A Cowboy's Prayer
Well I’ve heard it said
and I believe that it’s true
it ain’t what you’re wearing
it’s what you can do
The boys they are ready
it’s time to begin
and I sure hope that I
can hold up my end
And maybe some day
when they’re old and gray
they’ll think of me
and someone will say
He sure made a good hand
and we always did know
he would be there
when we needed him most
I do what I can
that’s all I can do
the crew that I work with
they do the same too
And maybe some day
when they’re old and gray
they’ll think of me
and someone will say
He sure made a good hand
and we always did know
he would be there
when we needed him most
© 1986, Gail Steiger
These lyrics may not be reprinted or reposted
without the author's written permission.
Gail told us that these lyrics, which "for a while were called
'Good Hand'," were written for the film, Ranch
Album. The song also appears on his CD,
The Romance of Western Life.
The
Romance of Western Life CD
"... like
listening to Bob Dylan if Dylan had been a working
cowboy...the lyrics are so beautifully descriptive of daily
cowboy life...These are cowboy feelings, simple and profound."
Editor Darrell Arnold, Cowboy
Magazine.
Includes 12 original
songs by Gail Steiger:
The Romance of Western
Life
Moment in Time
Riding on the Wind
A Cowboy's Prayer (from Ranch Album)
Nevada Highway
Right and Wrong
There Ain't a Day
John and Charlie
Jose Flores
Whistle
My Son (from Ranch Album)
Hired Hand
Hail and Farewell by Delia Gist Gardner
Gail Steiger-vocals,
guitar
Brent Reason-bass, lead guitars, percussion vocals
Mary Trevor-vocals
Lew Steiger-harmonica
Available from
CD Baby, the
Western Folklife Center, and other sources.
Ranch
Album
"Neither hurried nor overly sentimental, this is a magnificent video."
Booklist
The
tough life of the New West cowboy is lovingly portrayed in this gorgeous
film..." Wall Street Journal
"...cinematically brilliant and wonderfully constructed." TV Guide
The acclaimed Ranch Album video by Gail Steiger, released in
1988, is cited for its insightful
portrayal of cowboy life. From the producers' description:
Nationally released as an hour-long PBS special,
Ranch Album celebrates rough country ranching in Northern Arizona and
shows real cowboy life. Season by season, the people of this film
describe what they do and why they do it. In the process, they reveal a
sense of something more important—a spirit and culture that have
survived in the American west for a very long time.
The film is included in
the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences/UCLA Film and Television
Archives' survey of outstanding recent work in the documentary
field.
Available on DVD from
Amazon.
Cowboy
Magazine
Poet, musician,
photographer and writer Sally
Harper Bates profiled Gail Steiger in a Summer, 1998 cover
story in Cowboy
Magazine, "Ridin' the Spider" and wrote about the Spider
Ranch, about 40 miles from Prescott, Arizona, where Gail Steiger
has been the foreman since 1995. Sally Harper Bates writes that
the ranch is "one of the most remote areas in Yavapai County. The
terrain is some of the most rugged in the West, yet these
mountainous rock piles hold some of the best cattle grazing
available." About Gail Steiger, she writes, "...the call to cattle
runs deep enough in his veins to draw him back to country like the
Spider Ranch."
Cowboy Magazine
back issues are available from the
Cowboy Magazine web
site.
Range
Gail Steiger
is profiled in the Spring, 2009 issue of
Range
magazine, in an absorbing article, "Arizona Cowboy," by rancher,
writer, and photographer Kathy McCraine. The article explores the rough
country where Steiger works as the foreman of the Spider Ranch, and
delves into how he came to be a cowboy, filmmaker, and songwriter ("I
just kind of fell into it all," he says, but the article elaborates)
The challenges of the wild country and Steiger's ranching practices and
philosophies feature largely in the article, and there is a discussion
of his grandfather, famous poet Gail I. Gardner
("The Sierry Petes or Tying the Knots in the Devil's Tail").
Read the
entire article at the
Range magazine web site.
photo by
Jeri Dobrowski from the
25th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering
More...
Gail Steiger recites his grandfather
Gail I. Gardner's poem, "The Dude Wrangler," on the 2009
CD from CowboyPoetry.com, The BAR-D Roundup:
Volume Four.
Gail Steiger recites his grandfather
Gail I. Gardner's poem, "The Sierry Petes," on the 2003 Smithsonian Folkways recording, Cowboy
Poetry Classics.
Gail
Steiger recites his grandmother
Delia Gist Gardner 's poem, "Hail and
Farewell," on the 2007 CD from CowboyPoetry.com, The BAR-D Roundup:
Volume Two.
Gail Steiger has a journal at the
Western Folklife Center.
