My Summer Venues

Welcome to the beautiful Laramie River Valley in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming where I have been performing at guest ranches for the last 23 summers. This music video will reveal a lot of the valley's expanse and natural beauty while a wonderful old western tune, "Riding Down The Canyon" plays on the soundtrack.

 Riding Down The Canyon was composed by Smiley Burnett and initially featured in a 1935 Gene Autry movie Tumbling Tumble Weeds.  The song was also featured in many other movies and recorded by many top western and popular music entertainers including Sons Of The Pioneers and Bing Crosby. A more recent recording release was done by Willie Nelson and Leon Russel in 1979.  My rendition of the song now plays on a sound track which I performed and recorded myself in preparation for making this video.  It's song that I often play for the guests because it is so fitting for this beautiful out-of-the-way piece of western heaven.

Ten years prior to the Gene Autry/s and Smiley Burnett's film coming out in 1935, my dad and his brother Sy Alexander drove a heard of young, "green" horses 58 miles from a ranch near Buckeye, CO over Sand Creek Pass to the Diamond Tail Ranch which can be seen about 15 seconds into this video. They spent that entire summer at ranch, training the horses and then using them to put up hay that would be used that winter to feed all of the livestock  back at the home ranch near Buckeye. They put up hay all summer and then left the valley when the snow began covering the hay meadows that fall of 1925.  It is a remarkable blessing that unlike so many other beautiful places, the valley itself has not undergone much noticeable change in that time.  My dad began bringing me when I was just  a kid that wanted to go fishing with him and later to hunt with him, often on horseback.

The guest ranch where I routinely perform here is the Rawah Guest Ranch (https://rawahranch.com) which is named after the Rawah Wilderness Area that includes the majestic snow-capped peaks in the background of the video.   I am extremely thankful for the opportunity the ranches in the Laramie Valley Rawah, Glendevey, and Laramie River Ranch (Glendevey, Laramie River Ranch are no longer operating as guest ranches) have given me to be a small part of the wonderful outdoor experiences they offer to their guests; and the guests have been wonderful audiences to perform for.  Many return year after year and we have become good friends.  The other surrounding ranches in the valley and ranchers that raise beef, bison, hay, and a few horses also make this place very special to me.   I expect that it hasn't changed all that much since my dad rode in here on horseback when I was no more than a twinkle in his eye.  These are good sturdy American folks that live here.  Good neighbors of that old fashioned western variety that you can always count on when you need a hand.  I hope that they and their offspring continue on here forever.