Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.
If the Calgary Stampede were to invent the perfect musical guest for the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, he would probably resemble Chancey Williams.
The country singer has not only spent 16 years perfecting a neotraditional country sound favoured by Stampede crowds, but he was also a champion saddle bronc rider. He never competed in Calgary, but his father Dennis did way back at the 1971 Stampede.
He is even pals with both Alberta’s favourite rodeo-riding country star, Corb Lund, and Alberta’s bronc-riding champ Zeke Thurston.
But, as it turns out, Williams’ performance on July 9 at Ranchmans is his first and, so far, only gig scheduled for Canada.
“I grew up riding down here and I’m friends with a lot of the Canadian bronc riders,” says Williams, in an interview from his home in Wyoming. “We’re familiar with all those guys from the Stampede, we just never got to ride there or play there yet.”
The singer-songwriter decided to hang up his spurs as a competitor just under a decade ago, but he is still a favourite on the American rodeo circuit as a music performer. Williams and fellow Wyomingite songwriter and rider Chris LeDoux are so far the only two artists to have performed on the mainstage and competed at Cheyenne Frontier Days.
He began releasing albums in 2008, offering a series of songs with titles that would not look out of place on a Calgary Stampede playlist: The World Needs More Cowboys, Rodeo Cold Beer, A Cowboy Who Would and Fastest Gun in Town.
That trend continues with Williams’ latest song, the wonderfully titled One Bad Mutha Buckaroo. It takes on the familiar theme of championing the authentic rural cowboy. He even name-checks the late LeDoux, who was not only a hit song maker in the neotraditionalist mode but engaged in the very Stampede-like pursuit of bronze sculpture. He was also a hall-of-fame rodeo competitor and friend of Williams’ family. He died in 2005.
“Chris is the king of Wyoming, so everybody down here has always looked up to (him),” Williams says. “When I was a little kid, my dad and Chris rodeoed together. I knew him and his family ever since I was a little kid. So he helped me get my start when we were young. He let us up to perform a couple times. He was definitely one of my heroes who I looked up to in music.”
Music was always part of Williams’ life growing up on a ranch outside of the small town of Moorcroft in the northeast corner of Wyoming, where he and his brothers helped raise sheep and cattle and rodeoed on the weekend. His grandfather played in a band and Williams began performing music in his high school years, influenced by 1990s country stars such as George Strait, Toby Keith and LeDoux.
He released his first album in 2008 after visiting Nashville. Like many young singers who went through the Music City machinery, Williams initially left the songwriting to the Nashville pros.
“I wasn’t really writing when I first started,” he says. “We were just a cover band transitioning into being an artist. I was just cutting outside songs. So we cut a couple albums that way and it got to a point where I started writing. With the stuff I wanted to sing about, it was hard to find good songs that really fit me so I decided I would write them myself. I got to know a few great writers in Nashville, so I write with a handful of guys down there.”
That includes the new single One Bad Mutha Buckaroo, one of eight new songs Williams has recorded for an album he hopes to release later this year or early next.
“It’s a song about a guy that everybody knows,” he says. “He is a really good cowboy but he rarely comes into town. He drives an old ranch pickup with a dog. It’s just kind of a fun song. Everybody can imagine that guy in their head.”
Rodeoing and music were not the only options for Williams, who still calls Wyoming home. He attended Casper College and the University of Wyoming on a rodeo scholarship, eventually earning a Master’s in Public Administration.
But it soon became clear that music was his first love.
“I had a band for fun in high school and college, a cover band that played rodeo dances and fairs and square dances,” he says. “But it was always on the back burner to rodeo. It got where I had to make a decision. I chose music.”
Not unlike his friend, Corb Lund, Williams recently made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry. Since April, he has played three times. He had always heard about Calgary from Lund and others on the circuit and felt he would be a good fit. He plans to take in some rodeo action as a spectator before and after his Ranchman’s performance before heading back home for shows in Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana and Nebraska.
“I’m friends with Corb Lund and some other Canadian artists and it was always like ‘Man, I need to get up there,’” he says “It feels like we have the same fans: Real cowboys, people who really love rodeo and the Western way of life. I think we’ll fit in good in Canada.”
Chancey Williams plays Ranchman’s Cookhouse and Dancehall on July 9.