ProRodeo Sports News - August 7, 2020

Humorist Baxter Black releasing audio books Back to Black COWBOY POETRY VIDEO

BY MATT NABER T raveling thousands of miles in the rodeo rig is a fact of life in ProRodeo, and with it comes a special bond between cowboys and their stereo. But you can only listen to your buddy’s “Summer Jams 2020” playlist so many times before even Chris LeDoux starts to sound like a cattle branding gone wrong.

Buffalo, Alberta. Many of Black’s stories were inspired by personal experience, such as a heartbreaking incident while living in Denver when the woman he loved turned down his marriage proposal. “I had the ring in my hand and said I was going to tear her out of my heart, so I filled my tequila bottle and stuck it in my shirt and started walking until someone turned my lights out,” Black said. “I was walking up I-25 at about 10 p.m. with four lanes on both sides and I’d walked until South Broadway and then ran out of tequila.” “Hey Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky” was originally recorded in 1993. “Hey Cowgirl, Need A Ride” was recorded in 2005. Black is in the finishing stages of recording “Ride, Cowboy, Ride! 8 Seconds Ain’t That Long.” “It’s rural, funny and not political,” Black said. “By accident, everything I’ve done is just because I shoot so many arrows into the sky and hope they come down, and sometimes they do.” Black has been a mainstay on the ProRodeo scene for decades, often found speaking at events during the National Finals Rodeo, including opening the awards banquets in 1990-92. It was around that time, his first novel, “Hey Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?” was published and sold more than 100,000 copies. That was also when he began a 10-year stint of having columns published in ProRodeo Sports News. More recently, his poem “I Know You’ll Miss This Man” was read at Charlie Daniels’ funeral. His weekly column is still printed in 126 newspapers, and his radio program reaches 185 markets. He is also onThe Cowboy Channel’s “Out there With Baxter Black.”

Fortunately for cowboys or anyone else who spends an ample amount of time in a vehicle, Baxter Black is working on a 23-hour long remedy, a series of audio books set for release on CD in September and as a download on baxterblack.com. Black’s poems and stories have gone from print to TV – with the likes of Johnny Carson and Dolly Parton – to being included in the movie 8 Seconds. Once again, his words are getting another life as “Baxter Black’s Re- Ride Rodeo Audio Book Collection.” “We’re selling three audio books in real life (on CD) for the old guys in the audience, but the audience I’m aiming for are the guys going up and down the road pulling a horse going for who knows how long,” Black said. “It’s something everyone can laugh at.” Black calls them “three different books, three different cowboy routes.” “If someone asks what I did, I rode horses, fixed cows and made cowboys laugh,” Black said. “If I did anything on Earth that was it.” Black started as a livestock veterinarian for 13 years, but life took a turn around 1980.

“Entertainment hijacked my vet profession and I became a cowboy poet, so I know what traveling is,” he said. “I did 2,500 jobs in my lifetime, and you’re always going somewhere.” Each book is set in a different place,

all rodeo hotspots – Las Cruces, N.M., and Texas; Las Vegas and Idaho; Buffalo, S.D., and

“There’s a sort of cowboy mentality, and the real way to understand the cowboy mentality is this joke: Put your hand up in front of your face with your palm on your nose, then, repeat after me, ‘I bet you can’t hit my hand before I move it.’ … If there’s an easy way, we’re not going that way.” – BAXTER BLACK

ProRodeo Sports News 8/7/2020

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