O
UT HERE IN THE West, there’s no shortage of cowboy entertainment. Neither time nor distance separate you much from cowboy poets by the dozens who hold audiences enthralled with rhyming verse, or scores of songsters who enchant crowds with mesmerizing melodies. By any measure, Brenn Hill and Andy Nelson are numbered among the best Western entertainers. Individually, they hold honors aplenty recognizing their skill as writers and performers. But they offer something unusual, perhaps unique: a stage-show that combines the duo’s talents in carefully orchestrated duets of song and poetry. Beyond taking turns at the microphone to share song, then poem, then song, and so on—a common technique in cowboy entertainment—Brenn and Andy arrange their compositions in complementary pairings that blend verse and stanza; each song interlaced with a poem to double down on an idea, an emotion, or a laugh. CowboyPoetry.com describes Andy Nelson as “a modern-day cowboy with a somewhat twisted funny bone…. His extraordinary original writings, combined with his unusual facial expressions and body language, leave audiences holding their sides and trying to catch their collective breath.” In a word, Andy is funny. His poetry and stories expose the ofttimes insanity of Western life. Among his numerous honors, the Western Music Association has named Andy “Male Poet of the Year” on several occasions. Brenn Hill is likewise accomplished as a solo per-
former. For more than two decades, he has stood under a cowboy hat and behind a microphone on countless stages entertaining audiences, blending his voice with bending guitar strings in a performance style all his own. The songs he sings are, also, mostly his own, earning Brenn recognition as one of the premier musical chroniclers of cowboy life. Western Horseman magazine called Brenn “one of the most talented singer-songwriters in the contemporary cowboy music scene.” The recently released Rocky Mountain Drifter is his fourteenth album, taking its place on a list of critically acclaimed releases that are an integral part of the canon of cowboy music. ONE-OF-A-KIND, TIMES TWO As remarkable as they are individually, as a duo on stage their talents mingle and multiply, resulting in a show that will make you laugh (a lot), make you think, cause a lump in your throat, and send you away wanting more. When the house lights go down, the big screens light up. The show is accompanied by a colorful backdrop of ever-changing photographs of stunning western landscapes, cattle on the range, horseback cowboys at work, and other images of the West. Always popular, when Brenn performs, is his rollicking “Buckaroo Tattoo,” a song about a tough-asnails, top-hand cowgirl reputed to be secretly adorned with body art. Brenn sings,
