Wyoming Music and Mid Week At Work: Lights of Cheyenne
This song is, to put it bluntly, grim, but it captures a real slice of Wyoming. It's nearly the flipside of Crossland's Bosler.
The characters in this song are so familiar to me from legal work that it isn't funny. It's accordingly hard to believe that McMurtry, the son of the famous novelist, isn't a Wyomingite. The central placement of the Interstate Highway (Cheyenne is at the junction of two of them), the truck stop as a place of employment, the line about antelope, are all right on. Even the the surprising line at the end that reveals the protagonists feelings about Cheyenne are something that you'd expect from a native.
I recently sent a link to this performance to a friend from back East who was somewhat mystified by the lyrics, including the one "She's got a cowboy problem". This again, shows how accurate this song is, as that lyric makes perfect sense to a local.
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