Seriously, you can't get more seteotypical than this.

Anny already wrote a great article on our visit to the Fort Worth Stockyards so rather than repeating everything she said I’m going to share some photos and observations with you.

We didn’t actually plan to go to the Stockyards at all. In fact our plan was pretty much to just pass through Dallas on our way to New Orleans. But the detour that ended up being a full 12 hour stay at the stockyards was well worth it, mostly because we happened to be there on the same day Red Steagall had his annual Cowboy Gathering. We went to experience some true Texas cowboy culture and boy did we get what we came for. And then some!

I’m not going to pretend for one second I know anything about modern cowboy culture. All I know is the people who adhere to this culture insist on wearing wide brimmed hats, jeans and cowboy boots all the time – even if they don’t actually work out in the fields or even with cows. What I didn’t know is that once you find real cowboys – the ones that actually ride around on horses and deal with herds of cows on a daily basis – they are not all that different from the ones you see in movies and TV shows depicting life on the range back in the 1800s (minus the gun slinging and lawlessness perhaps). And at the stockyards we saw plenty of these true men and women of the field. Which was very cool.

The cowboy culture is as foreign to an European city dweller like myself as my Norwegian Christmas traditions must be to an Australian aboriginal. Everything is different, from the clothes to the hair to the language to the art and even the cooking utensils. At the craft market we found everything from “Wild Rag Rings” made from old silver dollars (a “wild rag” is the neckerchief cowboys traditionally wear when out in the field. They are called “wild rags” because as the cowboys rode across the open fields for weeks or months at a time without bathing they would use the rag for everything from filtering the dust from their breath to wiping sweat and other stuff off their skin. After a good long ride the rags would be truly wild i.e. smelly) to a special kind of small meat hook used to grab and flip steaks and other meats without having to handle them with more cumbersome utensils (see the gallery below). Other than that the market mostly featured cowboy art – mostly a modern day version of what I’d call national romantic art with heavy emphasis on the lone cowboy, sunsets, open fields and oil rigs – plad shirts, boots, various stuff made from longhorn horns and of course tons and tons of shiny flashy stuff attached to leather. I couldn’t see myself wearing or buying any of this stuff but then again I don’t think they were very impressed with my cool custom t-shirt and silver jewellery either so…

The Quebe Sisters Band – country music worth listening to

The Quebe Sisters Band

The event we had stumbled onto was actually called The Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering and Western Swing Festival with an emphasis on the latter (Red Steagall apparently is a famous western swing musician and he was plaing a concert later in the evening). Music is a vital part of the cowboy and country lifestyle, one that I understand on a theoretical level but can’t stand on a practical one. To be quite frank I absolutely hate most country music so this may not have been the wisest place to be, at last where my taste in music is concerned. I’d prepared myself to endure hours of terrible country twang and happy music with endless lyrics about life on the farm and how everything is so sad and depressing but it turns out (as it often does) that my preconceptions were way off. At least that was the case when we dropped in to take a listen to the Quebe Sisters Band (QSB). Now here was something classified as country music (though I’d probably place them in the Charleston / 20’s jazz category) that I could actually listen to. In fact, after having heard a few songs we ended up buying one of their albums! If you have a chance you should check them out live. They seem to be travelling a lot so chances are you’ll find them at a country festival at some point. The three sisters are originally fiddle players but they now also sing. What’s interesting about their style is that they do everything in complicated harmonies reminiscent of the 20’s and 30’s Charleston style which can be horrible but in this case is quite pleasant to listen to. The songs are the typical country stuff but the way they’ve arranged them lifts the songs above the standard country sound to something more refined and way more entertaining. Very impressive stuff.

My only real exposure to North American country culture before this was the Cloverdale Rodeo in Abbotsford, BC which quite frankly was horrible. Bizarrely I found myself much more at home in Texas and I think what we saw in Fort Worth was way closer to the real thing than the assless jeans, ridiculous prices and hordes of messed up drunks displayed in Abbotsford, pleated jeans and rhine stones included.

12►