Performers' Biographies
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The 20th Annual Wednesday through Sunday January 14-18, 2009 20performers’ Biographies Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard Arvada, Colorado 80003 720-898-7200 www.arvadacenter.org ELI BARSI of Rockaway Beach, JERRY BROOKS (Brooksie) of Missouri, is a full time musical Sevier, Utah, still likes reciting cowgirl, growing up on a ranch poetry – mostly cowboy poetry! and once living the western life, She was raised in New England she now travels internationally where she worked on horse farms singing and writing about this schooling green jumpers. Having lifestyle. She is an award winning the wanderlust of youth, she head- recording artist originally from the ed west and fell in love with the prairies of Saskatchewan Canada beauty of south central Utah and now based out of the Ozarks of the Tushar Mountains. Retired Missouri. She has recorded ten after 26 years as an underground CDs, released numerous charting coalmine foreman, she’s perfectly radio hits, and had three videos on happy to caretake an 80-acre CMT. Her show is lively family fun, a true western experience - stretch of Clear Creek Canyon, encourage water to run down- with smooth vocals, great yodeling, strong musicianship, hill, cut firewood, and shoot whistle pigs. Brooksie has been compelling originals, and tasteful standards all paying tribute featured on compilations CDs produced by the Bar-D Ranch to our Western Heritage. (CowboyPoetry.com). She’s nearly finished with her first solo project, a CD called Shoulder to Shoulder – her recitations of classic western poetry which includes Buck Ramsey’s masterpiece Anthem. BILL BARWICK of Denver, Colorado, is hailed as a cowboy’s cowboy-song singer, and accom- panied by superb guitar work, DEB CARPENTER-NOLTING Bill’s singing, songwriting and sto- of Bushnell, Nebraska, had rytelling are a performance not to Nebraska homesteaders for great- be missed. Nominated 2008 grandparents, and Deb was raised Western Music Male Vocalist of with a great appreciation of family the Year, by both the Academy of history as well as the history of Western Artists and the Western place. Deb, a teacher by trade, has Music Association. Bill appears taught in one-room schools, high regularly at Denver’s historic school and college classes on the Buckhorn Exchange. You might Pine Ridge Reservation, and com- also recognize him as the on-air spokesperson for Encore position classes at Chadron State television’s Westerns Channel, or the numerous radio and TV College in Nebraska. Married to ads he’s done. An award-winning entertainer and songwriter, gifted Western poet Tim Nolting, Bill’s albums all feature great western music and that deep, she currently teaches English and College Composition class- rich voice. es at Gering High School. Deb is also a freelance writer, poet, songwriter, and performing artist; a proud mother of two grown daughters, and a breast cancer survivor. BAXTER BLACK of Benson, Arizona, can shoe a horse, string a bob wire fence and bang out a JON CHANDLER of Commerce Bob Wills classic on his flat top City, Colorado, is a Spur Award- guitar. Cowboy poet, and former winning author and a unique large animal veterinarian, he was singer of the West. He has per- raised in New Mexico, spent his formed across the country, from workin’ life in the mountain west Washington D.C. to San Antonio, tormenting cows, now he travels from the Ryman Auditorium in the country tormenting cowboys. Nashville to the National Cowboy He still doesn’t own a television Poetry Gathering in Elko. Known or a cell phone, and his idea of a as a superb wordsmith, his new modern convenience is Velcro chaps. Since 1982, Baxter Black CD, The Grand Dame of the has been rhyming his way into the national spotlight. He’s Rockies was released in written several books, recorded over a dozen audio and video December to rave reviews. The tapes, CDs and DVDs, and has achieved notoriety as a syndi- host of America’s Soul Live!, a televised monthly concert series, cated columnist, radio commentator, and more recently with his he is the recipient of the 2009 Editors’ Choice Best of the West TV program Out There on RFD-TV. From the Tonight Show and Award as Best Living Solo Musician of the West from True PBS to NPR and the NFR, Baxter’s wacko verse has been West Magazine. Together with Ernie Martinez and Butch seen and heard by millions. He can be followed nationwide Hause, they are The Wichitones. Jon has recorded many through his column, National Public Radio, public appear- musical albums and has authored many books. ances, television and also through his books, CDs, videos and website, www.baxterblack.com. DORIS DALEY of Turner Valley, MIKE FLEMING of Santa Clarita, Alberta, Canada, comes from a California, grew up in Colorado gene pool in Southern Alberta where he developed his perfor- that includes Mounties, cowboys, mance and songwriting skills in desperados, fancy two-steppers, theater and music, including sev- sorry team ropers, and good pie eral years as a Barnstormer at the makers. She comes to the festi- Country Dinner Playhouse. He has val this year with a brand new been described by reviewers as CD, Beneath a Western Sky. “a creative and perceptive song- Play these poems to your calves writer” whose work is “among the and watch them gain weight! Doris has been an emcee and most innovative in Western featured poet at every cowboy festival in Canada and many in Music.” Mike has won the the United States. She is one of only three Canadian cowboy Academy of Western Artists Will Rogers - Best Western poets who has never roped a bear. Doris has many additional Swing Song award for Sometimes This Old Cowboy Gets the CDs available. Blues, as well as the WMA/Song of the Year and AWA Best Song with co-writer, Les Buffham, for Below the Kinney Rim. His band New West won the 1999 Will Rogers Award for Best JACK DeWERFF of Mesa, Western Group. Arizona, has spent his entire life around horses, cattle, and cow- boys. His working days were in MARK GARDNER of the farming and livestock industry Cascade, Colorado, and and although now retired, he’s still REX RIDEOUT of Conifer, a cowboy and pursues those inter- Colorado, have been per- ests whenever possible. Jack forming the historic music of started writing poems about his the American West for over observations over the years. He 25 years. They approach has shared his observations at “cowboy” music as histori- most of the cowboy poetry gatherings around the country and ans and musicologists, with groups ranging from annual meetings of major corpora- consulting rare diaries and tions to private birthday parties. Some of his poems are true, journals, early sheet music, some are partly true, and “them that ain’t, outta be.” vintage recordings, and oral sources. In their performances and recordings, they feature vintage instruments and use historic playing styles. In 2008, the New Mexico Humanities Council DUANE DICKINSON of Scobey, sent Mark & Rex on a concert tour of New Mexico in celebra- Montana, was born on a small tion of the centennial of the publication of the first book of ranch in the northeastern corner cowboy ballads, Jack Thorp’s Songs of the Cowboys. Thorp’s of that state. He began learning songbook was printed in Estancia, New Mexico, in 1908. The traditional cowboy songs and tour involved concerts in nine New Mexico communities, as sentimental Victorian ballads from well as special performances for elementary and high school his father, and has some 350 students and senior citizens. When all was said and done, Mark songs in his head. His fellow per- & Rex had traveled 2,715 miles and consumed gallons of formers highly respect him as one green chili. of the best sources of the old cow- boy songs and many consider him a national treasure. With song-collecting as a hobby, Duane ranched near Ryegate, Montana, until 1996, when he sold the PEGGY GODFREY of Moffat, ranch and semi-retired. He still owns an impressive fleet of Colorado, has been ranching for antique farm implements! Duane has recorded several cas- 35 years – the past twenty in the settes of both popular and obscure material and a CD, When San Luis Valley of south central the Work’s All Done This Fall. Colorado. Composting disasters has provided a fertile medium for sprouting poems and stories, her personal variation on value-added ELIZABETH EBERT of agriculture. For the past four Lemmon, South Dakota, is a years, she has worked with a local retired rancher and recent widow. non-profit producing a ranching Her beloved husband of 63 years, heritage video project featuring SJ, passed away last summer. local ranch folks and ranching Elizabeth was a closet poet until activities season by season. During the past couple of years, 1989, and has since recited at she gained experiential evidence that her poetry exposing arro- gatherings from California to gance and greed does not set well with the afflicted; however, Boston and from Canada to Texas. poets usually get the last word! Peggy’s first performance as a Elizabeth work is preserved in a cowboy poet was here at the Arvada Center. book entitled Crazy Quilt and a CD Live from Thunder Hawk. She also appears on several compilation CDs. Two of her poems have even been set to music! She was given the Academy of Western Artists Award for Female Poet in 2001. She was featured at the Denver Storytelling Conference. Elizabeth’s new book, Prairie Wife is fresh off the press! SID HAUSMAN of Tesuque, New BOB HUFF of Pagosa Springs, Mexico, writes songs of folk and Colorado, was one of the poets Western Americana, and is a who participated in the first strong instrumentalist playing Arvada Gathering twenty years banjo, 12-string banjo, baritone ago and has returned frequently as ukulele, harmonica, and bones.