FEATURING: Pipp Gillette + Lloyd Wright, Chris Isaacs, Waddie Mitchell.

This show is sure to be a treat! Take one multi-faceted, multi-instrumentalist Texas institution (don’t remove the ten gallon hat). Combine with one Nevada icon (garnished with mustache and wild rag). Add a returning favorite from Arizona (horseshoes optional, but be generous with the meter). All ingredients should be well seasoned, with friendships and collaborations developed over the years. Top with equal parts poetry and music, to taste. Turn on high for an hour and a half. There you have it–a surefire recipe for a sweet cowboy concoction featuring Pipp Gillette, Chris Isaacs, and Waddie Mitchell. Who says you can’t eat dessert first?

From the 36th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

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PLAYLIST

"Blood, Sweat & Steers" - Waddie Mitchell
"Spring Drive" - Pipp Gillette + Lloyd Wright (words by Waddie Mitchell + music by Pipp Gillette)
"Not Yet" - Chris Isaacs
"The Sounds a Cowboy Hears" - Waddie Mitchell
"Grandpa"- Pipp Gillette + Lloyd Wright (words by Waddie Mitchell + music by Pipp Gillette)
"Mutual Respect" - Chris Isaacs
"The Flyin' Outlaw" - Waddie Mitchell (poem by Curley Fletcher)
"Could Have Been Worse" - Pipp Gillette + Lloyd Wright (words by Waddie Mitchell + music by Pipp Gillette)
"Alzeda" - Pipp Gillette + Chris Isaacs (poem by Phil Martin)
"Bronco Twister's Prayer" - Waddie Mitchell + Lloyd Wright (poem by Bruce Kiskaddon)
"I'm Happy" - Pipp Gillette + Lloyd Wright (words by Waddie Mitchell + music by Pipp Gillette)
"How to Win an Argument" - Chris Isaacs
"The Sham of it All" - Chris Isaacs
"Shorty" - Waddie Mitchell
"Barn Dance" - Pipp Gillette + Lloyd Wright (words by Waddie Mitchell + music by Pipp Gillette)
"Michael Bia" - Chris Isaacs

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Pipp Gillette
Crockett, TX
Pipp Gillette lives and works on the family ranch near Lovelady, Texas, where his grandfather started raising cattle and cotton in 1912. Pipp and his late brother, Guy, received the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Traditional Western Album of 2011 and the 2013 Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Original Western Composition for their performance of the Waddie Mitchell song "Trade Off.” Drawing on a lifelong interest in Western history and music, Pipp plays traditional cowboy music on guitar, banjo, harmonica, and bones. Pipp’s CD, Singing Songs by Waddie and Pipp, received the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Traditional Western Album of 2016. Pipp is accompanied by Lloyd Wright.

Chris Isaacs
Eagar, AZ
Chris Isaacs is an award-winning poet and storyteller who has lived the life that he tells about. He has worked as a cowboy, he’s rodeoed, and he’s spent time as a packer. In between jobs, you can usually find him making a living as a horseshoer. He has recorded several albums, has published four books, and now is at work on a fifth tome. Semi-retired, he currently works part-time for Bobcat Pass Wilderness Adventures in Red River, New Mexico, and travels the country sharing his poems and stories.

Waddie Mitchell
Twin Bridges, NV
Waddie Mitchell was immersed in the cowboy way of entertaining as a boy on the Nevada ranches where his father worked. The art of spinning tales in rhyme and meter about a rich lifestyle of pushing cows and living off the land came to be called cowboy poetry. Waddie recites the older classics as well as his own works, eloquently expressing moments grand and common, humorous and tragic. In 1985, Waddie helped organize Elko’s first Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Since then, he has kept busy writing, publishing, and recording.

Lloyd Wright
Crockett, TX
Lloyd Wright is a fourth-generation Texan. He and his family were introduced to dulcimers and old-time string band music in the summer of 1994. In 2000 he won the National Mountain Dulcimer Championship at the age of 18. Now settled down with his wife and three kids in the heart of the Davy Crockett National Forest, Lloyd regularly performs Old Time and Country Gospel with his wife, mother, and brother. He first heard Guy and Pipp Gillette perform when he was a teen, and he has followed their music over the years. Lloyd combined forces with Pipp after the passing of Pipp's brother, Guy. This seemed to follow a natural progression as he was familiar with Pipp's repertoire. Lloyd and his family run two music festivals in East Texas, including his very own Old Mill Music Festival.

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Filmed in front of a live audience at the Western Folklife Center's G Three Bar Theater in Elko, NV, on Jan. 28, 2020.

Made possible by Ledgestone Hotel and by the multitude of staff, artists, volunteers, and community members working behind the scenes to make this show happen.

Brought to you by the Western Folklife Center, using story and cultural expression to connect the American West to the world.
www.westernfolklife.org

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