Alta Branch Library Welcomes Spring with Cowboy Music, Poetry

Alta, WY- The Teton County Alta Branch Library presents "The Alta Cowboy Jamboree," an evening of music and poetry at 7 p.m. Friday, April 4 at the Alta Elementary Gym.

This family-style entertainment begins with music by Pop Wagner and Michael Hurwitz and the Aimless Drifters. The cowboy music will be interspersed with original and classic cowboy poetry from local poets. The Friends of Alta Branch Library will further sweeten the evening by serving Dutch oven apple cobbler, ice cream and coffee or tea. The event is free and open to the public, and suitable for families with kids of all ages.

"Cowboy music is the highlight of our little Jamboree, this year, with a performance by Pop Wagner of Prairie Home Companion fame," said Gretchen Notzold, Alta Branch Library Manager. "He is not just a musician but literally a poet-lariat. You should see him twirl that rope while he poetizes!"

Wagner's cowboy anthems crackle with the warmth of a prairie campfire and his old-time fiddle tunes set toes a tappin' while he serves up spellbinding rope tricks and tall stories, all with a good dose of friendly humor.

Bill Hinkley, of "Inside Bluegrass" magazine, extols the many qualities that make a Pop Wagner performance unique, writing: "When you hear that smoothly-rolling John Hurt-inspired guitar and that cowboy drawl, or dance to that rowdy old-time Cajun-blend hoedown fiddle and his often-hilarious calls, or marvel at the unlikely sight of a man standing on a horse's back twirling a lasso around his torso, then you're sharing in the spell that only Pop can cast."

Wagner also will be performing at local schools in the community and at the Teton County Library in Jackson at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 3.

Michael Hurwitz and the Aimless Drifters, a local cowboy band gaining national attention, will perform original songs from Hurwitz's most recent CD, "Cowboy Fandango," as well as other CDs.

"Pop and I are old friends and we're both looking forward to playing together again," Hurwitz said.

Hurwitz provides a sometimes edgy and always interesting ride, according to Notzold. His songs are peopled by a cast of characters as diverse as the landscape they inhabit from the prairies, mountains and plains of Wyoming to the ranches, dance-halls and honky-tonks. There are cowboys and cowgirls, outlaws and bankers, bartenders and beauty queens, quirky horses, dancing badgers, ghosts and aliens.

Hurwitz's "Cowboy Fandango" was chosen as one of the top 20 country and bluegrass albums of 2007 by Jerome Clark, country and bluegrass editor of the roots music website www.Rambles.NET. Clark describes Hurwitz as a superior writer, with a sure eye for the foolish and tragic in the old-turned-new West, who sings with a baritone "weathered" in a good way.

For information on the upcoming jamboree, contact the Alta Branch Library at 307-353-2505 or visit online at www.TCLib.org/alta. The Alta School Elementary Gym is located in the Alta Elementary School, 15 Alta School Road, off Ski Hill Road in Alta, Wyoming.

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