A song written between Wyoming winds and the kind of pain only real cowboys know.
The name Chris LeDoux brings to mind the image of a real cowboy—one who lived far from the glitter of Nashville, spending his best years covered in dust, sweat, leather, and the bruises that never fully faded. “Them Bareback Horses” stands as his private journal, a snapshot of the life he lived on the rodeo trail, written during those restless years moving from one arena to the next. Chris wrote this song when his entire world revolved around two things: the wild broncs beneath him and the old guitar lying in the back of his pickup. The track captures what every bareback rider understands deeply—the electrifying eight seconds on a 1,200-pound bronc that can make a man feel more alive than anything else in the world. There’s nothing polished or sugar-coated here. The lyrics read like honest field notes: mornings when his body hurt too much to stand straight, purple bruises stretching across his ribs, and long lonely highways where he drove through the night just to make it to the next rodeo on time. And yet in that pain and solitude, Chris found freedom. Rodeo wasn’t a job to him; it was where he felt most himself. Music, written quickly under dim gas-station lights or inside a cold horse trailer, became the only way he could preserve the memories before the road swallowed them. That’s why “Them Bareback Horses” feels raw, rugged, and unfiltered. It doesn’t try to glorify anything—it simply tells the truth: cowboys fall, cowboys rise, cowboys ride again. When Chris sings it, you can almost see a young man tightening his rigging, taking one steady breath, and nodding for the gate. If you ever wanted to understand who Chris LeDoux truly was, this song is the closest you’ll get. It’s not philosophy, not poetry—just dust, pain, pride, and the heart of a cowboy who lived exactly what he sang.