Wanderers in Wonder

Driving through Wyoming today we stopped at the town of Kaycee, home of Chris Ledoux.

Chris was born in Mississippi. His father was in the military. While still a tyke the family moved to Wyoming where Chris’s grandparents lived and where his parents were born and raised. Chris would always call Kaycee, WY home. This statue is at the Chris Ledoux Memorial Park in Kaycee.

Chris was the Wyoming State High School Bareback Bronc Riding Champion his senior year at Cheyenne High School. He went to Eastern New Mexico State University on a Rodeo Scholarship and was the College Bareback Bronc Riding Champ his Junior year. In 1976 Chris won the Bareback Bronc Riding Championship at the National Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City. Chris competed for four more years.

To finance his rodeo career Chris wrote songs about the rodeo life. His first twenty-plus albums were recorded, produced and marketed by he and his wife. Their market was the Rodeo Circuit and a small group of Country Music insiders. I was introduced to Chris’s music in 1979 when I was attending St. Mary’s School of Law in San Antonio. A fellow student who became a friend, ‘The Barrister Bard’, Rodney Dale, was paying his way through law school playing music. Rod was an early competitor and invitee at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, TX. Rod and his musician friends were deep into Folk and Country and knew of Chris Ledoux and his music.

Chris became known to a wider Country audience in 1989 when ‘Much too Young to Feel This Damn Old’ by Garth Brooks hit the Country charts.

“The competitions getting younger, Tougher Broncs, you know I can’t recall,                                  A worn out tape of Chris Ledoux lonely women and bad booze,            Seem to be the only friends I’ve left at all”.

Sadly cancer cut Chris’s life short at the age of 57.

Chris’s legacy is not only his music, but also his family and Memorial Foundation.

Chris and his wife Peggy had five children…Clay, Ned, Will, Beau, and Cindy. The family runs the Chris Ledoux Memorial Foundation which provides funds for Rodeo Scholarships and contributes to the Make a Wish Fund.

Chris and Cindy’s son Ned is following in his Dad’s footsteps as a musician.

Did you notice the pedestal for Chris’s statue?

Peace…Wanderers in Wonder.