Voice in the American West – serie

From the Texas panhandle to the mountains of Arizona, Amy Auker has lived the cowboy life—as wife, as mother, as cook, as ranch hand, as writer. In fine-grained detail she captures the prairie light, the traffic on small farm-to-market roads, the vacant stillness of shipping pens when fall works are over.But she also captures the unmistakable westernness of the people and creatures around her: the son who must get back on the horse that just bucked him off, the husband who gives great gifts, the animals whose names and temperaments are as recognizable as family. Auker understands those who live in the sway of nature’s moods far off the main roads, and she commends them to us in luminous prose backlit by her own hard-earned experience.

Glenn Ohrlin (1926–2015) was a cowboy singer, working cowboy, rodeo rider, storyteller, and illustrator. In The Hell-Bound Train he has gathered dozens of his favorite songs, which chronicle the range and rodeo life he lived. Ohrlin was known for singing in an unornamented Western style, accompanying himself on the guitar and harmonica. Most of his repertoire comes from the period of 1875 to 1925. The book includes music and lyrics for songs such as “My Home’s in Montana,” “The Texas Rangers,” and “Bull Riders in the Sky,” along with Ohrlin’s commentary on each work’s provenance and meaning. This collection is a must-have for any fan of cowboy and folk music.

From his home on the Texas Panhandle, John R. Erickson, rancher and author of the bestselling Hank the Cowdog series, saw firsthand the raw power of two megafires that swept across the high plains in 2006 and 2017. "These were landmark events that are etched onto the memory of an entire generation and will be passed down to the next. They made the old-time methods of fighting fire with shovels, wet gunny sacks, and ranch spray rigs a pathetic joke."Yet Bad Smoke, Good Smoke, while relating a tale of gut-wrenching destruction, also provides a more nuanced view of what is often a natural event, giving the two-sided story of our relationship with fire. Not just a first-hand account, Bad Smoke, Good Smoke also synthesizes and explains the latest research in range management, climate, and fire. Having experienced the bad smoke, Erickson tries to understand a rancher's relationship to good smoke and to reconcile the symbiotic relationship that a rancher has with fire.Evocatively chronicled, Erickson tells what it is like trying to stop the unstoppable: Bad Smoke, Good Smoke gives voice to the particular pains that ranchers must face in our era of climate change and ever more powerful natural disasters.

I've been there before And I'll try it again But any fool knows That there's no way to winThose lyrics have been sung by Ray Charles, Norah Jones, Nancy Sinatra, Dean Martin, and George Strait; even Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis have performed an arrangement of "Here We Go Again." This legendary song, and a host of other hits, were written by Russell Don "Red" Steagall. He has released fourteen of his own albums. He has performed for President Reagan and other heads of state and has made three tours to the Middle East, East Asia, Europe, Australia, and South America. This is in addition to his dabbling in acting and hosting radio and TV programs. Now a bona fide global star, Red was raised in a small oil field town in the Texas Panhandle. Before wrangling with polio at age 15, he was already a fixture on the rodeo bull-riding circuit. Music was his rehabilitation therapy. This is a story of how Western culture permuted through twentieth-century America. In 1985, when country music changed, Red changed too. He began writing cowboy poetry and cowboy songs, with his music emphasizing the Western lifestyle that he loves. As a producer, as a host, as a broadcaster, and as a multihyphenate award-winning artist, he never forgot his roots and he never failed to bring the West to everyone he encountered.

From his home on the Texas Panhandle, John R. Erickson, rancher and author of the bestselling Hank the Cowdog series, saw firsthand the raw power of two megafires that swept across the high plains in 2006 and 2017. “These were landmark events that are etched onto the memory of an entire generation and will be passed down to the next. They made the old-time methods of fighting fire with shovels, wet gunny sacks, and ranch spray rigs a pathetic joke.”Yet Bad Smoke, Good Smoke, while relating a tale of gut-wrenching destruction, also provides a more nuanced view of what is often a natural event, giving the two-sided story of our relationship with fire. Not just a first-hand account, Bad Smoke, Good Smoke also synthesizes and explains the latest research in range management, climate, and fire. Having experienced the bad smoke, Erickson tries to understand a rancher’s relationship to good smoke and to reconcile the symbiotic relationship that a rancher has with fire.Evocatively chronicled, and now newly updated with information from the 2024 Smokehouse Creek Fire, Erickson tells what it is like trying to stop the unstoppable. Bad Smoke, Good Smoke gives voice to the particular pains that ranchers must face in our era of climate change and ever more powerful natural disasters.

More than fifty years ago, John R. Erickson took a vow of discipline. Every day, he would retreat to some quiet place and write for four hours. For nearly as many years, readers have eagerly awaited the fruits of those labors, whether they be in the form of Hank the Cowdog installments or other books on ranching and the writing life in Texas.Small Town Author documents the journey of a young man eager to escape his Panhandle childhood to the adult who returned to write books for the rural readers he had previously scorned.The hurricane years of the '60s swept young Erickson to Denver, Austin, Cambridge, New York, and back. From big city to small town, from social activist to flunky bartender, from church work to ranch work, from literary aspirations to self-publishing, this winding path gave contemporary literature one of its singular voices.Erickson’s journey as an artist also intersected with much of the Texas literati. He documents his memories of J. Evetts Haley, Larry McMurtry, Al Dewlen, Elmer Kelton, and many others.While a story about literature and writers, Small Town Author also considers universal questions of how we come of age, how leaving home changes us, and how returning can make us whole.

Born in San Antonio, raised in Lubbock, Bob Livingston drank from the same water that nourished musicians like Terry Allen, Joe Ely, Lloyd Maines, Jesse Taylor, Butch Hancock, and others who were surfing the wake of Buddy Holly, Sonny Curtis, and the Crickets. He then made his way to Austin and installed himself among the progenitors of the Cosmic Cowboy movement, as bass player for The Lost Gonzo Band, musicians who played outlaw country music and broke the rules (and the laws) that didn’t suit them.After that, Livingston took his Lost Gonzo Band on the road to all corners of the earth, from India to Africa to Europe. He eventually made it  back to Texas, and these days Livingston is fostering cross cultural music of all kinds. He’s produced countless albums, written more songs than he can remember, and is excited to tell you about it all in this book, the story of his fascinating life.