{"id":79,"date":"2006-10-11T17:11:57","date_gmt":"2006-10-11T21:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=79"},"modified":"2006-10-11T17:11:57","modified_gmt":"2006-10-11T21:11:57","slug":"a-singing-cowboy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=79","title":{"rendered":"A singing cowboy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Western swing star, rancher and cutter Wylie Gustafson was featured on the October 7 edition of the popular radio program, A Prairie Home Companion<\/a>. It wasn’t surprising that he took the opportunity to tell the audience of 4 million listeners about cutting. Gustafson, who won the $20,000 Non-Pro on Irish Whiskey Sugar at the 2004 NCHA Western National Championships, even lists that achievement above his music awards on his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gustafson, who ranches<\/a> outside of Dusty, WA, (population 11), caught the cutting bug from his wife, Kimberley, about five years ago. “I was her turnback and her truck and trailer driver,” he said. He bought Irish Whiskey Sugar as a yearling roping prospect in a sale at the John Scott Ranch in Montana in 1999. But when Kimberley checked out the pedigree of the Paddys Irish Whiskey son, the horse had a different future in store for him.<\/p>\n

“He ropes. We use him to sort cattle,” Wylie said. “He’s one of those good old-time horses who can do it all.”<\/p>\n

When Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor asked about cutting horse competition, Gustafson said, “We’re just the jockey up there. The horse does all the work. We just drop the reins and the horse is supposed to keep the cow away from the herd.”<\/p>\n

Wylie and the Wild West’s 11 albums show the influence of western swing, classic country, cowboy, and folk music. Cutters can relate to tunes with titles like “76 with a Miss.” Click here to listen to a clip from “Cattle Call<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

On the riding side, Gustafson cites the Hansma brothers as a major inspiration. “If I could ever ride close to the way they ride, I’d be happy,” he says.<\/p>\n

“We’re happy to be from the northwest. There are a lot of good cutters there, and it’s a really good environment to be a beginning cutter. The connection between my ranch life and my music is extremely close,” he adds. “Most of my songs reflect the great wide open where I live and punch cattle.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Western swing star, rancher and cutter Wylie Gustafson was featured on the October 7 edition…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cutting","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}