{"id":5269,"date":"2015-01-21T12:17:07","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T19:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=5269"},"modified":"2015-01-25T17:57:24","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T00:57:24","slug":"cowboy-singer-playing-rare-billings-show-friday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/01\/cowboy-singer-playing-rare-billings-show-friday-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowboy singer playing rare Billings show Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fahBNPkgw9E\" width=\"100%\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bruce Anfinson, a cowboy-country singer from Helena, has played music in Germany, Taiwan, Japan and Costa Rica, and a tune he wrote is the theme song for the Montana PBS show \u201cBackroads of Montana.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s played with scores of big-name musicians, jammed with Doc Watson and appeared on \u201cMountain Stage,\u201d the American Public Radio program broadcast from Charleston, West Virginia.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But he has played in Billings only rarely. He remembers performing at the Northern Hotel and at the Alberta Bair Theater for a Charlie Russell Christmas show, and he recalls being interviewed by T.J. Starr for a segment on Yellowstone Public Radio.<\/p>\n<p>As those memories trickled out, Anfinson asked, \u201cWas there a place called the Granary?\u201d He\u2019s pretty sure he played there, too. \u201cThat\u2019s all been quite a while ago, though.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All of which is to say that if you haven\u2019t heard of Anfinson, don\u2019t feel bad. I myself had never heard him until last summer, when I happened to catch him at the summer-kickoff celebration in Fort Benton. I was hooked and couldn\u2019t wait to hear him again.<\/p>\n<p>That opportunity will present itself Friday night, when he plays a free show at the Yellowstone Valley Brewing Co., 2123 First Ave. N., from 6 to 8 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t travel much anymore. In the summer he stays close to his Last Chance Ranch just north of Helena, where he offers wagon rides, gourmet dinners and live music. In the winter, he works at Lone Mountain Ranch in Big Sky, where as part of a sleigh-ride dinner he drives a team of Belgian draft horses and performs his music.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"well\"><div class=\"dfad dfad_pos_1 dfad_first\" id=\"_ad_652\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/mjhWkW\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/201703_capeair_variable.jpg\" alt=\"CapreAir_Variable\" width=\"510\" height=\"180\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18069\" \/><\/a><\/div><\/div>With so many people from all over the United States visiting Big Sky, Anfinson said, \u201cFor me, it\u2019s a way to travel the country without having to leave the state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Anfinson inherited his love of music and horses from his father, Al Anfinson. Al wasn\u2019t a bona fide cowboy, but he was a horseman. When Bruce was growing up in Great Falls the family would travel all over Western Montana on the weekends, so Al could play cowboy polo at various saddle clubs.<\/p>\n<p>Al was also a member of the Montana State Sheriff\u2019s Posse, which meant doing horseback search and rescue for lost hunters, riding in parades and patrolling the fairgrounds on horseback during the state fair.<\/p>\n<p>Al wasn\u2019t a musician, though he liked to pretend he could play the harmonica, but he loved to sing songs by the Sons of the Pioneers, Bob Wills and other cowboy and country entertainers. And when Bruce was 9, his father bought him his first guitar.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5272\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"addboard wp-image-5272 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/saddle-1-of-1.jpg\" alt=\"Saddle\" width=\"336\" height=\"264\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the liner notes to &#8220;Handmade Saddle,&#8221; Anfinson&#8217;s 1999 album, his father, Al, is shown with the saddle that inspired the song.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t any old cheap acoustic guitar. It was a solid-body 1956 electric Les Paul guitar. Bruce was soon hooked, and his band was the first one ever to play live at a dance at his junior high school. They had six songs figured out, the idea being that they\u2019d play some songs on a record player, perform their six songs and then fire up the record player again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomehow the record player broke and we ended up playing those six songs, like, six times each,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>That band played the popular music of the time, but eventually Anfinson started playing some of the songs he heard hanging out with his father and assorted \u201cold cowboy characters\u201d who were in the sheriff\u2019s posse. Later on, influenced by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band\u2019s seminal \u201cWill the Circle Be Unbroken\u201d album, Anfinson started playing bluegrass, too.<\/p>\n<p>His music now is an Americana mixture, though for my money his cowboy-tinged songs are his best. My favorite is \u201cHandmade Saddle,\u201d a true story about a saddle his father made in Great Falls in 1972. He donated it to the sheriff\u2019s posse for a raffle, and it wasn\u2019t until 25 years later that his son started wondering what became of it.<\/p>\n<p>After several years, Anfinson finally found the saddle in Lewistown, and its owner graciously swapped it for another saddle Anfinson had. In his song, Anfinson tells that simple story in a straight-forward but affecting manner, and even if you don\u2019t know which end of a horse to put a feedbag on, it\u2019s liable to bring a tear to your eye.<\/p>\n<p>He brings that same straight-forward delivery to \u201cHome Is Where Montana Is,&#8221; the song that became the \u201cBackroads of Montana\u201d theme song. He manages to capture the spirit and the beauty of the place without a drop of sap or treacle.<\/p>\n<p>In another song, &#8220;Sweet Montana Home,&#8221; Anfinson sings, \u201cThe songs I\u2019m used to singin\u2019, they ain\u2019t the kind that the jukebox plays, so I\u2019m headin&#8217; home, to my sweet Montana home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The jukeboxes still aren\u2019t playing his kind of music. If you want to hear it, you\u2019ll have to head down to the Yellowstone Valley Brewing Co. on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Anfinson, a cowboy-country singer from Helena, has played music in Germany, Taiwan, Japan and Costa Rica, and a tune he wrote is the theme song for the Montana PBS show \u201cBackroads of Montana.\u201d He\u2019s played with scores of big-name musicians, jammed with Doc Watson and appeared on \u201cMountain Stage,\u201d the American Public Radio program [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[1976,1975,1973,1974,1977,202],"class_list":["post-5269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-diversions","tag-backroads-of-montana","tag-big-sky","tag-bruce-anfinson","tag-lone-mountain-ranch","tag-montana-pbs","tag-yellowstone-valley-brewing-co","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}