Special Presentation: The Untold Stories of the American West (As Told By Many Others and Myself)

September 19, 2015

Special Presentation: The Untold Stories of the American West (As Told By Many Others and Myself)

"The story that I want to tell you cannot be found in a book. They say the history of the West was written from the saddle of a horse, but it's never been told from the heart of one..."

---Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

"Not 'til now. I was born here, in this place that would come to be called the Old West, but to my kind the land was ageless. It had no beginning and no end, no boundary between earth and sky"

-- Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

"Like the wind and the buffalo grass, we belonged here. We would always belong here"

---Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

"They say the mustang is the spirit of the West. Whether that West was won or lost in the end, you'll have to decide for yourself"

----Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

" But the story I wanna tell you is true. I was there and I remember"

-----Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

" I remember the sun and the sky and the wind calling my name, in a time when wild horses ran free"

---Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

"And so I grew from colt to stallion, as wild and reckless as thunder over the land"

----Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

"Soaring with the wind. Flying? There were times I believed I could"

---Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

And I always remembered what John Wayne used to say: "Don't Much Like Quitters, Son"

" [In the West where many call it the "Flyover country"], when you hear twin fiddles and a steel guitar,You're listening to the sound of the American heart. And Opry music on a Saturday night, Brings a smile to your face and a tear to your eye."

----- Soundtrack from Pure Country (1992 Movie)

"There's a place where mornings are an endless blue, and you feel mother nature walk along with you"

-----Soundtrack from Pure Country (1992 Movie)

"Where simple people living side by side
Still wave to their neighbor when they're drivin' by"

---Soundtrack from Pure Country (1992 Movie)

"Sing a song about the heartland, The only place I feel at home.
Sing about the way a good man, Works until the daylight's gone"

---Soundtrack from Pure Country (1992 Movie)

"Sing the rain on the roof on a summer night, Where they still know wrong from right. Sing a song about the heartland., Sing a song about my life."

---Soundtrack from Pure Country (1992 Movie)

"[In music writing, however], you are not supposed to say the word 'cancer' in a song. Or telling folks that Jesus says the answer can rub 'em wrong.........[But in the American West]. that's what they do. [They] turn it on, turn it up, and sing along".
---Brad Paisley, This is Country Music

"Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us. And the greatest is love"

---Alan Jackson, Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)

"I can tell God's smiling down, I just get that feeling. You and me going town to town, on two lanes of freedom"

----Tim McGraw, Two Lanes of Freedom

" Oh, no red lights or stop signs around for miles,
Just swaying trees, your hair in the breeze, and that smile"

-----Tim McGraw, Two Lanes of Freedom

"God's working down from that sky blue ceiling.
He made these old country roads for driving and dreaming"

----Tim McGraw, Two Lanes of Freedom

[On that country road],

"He left that phone danglin' off the hook
Then slowly turned around and gave it one last look
Then he just walked away
He aimed his truck toward that Wyoming line
With a little luck he could still get there in time
And in that Cheyenne wind he could still hear her say...."

------George Strait, I Can Still Make Cheyenne

"Brothers of the highway, children of the wind"

-----George Strait, Brothers of the Highway

"I never thought I'd ever leave the Butcher Holler
But a lots of things have changed since the way back then. And it's so good to be back home again
Not much left but the floor nothing lives there anymore. Just the mem'ries of a coal miner's daughter"

---Loretta Lynn, Coal Miner's Daughter