Skip Gorman
A Cowboy’s Wild Song to His Herd (Rounder)
Singer, fiddler and mandolin player Skip Gorman has an affinity for vintage cowboy songs that dates back to the early 1970s. Since then, the onetime Deseret String Band member has carved out a career as one of the foremost contemporary interpreters of American cowboy ballads and instrumentals first popularized by performers such as Jimmie Driftwood, Carl T. Sprague and the Carter Family. “A Cowboy’s Wild Song” is an appealing follow-up to Gorman’s two previous Rounder CDs devoted to the genre; though he’s not slavishly wedded to lyrics or arrangements of the past, his respect for the material is evident, whether he and the band are tackling familiar fare like “Cowboy Love Song” (better known as “Red River Valley”) or more obscure sagebrush sagas such as “Little Joe the Wrangler’s Sister Nell.” Approximately one-third of the CD’s 16 tracks are instrumentals, most of which reflect the Celtic or African-American musical influences that figured in tunes once popular in the cowcamps of the 19th Century West.
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