Andy Hedges’ CD Roll On, Cowboys , a double album of cowboy duets was released in February, 2023 and was premiered on stage at the Cactus Theater in Lubbock in April. The show was performed again at the 2024 Lone Star Poetry Gathering in Alpine. In March of 2024 Andy and friends brought the Roll On, Cowboys show to Carnegie Hall in New York City. Our concert features Andy and two others from this Carnegie Hall show. This is Andy’s third appearance at the annual Winnsboro Cowboy Music & Poetry Gathering.
Andy Hedges is a songster, reciter, storyteller, guitarist, and collector of cowboy songs and poems. The son of an Italian schoolteacher and a rodeo cowboy turned preacher, Andy was born in Lubbock, Texas, in the spring of 1980. He grew up in the small community of Tokio, Texas, where his family paid rent on an old farmhouse by looking after a few head of cattle. It was there that Andy fell in love with traditional music by listening to his father’s cassettes of cowboy songs. Andy’s vast and varied repertoire includes classic cowboy poetry recitations, obscure cowboy songs, dust bowl ballads, and blues. He also hosts a podcast, Cowboy Crossroads which features in-depth interviews with fellow musicians and poets. Andy has performed many times with folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the duo’s performance at the 60th Newport Folk Festival was named one of the “10 Best Things We Saw” by Rolling Stone City.
Dom Flemons: GRAMMY award winner, two-time EMMY nominee, 2020 U.S. Artists Fellow, Honorary Doctorate Dom Flemons, is known as The American Songster® since his repertoire covers more than one hundred years of American roots music. Flemons is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music scholar, historian, actor, slam poet, record collector, and WSM radio producer. He is considered an expert player on the banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, fife and rhythm bones. In the spring of 2022, Flemons made his debut as a creator, host, and producer on Nashville’s country music radio station 650 AM WSM, where he released season three of American Songster Radio Show. He was awarded a degree as a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater Northern Arizona University and was the commencement speaker at the graduation ceremony for the Class of 2022. In 2020, Flemons was also selected for the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship Award for the Traditional Arts category which was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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 first solo CD, Singing Songs by Waddie and Pipp ,received the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Traditional Western Album of 2016. His newest CD, Pipp Gillette with Lloyd Wright, was released fall 2018.
