson also, and he had some very humorous shots of Waylon as well. He also honored me by shooting me in ‘88,
and I'll never forget his business card. It said, "I shoot singers and songwriters." My favorite picture of Tanya Tucker was one he took while I was going down the road with her, and on the same day, he took one of Tanya between my friend Billy Joe Shaver and Kris Kristofferson. God bless him. My winter was his, and I gave him what I could—my time when he needed it. But I worked hard singing this year, also.

I was singing to a group of politicians from Wyoming in February at a desert cookout on the day Ledoux died, and one of them—a man I just remember as Fred—gave me that news; so I sang Chris Ledoux songs all night. I thought it was ironic that the former Speaker of the House of the Wyoming State Legislature told me about Chris's dying. As a cowboy singer, I held him in high esteem and knew how these men also felt about him. I wrote him a song this year, but I'm no big time promoter of my own stuff; I just like to sing it for him. I know he hears it. So went my winter and spring in 2005.

I left Arizona in May and headed back to Colorado where I was booked until Labor Day at some of the guest ranches and resorts up there. I was in need
of friendship at about that time, and I found it in my own home in Walsenburg, Colorado. Having not seen my friends the Van Berkums since the previous
fall, I was amazed at how much their children had grown. To hear a three-year-old cowboy yell my name and launch himself fearlessly into my arms was
a moment I'll treasure forever. Just as memorable was the moment after that when his two older sisters did the very same. So, Derek and Caroline and Mary Ann Van Berkum, maybe when you're older, something similar will happen to you when you need it most.

Before I say much more, I want to let anyone know who reads this that I am alone in the world, but not. I'm not even close to a role model, but I'm getting better as I get older. I am a 50-year-old cowboy singer and troubadour, a drifter and a dreamer, a true disappointment to my late father, and I believe the greatest joy of my mother's too-short life. I'm married only to my guitar; my home is the road; and my heart is in pieces and places from San Diego to the Allegash
Wilderness in northern Maine. I love what I do, and I will never stop traveling and singing. The hardest part of this is the constant leaving, and the greatest joys in my life have been the greetings of friends I haven't seen for a long time. My mother gave me the love of singing, and the guitar has been my constant companion since I was twelve years old—although you couldn't tell that by the way I abuse it.

I began recording in April of this year, and with the help of Evelyn Roper, Don Richmond, Jim Stadler and Bo Seawell, I got 14 more songs onto a disc. I didn't write
so many of the songs for this recording but instead focused on trying to create an electric cowboy CD—something less traditional than the acoustic music I love so much, a little more outlaw in feel, but still expressing the values I feel the need to express in my music. Evelyn helped by writing two of the songs, and during the recording process, I began to think about friends I'd lost along the way and people who influenced me in my musical growth.

One name came to mind—a folk singer from Chicago who was killed by a drunk driver in St. Louis years ago. He had written one of the very best train songs I have ever heard; so I recorded Mike Jordan's "Southbound Train". He used to be a "Famous Potato"—and if you're a John Prine fan, that will make sense to you.

I also did another train song on this cd, written by a man who died on the very day I lay unconscious in a Denver hospital three years ago fighting for my own life. I met him twice and have become a huge fan of his
music. He died way too soon and deserves to be heard by as many people as I can marshal to his music. His name was Dave Carter, an Oklahoma native who made his home in Portland, Oregon, and who was an absolute genius with lyrics. I put two of his songs on my next effort—both traveling songs—one called "Highway 80" and one titled "Hey, Conductor."

This recording process brought a lot of peace to me, and I spent the summer singing from Gunnison to Denver to Santa Fe, renewing myself along the way. I spent time with friends from Europe to Hollywood and sang around the campfires and circled wagons of families reaching for peace in a world riddled with war and tragedy. I could see the joy in the faces of children, and as transient as that joy is, I even found a little bit of it myself. I even fooled myself for a moment into thinking that I could do something silly like fall in love myself. Fat chance of that, my guitar responded, and I listened.

By the end of summer, I had finished recording, and sometime in August, I heard the phone ring; Arizona was calling again. I left my motorcycle, my horse, a cat, and a change of clothes there; somewhere in the Sonoran Desert was a home with my name on the door. "Snake Oil Willie", the sign says, and under that is a nice drawing of a rattlesnake. My Arizona contracts were just reminding me not to get too settled up in Southern by God Colorado and the Sangre de Cristo mountains. I had intended to go to Ireland in September (I hear the girls there all have great calves and freckles), but business in the southwest was picking up for me, and I was born far too poor to ignore opportunity.

In retrospect, I think the summer of 2005 was a summer of healing for me. It took me three years to recuperate from the injuries I suffered in an
auto accident in 2002, and during those three years, I had to say goodbye to not only friends of mine who seemed to be dropping like leaves from an old oak, but I had to say goodbye to myself. This year I said goodbye to dreams I held on to for too long, goodbye to the young man I thought I would always be before I was faced with my own mortality in that horrible life changing event, and I had to say goodbye to the past—some parts of which I had never been able to let go.

I am so thankful for letting go. I have cemented life-long friendships through my music and made for myself a family where I never had one. Folks like Greg and Shelly Williams of Powderhorn, Colorado, the Pringles and Evelyn from Gunnison, and the Van Berkums are as close to family as I'll ever know. While I gave them music without really thinking about what it meant to them, they gave me faith. Folks as ornery as Dave Brown and as hard-working as Dean and Karen May have given me their loyalty and friendship—no small gift.

My name is Will...it's always been Will. I'll never see a sunrise I can't appreciate and hope I never know a tragedy or face an obstacle that can't be surmounted. I am alone, but we all are at some point in our lives. I'm also headed toward your town, wherever you are. I just don't know when I'll get there.

In October I started working again in Wickenburg and Phoenix. I'm lucky this year. I got to sing on “Sonoran Living” this month, a Phoenix TV show, and I was filmed for a future show on the travel channel. I've been pitching songs to film and television shows and have had to get help with bookings. If anyone wonders, this work I do has nothing to do with fame or fortune. I have to sing just like I have to breathe. It's who I am and, all in all, this has been the very best year of my life. Flesh and blood withers and dies, but love survives, and mine is strong. I have two gifts to give: my time and my music. What I seem to give best, besides grief because I'm ornery, is music—my expression of joy and love. It's all I have; it's what I have to give. My mother gave it to me and told me to pass it on. And everybody knows that you should do what your mama tells you.

Thank You, My Friends - December 18, 2005
Merry Christmas—and no, I don't care if I'm not all that politically correct. I would also like to wish a Happy Chanukah to my dear friend Alys in my home town of Walsenburg and to her brother Peter in Nashville and their family in New York. Also, a very special Merry Christmas to the Van Berkums, the Gants, the Pringles, the Mays, the Gordons, the Williams' and, of course, the Browns and the Loftis family here in Arizona. These are all families who own ranches that I work for on a continual basis—families that have enabled me to fulfill the sweetest dream of my childhood—to be able to make a living as a cowboy singer.

The other night I was down in Paradise Valley performing at a private party for the Brown Family Communities here in Arizona. It was a beautiful outdoor concert in the kind of weather that only this valley of the sun seems to experience. The concert was up near the top of Camelback Mountain, and playing there meant that the lights of Phoenix and the waxing moon were the backdrop for the stage. I don't know if I could have played for nicer people or had a better time in a more beautiful place.

I was also offered the opportunity to entertain a very special wedding party here in Wickenburg at the Rancho de los Caballeros. The really neat thing about that gig was the opportunity to meet these good people, among whom was one of the sons of Sandra Day O'Connor, an Arizona native and retiring Supreme Court Justice.

The life I live and the work I accept affords me opportunities to not just sing for people but to interact and really have the opportunity to gain an impression of the people I sing for. I don't know if theater shows and bar gigs are as fulfilling, but that's just me.

I got a call this morning from Terri Beecher, one of the owners of the Out West Saddlery in Pagosa Springs, Colorado; I would like to wish her and her husband the very best of holidays. They drove 80 miles to see one of my shows in September up in Colorado, bringing with them a number of their friends in the hospitality and horse business, and I consider that an act of friendship by wonderful people. Thanks, Terri...thanks, Bob.

My winter in Phoenix has been productive and heartening. I've been filmed twice and appeared on Sonoran Living, a local television show that aired Nov. 28th. The good thing about that was that I played a brand new song and received some very nice emails from some of the ABC viewers here in the valley of the sun. I can't wait to get this one recorded. It started as a poem for a folk singer named Tracy Grammer. She was moving from Oregon to Massachusetts, and I wanted to give her something from the heart. Being a working musician isn't everything people often make it out to be. To me it's oftentimes a blurry existence of meeting many people. Truth is, though, I want to meet and say hello to everyone. Here's the poem, which found its own melody:

I can't shake the dust off of these boots any more. They've been down too many back roads, and out too many doors.
I left pieces of me behind. There's pieces in places I'll never find again.
But, oh, my friend...

I have lived this life how I chose from the start.
I bit the dust and I plucked the rose; I held the moon right to my heart.
I lost it all in just one throw, but still I held on to my soul.
I'm a better man, I know, for those dreams that I let go.

I can't shake the dust off of these boots any more.
They've been down too many back roads, out too many doors.
But still there's roads I've yet to find,
Memories I've got to make before my time unwinds.

I can't shake the dust off of these boots any more.
And I'm wondering how I ever thought I could, and that's for sure.
’Cause these dusty boots remind me of those friends I left behind me,
Of those I'll never find, and this road right here that winds before me...
I can't shake the dust off of these boots any more.

What Does it Mean to You? - December 8, 2005
It's getting close to Christmas. Just a few days ago, I entertained at a Christmas luncheon at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona. I talked with a number of WWII veterans. One of them was a newlywed; why was I so surprised at that? He had known his bride for 60 years; in fact, she was the sister of his own first wife who passed away a number of years ago. Naturally, I sang 'em "I'm my own grandma"...

My notion of Christmas is fairly traditional, but I have no immediate family. I like to give to strangers anonymously during this season. I would suggest it to anyone who lives in comfort and isn't being strained too badly by doing so. It's a good time to give it up.

I started doing this by accident when I was a young widower who bought presents anyway. I saw things I knew Joyce would have liked, then bought them—but it made me sad. I was feeding my sorrow. So I decided to feed my joy by giving those gifts to strangers that I imagined might appreciate them. It was healing for me. It renewed me somehow to think of people appreciating a gift given to them in a random act of kindness. I wouldn't do that kind of stuff any more—I'm far too selfish—but when I was young, I knew in my soul that giving to another unconditionally is the greatest gift you can give yourself.

There are a lot of gifts. You could show up at the shelter some day and help feed the homeless. You just never know—you might see your long lost best pal from the eighth grade there. You could teach a child how to give; imagine the joy you could discover within by teaching this. From a child, you could learn how to give just by smiling, listening, and then listening again in the effort to understand. Kids love it when you pay attention to them. And even though most of what they say is senseless and immature, if you sift through it a little bit, you can learn all kinds of goofy trivial information. You might even discover a little human being lurking inside that child.

Or...maybe you could send a fruitcake to that neighbor you dislike. He might like the gift, and you could mend a fence there accidentally on purpose! Now I know that all you folks out there have already taken care of your immediate family's Christmas (yeah, sure), so it's time to ask yourself again...who needs your help? Who can you give to, and what should you give?

Carol and Fred Celebrate 50 Years - December 3, 2005
Last night Carol and Fred and a very large extended family of theirs celebrated their 50 years of marriage. Something this special has always amazed me. The Kay El Bar Guest Ranch in Wickenburg was theirs last night; and all the way from Massachusetts and Los Angeles, they met here and are enjoying the hospitality of the ranch and the company of their loved ones at this special time in Fred and Carol's lives. Here's a poem for them—the lyrics to a song I wrote with Tony Martin...

Her auburn hair has turned to white, and the laugh lines only make her blue.
But when he looks into her eyes, he still sees the girl he knew. He feels the same. Nothing's Changed.

The boy she loves is old and gray, but in her heart he's still eighteen.
If love is young, then so are they. The added years don't mean a thing. She feels the same. Nothing's changed

And though the years weigh on their shoulders, and to the eye they're growing older, where the lines on their faces trace their joys and their pains,
Time may have aged them, it hasn't really changed them, for the love they have always shared remains. Nothing's changed

Years go by, seasons fly, colors change upon the leaves. When winter calls, the leaf will fall; but through it all there stands the tree, and love's the same. Nothing's changed.

And though the years weigh on their shoulders, and to the eye they're growing older, where the lines on their faces trace their joys and their pains.
Time may have aged them; it hasn't really changed them. For the love they have always shared remains. Nothing's Changed.

Glory Bound - December 2, 2005
Last night I looked up through the stars at all that I could see,
And it looked just like a road to me that rolls eternally
past these mortal dreams into a greater mystery.
I just know that something wicked good there waits for us to see

It's wonderin’ what it is that waits that keeps my fire strong,
And roll I will through these hills until my spirit's gone.
Buckle down and making ground past cities, farms, and towns.
Living like I ought to, every minute glory bound.

I know there was a gypsy somewhere in my family's bones,
Whose spirit's shaped my destiny and found in me a home.
Don't know where the music comes from, but the weather's fair and warm,
And I love to feel the promise of this road that we are on.

It's wonderin’ what it is ahead that keeps my fire strong,
And roll I will through these hills until my spirit's gone.
Buckle down and making ground past cities, farms and towns.
Living like I ought to, every mile glory bound.

And I just can't comprehend a proper thanks for what I've seen,
So I'll dance around the fire just in case the world should need
A little joy, a little fun, a little dance, a little song,
A little smile to warm the others who are on their own way home.

And it's wonderin’ what it is ahead that keeps my fire strong.
So roll I will through these hills until my spirit's gone.
Buckle down and making ground past cities, farms, and towns.
Living like I ought to, every minute glory bound.

The Sun Shines Just Enough Here in the Valley of the Sun - November 27, 2005
There were folks from Florida, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Germany in the saloon last night. Hoi pulloi- ing was going on all over the place, and just by looking at their faces, I could see a million stories. One of the big shots was the owner of a casino up in Nevada, and some of the others had their kids with them— out for dinner after a hard day golfing or riding the trails on this little parcel of Arizona.

When the sun goes down out here in the valley of the sun, a lot of people look to the west and thank their personal saviors for a day spent in paradise. Then what better way to spend the evening than a drink and some light entertainment before dinner in the dining room, surrounded by nice people, good food, and every star in the heavens.

When I look into the night sky from the desert near Wickenburg, I'm seeing something more clearly than every soul in every smoggy city from Hong Kong to Berlin. The horses like it, too, and the barn cats have been known to join me for some midnight stargazing. I love this place. The sun shines just enough here in the valley of the sun.
The Cleveland Giddyup Gals and One Impressed Cowboy... - November 15, 2005
Last night I had the privilege of entertaining the Cleveland contingent of the "Giddyup Gals", a dozen women who have known each other since childhood, who all grew up together, went to school together, and are now passing into their 40’s together. They told me that between them, they now have 27 children who are growing up together also.

The lesson of their friendship is not lost on me. The bond of sisterhood and friendship they feel will never be something I'll understand; but to all of them I say, “I am AMAZED—in awe of you collectively and individually. I can only remember nine of the twelve names. I did ask Elizabeth to pass on a hug to each of you. And the first one of you I was introduced to was Wendy...how wonderful and appropriate. I hope none of you ever grow up, and this poem is for all of you. I wrote it last spring when I met the Phoenix chapter of the Giddyup Gals...

It's Mother's Day, and the Giddyup Girls are riding down the canyon,
Down to the wagon where the Giddyup boys are gathered to serenade 'em.
And as the sun retreats and bids us all a fond adieu,
The Giddyup Girls prepare themselves to greet the summer moon.
Deep in the heart of Mother Nature, deep in the mountains in a wild Sonoran desert,
In a valley you can't get to unless your horse and the desert choose,
They dance beneath the diamond skies with the ones who love ‘em true.

Those Giddyup Girls, they're regular pearls, diamonds every one.
Born to ride, and they’ve been places few have ever gone.
And once a year they meet right here beneath the desert moon,
To be treated like the queens they are by the ones who love ‘em true.

Deep in the heart of Mother Nature, Deep in the mountains in a wild Sonoran desert,
In a valley you can't get to unless your horse and the desert choose,
They dance beneath the diamond skies with the ones who love 'em true.

To Lisa, I say thanks for giving me the newer, funnier version of "He's a Cowboy", and for Katie, I say Aye, yi yi...Katie...

The Power of Love - November 6, 2005
I've been singing in Wickenburg, Arizona, entertaining groups of visitors from California to New Jersey. I've found that the most requested song by far that I do is ''Ladies and Jellybeans", a children’s song I wrote the music for a few years ago. Interestingly enough, in a Western Horseman review of my new CD "True Lies and Other Legends", it was one song that the reviewer didn't seem to like. I suspect the review was written by an adult who took the lyrics far too seriously.

Last night 150 people—at least a dozen kids among them—enjoyed a cookout and campfire at Yucca Flats, the cookout location for the Rancho de los Caballeros. During that time, I was flattered by the many people who already knew my music— evidenced by large numbers of requests for my self-penned material. "Slim and Jenny", a tribute to lasting relationships, was requested twice; and the power of love and the gift of music was made clear to me once again.

Arizona - October 22, 2005
I'm living in the high desert near Prescott, Arizona, near where Snoopy's cousin lives, and I’m singing the cowboy songs around the campfires at the Kay El Bar and Rancho de los Caballeros guest ranches in Wickenburg. Three years ago I didn't know if I'd ever walk right again, much less sing again. Now the weather's good, the nights are incredible, and the stars are out.

The day after tomorrow, I'll be celebrating my 50th birthday; and I'm not just alive, I'm alive and well. I recorded 14 new songs this summer; with the right luck, I might have a record out by spring. Meantime, all the money from CD sales on the website are still going to the Red Cross. When the ink dries on the bottom line, I hope I've done well, and given enough.

-----GIVE----- - September 2, 2005
All the dough from the sale of the CD's on my website goes to the Red Cross until Jan. 1, 2006. I won't even see the money; it goes directly from CDBaby to the Red Cross. Would you buy a CD for a friend for Christmas, knowing the money goes to help the folks in New Orleans and across the gulf coast?

How the Garden Grows - August 27, 2005
Last night I played at Waunita Hot Springs, and for the first time since I can remember, Ryan wasn't there. His son Colby's football team was playing in Delta, and Ryan was doing the play-by-play for the radio station that covers the high school team.

On the way home this morning, I saw a remarkable sunrise over the Sangre de Cristos as I was coming down valley toward LaVeta Pass.

On Wednesday, I was in the studio in Alamosa. Don's studio is a small one, but the corn growing out the window is TALL. He has a wonderful green thumb and has been growing sweet corn, peas, beans, dill, squash, and other vegetables. What a wonderful preoccupation for the master bass player/stringed instrument utility player Don Richmond. Bo was his usual amazing self on drums, and Jim's piano playing only made Evelyn Roper’s voice sound better. We recorded two songs she wrote. One is a duet that I hope will go on my next project.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning - August 24, 2005
Today is studio day. Don Richmond, Bo Seawell,
Jim Stadler, Ev Roper, and all their muses fill the atmosphere in Alamosa. It's going to be fun. Studio days are the best, and I'm excited about today. I'm recording a song someone else wrote—which is lending my voice—which is something that takes a lot of thought and a bit of time needed to think about the how’s and why's.

I hope everyone who reads this feels the same anticipation—like a 2-year-old might have for a whole new experience, a whole new day, God's gift, our joy. And if you wake up a little glum, GET OVER IT. Imagine how lucky you might be today. You could catch that big fish; you could even ride a beautiful horse; and if not really, then in your mind. And if you see a cloud, then isn't it a beautiful cloud? And isn't it wonderful that the ability to see it and appreciate its beauty is yours.

Under an Opal Moon - August 6, 2005
It's Saturday, Aug. 6th. I've been singing for six nights a week now since Memorial Day weekend. I've been logging somewhere over a thousand miles a week on my Jeep and have seen some incredible sights and met some extraordinary people.

A huge bull elk was at the top of Monarch Pass last week. It was around 11 pm when he fell into my headlights. He was moving away from the car thankfully, but the sight he was surveying prior to my interruption was the view from the summit—which on a moonlit night is unsurpassed in beauty.

I've met kids with their mouths stuffed with S'mores and parents grateful to be out of the city and into the mountains, and I’ve entertained them all as best I could. If all goes well, I'll be in Ireland next month and Arizona in October, entertaining once again at the Rancho de los Caballeros and for the elder hostels for which I've been singing for a number of years.

I've also been recording this summer (on my day off?) and will hopefully conclude the music for the next project by the second week in September. The website jukeboxsparrows.com has chosen one of my CD's as the independent CD of the year, and radio airplay, though sparse, is growing. My next project will sound very different to those familiar with my music. Evelyn Roper, who harmonized on my previous 3 CD's, is playing a larger role on the next project and has written two of the songs we hope to release. We will also be singing a duet on this as-yet-unnamed CD.

Roy, New Mexico Park Event - July 17, 2005
It was a beautiful drive to Roy—a sunny day down a two-lane blacktop through the Comanche Grasslands to this community on the plains. With just me and my guitar in the Gazebo, folks were dancing in the street and enjoying potluck dinners at picnic tables in this park filled with kids swinging, sliding, and climbing, parents laughing and enjoying the evening, and old folks reminiscing, holding hands, and enjoying a perfect summer evening in a small town park. The setting was more Rockwell than real, and the people were not only wonderful to meet, they were sad to see the day end. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

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© 2006 Will Dudley

These Arizona Highways
Four Corners to Mexico
They set my spirit wandering
And you know I'm bound to go
When my rambling's over
And I've lost the urge to roam
These Arizona Highways
Will always bring me home.

My wheels might take me clear across this country
I might hop a train and leave today
Silver wings might fly me over clouds and rainbows
Or I could saddle up my horse and simply ride away

Down Arizona Highways
Through the Land of the Navajo
It sets my spirits wandering
And you know I'm bound to go
When my rambling's over
And I've lost the urge to roam
Arizona Highways will always bring me home.

I love to see my flag down at the courthouse
And the friendly smiles on folks I've come to know
These highways light my way just like a lighthouse
To help the weary traveler on his way back home.

Arizona highways take me back to where I'm from
Kingman to New Mexico
Through the valley of the sun
When my rambling's over
And I've lost the urge to roam
Arizona Highways will always bring me home.

I have a story to tell, it's a short one filled with love. My younger brother, a foreign service officer stationed in Iraq, died on the 18th of February. His name was Jon Dublin, and when we stood side by side, there was no mistaking that we were brothers, although our personalities were as different as root beer and doctor pepper. I wrote this poem about me and Jon years ago. We used to fish in the Middlefork River in Champaign county, Illinois when we were only 8 and 7 years old. The biggest things we caught were crawdads, minnows, and the occasional catfish. The reason we fished was so we could jump in the river and cool off on those hot summer days. Looking back, we were swimming in shallow water, barely to our knees, but those days were some of the happiest of my life. We'd put baloney and cheese on an old fishing hook, tie it to a string and a stick, and that's how we fished. This poem is for my brother Jon, dedicated to his memory with every piece of my heart wishing he were still among us.

Jon and I were 9 years old
We were headed to the fishin and the swimming hole,
A bucket of worms and an old cane pole,
We were both forever young

It was a two mile hike down to the river
Thru the fields and cattle pastures
We’d take half the morning just to get there
Me and Little Jon

Hey, Little Jon
Little Jon
The corn is high beneath the summer sun
Morning’s hot and the river’s cold, and we ain’t ever growing old
Forever young, both me and little Jon

I’d talk mom out of a dollar
And we’d head uptown for an ice cold root beer
Then disappear down towards the river
Easy as you please

We’d cool our feet in muddy waters,
Bait our hooks with big nightcrawlers
Listen to the sounds of summer
Drifting thru the trees

The boy I grew up with is gone
He’s on a wall in Washington
I got a 15 year old son
Who answers to his name

My hair is thin, and my youth is gone
But thru the eyes of Little Jon
The river’s running on and on
Me and Little Jon

Little Jon...Little Jon
The corn is high beneath the summer sun
The morning's hot, and the river's cold
And we ain't ever growing old
Forever young, me and little Jon.

You don't get rich driving up and down these mountain roads. You just pray you make it.
Keep yer eyes peeled on the road out in front of you and hope that guy in the other lane ain't drunk
or half asleep. Somebody's out to get you, don't you forget it, don't lose your concentration, drink the
water cold, keep the windows half down. I love my little Jeep Cherokee, it gets the job done. I have one hundred
thirty two thousand, eight hundred fifty miles on mine, I'm hoping for three hundred thousand, and if I continue
treating the car like the friend it is, I'll get there.

When I get to my gigs alive, I say a silent prayer. I see myself being hurt sometimes in my imagination, and try to remind myself not to
drive too fast, act belligerent toward other drivers, or fall asleep. I don't run any red lights and respect the yellow ones.
Man, I love this job.
My name's Will. I don't drink much but a few beers or a glass of red wine every now and then and I live this
marvelous existence of a cowboy singer.
There's no way to anoint a cowboy singer, I just are one. Too crazy to work, too restless to keep still,
too busy noodlin on this guitar. I got fired down at the feedlot and and left with no choice. I never did
care much for the smell of that place, anyway, Tornadoes every spring, and a desire to move to the mountains
during hurricane and tornado seasons! Sounded good when I thought of it, so I left West by God Texas, moved myself and my horses to
Southern by God Colorado, and took this job dude wranglin one year long ago and far away.
Pretty soon I was singing for the dudes and pack horses, drawing low wages and fantastic tips for singin whenever the hell
they seemed to want. So I quit wrangling for just one boss, and got these jobs singing one night a week at different ranches and for different outfitters.
Good work if you can get it, I guess. It didn't hurt to do that video with Charlie Daniels and Ian Tyson,
and then those boys from the Burrito Brothers and the Byrds and the Nash Ramblers pickin on my first record was kind of a stroke of good luck.
You might say I stumbled into this line of work.

Some things have to be believed to be seen. I read that on a card.
Or in a magazine.

I have gigs out near Denver and Phoenix,
and in Texas and New Mexico, and Nevada as well. I don't think there's much call for a cowboy singer in Milwaukee or New York or Atlanta, but in Shawnee, Colorado and Wickenburg Arizona, Billings, Montana and Elko, Nevada, they can't seem to get enough of singing about horses, cows, and hard work.

Not to change the subject, but I just went to the kitchen and looked out the window. There was this fat lady across the street holding the hand of another fat lady with her hair tied up in such a way as to remind me of a Polynesian... Samoan or Hawaiian. One was wearing a mu mu. They both got into an old Oldsmobile, and the bumper scraped as they backed into the street.
I don't think those ladies would do well on a horse.

3: Another wonderful distraction occured on July 31st of 2005.
I was right at the top of Monarch Pass, it was a Friday night and I was driving home to Walsenburg, Colorado, and I saw an elk at the edge of my headlights turning away. He was huge, incredible. He had a rack like a great crown, and it occured me that some elk are called Monarch Elk, and this one was at the summit of Monarch Pass. It's called that, I think, because the mountains from this vantage are formed in a ring, like a huge crown of mountains, miles high, laid on the earth. That must be true, it's far too beautiful, if there is such a thing, at the summit of Monarch Pass. Under moonlight, and when snow tops the peaks, it's like a jeweled crown. But this was summer, and I was thinking that this might be the King of elks, coming up to survey his kingdom, to view his crown and feel the strength of the earth, his own mother.

Praise the Lord, here comes another freaking song:


I gambled and won, and I lost and was gone
There are a very few winners I've known.
I been a sinner and saint I am blessed cause I ain't
But an orphan in search of a home.

I rambled from Austin to Denver to Phoenix
To Hell's Gate, right down to Wherever.
The wide River Styx to the jail on Fort Bliss,
(nothing and) noone's forever...

We could die in Tsunamis or crash on the levies
or be cursed with a plague noone knows.
If you come back from that last trembling gasp
Buddy, tell me so both of us know.

My horses are strong, and my past is all gone, and
my future's a tale I don't know.
Lightning could strike, I could fall off a bike,
Or die on the curb in the snow

But I'm breathing today,
And each night I pray
When I go, I'll be
happily, peacefully gone
I'm blessed by my friends,
I know life never ends,
It just changes from darkness to dawn.
As time, and the earth roll on.

I was a rebellious middle child, third of six. I have four sisters and once had a brother.
My father was a sergeant in the Air Force
SO
When I was 17 I joined the navy.
At 19, married
@20, I was in the Tonkin Gulf, off of Vietnam, doing my part as a veteran of that war.
At 22, I was widowed. Her boyfriend was driving, it happened near Seattle.
I was in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of Iran on that day in 1974, and it took 13 days for the government to get me home. I missed the funeral. I got out of the navy the next year, and got drunk for 2 years.
When I was 25, I was singing in the bars in Seattle, starting to write songs, and learning how to be a troubador.
When I was 27, I was doing the same thing in Chicago, where the wife was from and where she
is buried. More than anything, I wanted to keep singing. I played folk clubs and tried to find a direction. I met Steve Goodman and saw a light. He had recorded an album in Nashville, "Somebody Else's Troubles", so that's where I went. A good troubador writes songs,and the place for learning that craft was Nashville for me. I went there, and a long, slow disintegration began. I eventually dropped out of college, and I met thieves, con artists, drug dealers and strongarm men, all claiming to be songwriters of great talent, all wanting to be the next big thing out of Nashville in the country music biz. I met Townes Van Zandt and Taz Digregorio. Townes was a ghost of a man already dying from too much life when I met him, Taz was Charlie Daniels' piano player. They both wrote great songs and took music seriously enough that they made sure I knew that dedication is lifelong and that's not a joke. A musician serves a master.
When I was 28, I enrolled in a Baptist College in Nashville, studied music business and continued writing songs.
I carpentered, waited tables, sang tableside in restaurants for tips, sometimes drank too much, and learned as much as I could about the music business in that state.
Taz showed me the reality of the work ethic of dedicated musicians. He drank heavy sometimes, and was no saint, either. He and I were recording one night in the studio at the Baptist College with a 5th of
Jim Beam under his piano and a six pack on ice. Security busted us. They frown on liquor in Baptist Colleges, not