Reckless Rooster | "One Man, Six Instruments, Endless Miles"

Reckless Rooster

Born and raised in Utah, Reckless Rooster has become one of the most recognizable independent Americana and Western roots artists traveling the highways of the American West. A true multi-instrumentalist and relentless road warrior, Rooster has built his career one show at a time, earning a reputation for high-energy performances, exceptional musicianship, and authentic storytelling.

Known as a one-man-band, Reckless Rooster seamlessly blends Americana, folk, bluegrass, Western, Red Dirt country, and cowpunk influences into a sound that is uniquely his own. Whether he's playing flatpick guitar, fiddle, banjo, dobro, harmonica, or driving the rhythm with foot percussion, his performances showcase the versatility and talent that have made him a favorite throughout Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and beyond.

A veteran of hundreds of stages across the West, Rooster regularly performs more than 150 shows annually, bringing his music to honky-tonks, breweries, festivals, dance halls, and listening rooms. His relentless work ethic and passion for live music have earned him a devoted fan base and the respect of fellow musicians throughout the region.

Beyond his solo career, Reckless Rooster is a highly sought-after sideman, lending his talents on fiddle, dobro, guitar, and banjo to numerous artists and bands throughout the Intermountain West. His ability to move effortlessly between genres has made him one of the most versatile musicians on the Western music circuit.

His accomplishments include recognition in regional songwriting and guitar competitions, while his growing catalog of original music continues to resonate with audiences who appreciate honest songs rooted in life on the road, the mountains, small-town America, and the enduring spirit of the West.

With the release of his album Death On The Highway, Reckless Rooster further established himself as a rising force in Americana music. His songs capture the grit, freedom, humor, and adventure of a life spent chasing music across thousands of miles of open road.

Whether performing solo or alongside fellow musicians, Reckless Rooster delivers an unforgettable show built on exceptional musicianship, authentic storytelling, and a deep love for the music and culture of the American West.

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🎵 In This Episode:
• Reckless Rooster interview
• Americana Music
• Northwest Tour
• Treefort Music Fest
• Muti Instrumentalist 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

It's gonna be a cold one night. Windows filing. Like a wolf at the moon on some minute train. Yabin on the road. Three weeks I'm drunk and dirty. I'm ready and I'm willin'. I'm single villain. The long road home. The sting's over. So it's tender the yellow clothes. I'll learn a few more scratches on a guitar. We can fucking love. It's the price to roll. We get that over. See with me. No big bottle all the time. Let's all do. Do it again. Sleepin' pocket. Sweet little. We're gonna die, little we found. My little crowd. See we never came around. That's the chance I'll take. Ever puts me in my grave. Cause I got a five miles ago. Three more shows to play. What do you say? And I'll say Gimme another knife. Smoke your tongue gas station food and sleeping in a parking lot. From here to Texas to the coast. It's the price to pay for the dice to roll. We're gonna die.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Thanks for having me, buddy. Hey man, we uh we are really, really uh having a great time here. We're in we're in Boise, Idaho. We're at 12th fret music. What a cool place. City of Trees, we are here for the Treefort Fest, Music Fest, and uh there's all kinds of fests going on, but the Music Fest is really why we're here. And we're here and got got the chance to um uh reached out to my buddy Corey Grubb over there. I said, Who do we need to come and interview while we're in town? And you were on the top of the list. Oh, shucks. Yeah, can you imagine that? So so we didn't we we did get to listen to your music on the way over here the other day. Um we we try to do at least that and do as much background as we can with what's available. Um uh you won't even tell us who your real name is, but I'm just kidding. You didn't tell us, but we won't share it. So uh because uh mom's the one who tagged you with Rooster. She did give me the nickname. It's true.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Why's that? It's my hair. It's your hair. Yeah, if I don't wear a hat, it just like comes all up and over like crested chickens.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Okay. Okay, so you look like a little banny rooster. Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Well, uh, where'd you grow up, Rooster?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Uh, northern Utah, but like north of Salt Lake, northern Utah. Like Brigham City, Logan Logan, Ogden.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Okay, okay. We were just over there uh a couple weeks ago for the uh Cache Valley Cowboy Rendezvous. Yeah, I probably know a bunch of those. Yeah, yeah. We got to go interview some interview some of those guys, and we had a great time. It was uh a lot of fun. And we've got two sons that live in Ogden, so yeah, yeah. Um but uh went to Weaver State. Oh, you went to Weaver State. Okay, cool. Well, we got one that graduated from Utah State, so we won't hold that again. Well, so so how'd you get bit by the music bug and when did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Uh that has been a thing since the beginning. Your whole life. Yeah. Mom mom musical. No, you know, that's kind of the anomaly there is nobody in the family played anything. That's crazy. Yeah, you mean usually musicians like you know, some somebody somebody is playing instruments and nobody in my family uh had any musical talent. Really? They they had uh excellent taste in music. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean I I grew up listening to my my f my folks, uh, you know, got to live through the sixties and seventies, so I grew up on all the old good vinyl stuff. Sure. You know, that um and then um I kind of grew up in my grandpa's house because my mom worked a lot too, and my grandpa was into a lot of that old country, like Hank Williams type stuff. Okay, that's yeah, that's what I was just wondering. Like fifties country. Yeah, yeah. You know, and grandma really liked Elvis and so I I got a I got a pretty good eclectic taste, pretty good eclectic taste in music at a very young age. And then uh my grandpa would buy instruments. Oh you couldn't play them. But he'd find them at like thrift stores and he'd buy them. Really? And so there was an abundance of instruments laying around that at the point where I decided I wanted to try and learn something, there was about how old were you when you picked up and what was the first instrument you picked up? Um well the first thing I wanted to play was the fiddle. Okay. I think I was about six. So I told my parents I wanted to play the the fiddle and they put me in piano lessons.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah, and I was like, this this this is.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Not the same. Yeah. Um they uh they wanted me to have a good foundation, I guess, in music. Uh I did I did play piano for a l a while, uh maybe six years or so. But uh I started playing fiddle not too long after I started piano lessons. So I did I did get to the instrument that I wanted to play fairly quickly. Which was the fiddle. You still play the fiddle? Yeah, it's my primary instrument. Is it really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, if I'm not if I'm not doing the the reckless rooster thing, which is kind of the solo project, usually I am playing fiddle or lead guitar or dobro or something for another band.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Yeah. But you had your reckless with the we saw you last night perform at Penguilly's, which is such a cool venue. Very cool. And and uh hysteric uh hysterical, historical venue here in in downtown Boise. Uh I actually had been there once or twice before and saw um Buddy DeVore and the Faye Cowboys playing there. They're kind of the house band. Kind of a staple there. Yeah, they really are. Um This episode is brought to you by Tin Hall, Western style with an edge, bold design, fearless attitude, and boots that make a statement. Discounts available when you click our sponsor link at musical milespodcast.com. Um but uh um anyway, very cool place. But you said last night was your first full band gig as Reckless Rooster.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yes, Reckless Rooster has been uh for about ten years a one-man band. Wow. Yeah. So you roll in and and and mostly just a guitar, or or you play everything in your yeah, um so the original format of Reckless Rooster, and I'm trying to get away from the one-man band thing, which is trying to like start a band and add other players. Um a lot of it had to do with uh geographical location. I was based in western Wyoming in the middle of nowhere.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

You were in Pineale.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Pine Sublit County. Sublake County, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Do you know do you know Tamara Conrad? I don't think so. She grew up in Pinedale, but she now is l lives in Flathead, but she's a songwriter. And uh cool chick. We just you'll have to check out her. I just released her podcast episode last week. Oh wow. So uh but she grew up in Pinele. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Um what were you doing over there? No, I I moved out there because of the music scene. In Pinedale. It had a music scene when I moved there. Really? The oil was booming. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I I started playing out there with a band from Salt Lake City. We were playing every bar in the county like every six weeks. Wow. Yeah, okay. It was yeah, it was it was booming. There was cool open mics, there was a lot of good local players. Um, you know, but then booms and busts, and so it busted, and then that kind of kind of killed the music scene, and people moved away, and it kind of just never really came back even after COVID. I think I think there's a decent there's a decent number of local musicians there now, but I had to go elsewhere to to like professionally.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yeah, so I was never able to become like a part of that community.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

So were you did you go back to Salt Lake or did you come here?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Well, I've always played in a band out of Salt Lake City called Matthew and the Hope. And that's the band I ended up out in Pineale with. Okay. Um but as a solo artist, I've yeah, I've always been touring the Mountain States.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Okay. Yeah, we've interviewed a couple of other bands from down that way. Uh Swinging Lights. You know those guys out of they're out of Salt Lake or somewhere down there. Um you know a kid named Skylar Gear? Uh singer-songwriter, country, more country. Yeah. Um anyway, he spent some time in Nashville and and around. But we we've we've uh run onto a few bands, but really we, you know, with this podcast, we go everywhere. Call it Musical Miles Podcast for a reason because we've traveled everywhere and done every interview's been in person, which makes it cool, right? Because there's nothing worse than looking at a split screen with two guys, one in Texas and one in Boise, Idaho, or wherever, trying to have a conversation, and there's no replacing this, and there's no replacing what you just did. That live music experience is there's nothing like a live music experience, in my opinion. I can listen to you. In fact, I listened to you on the radio, I mean on the on on Spotify coming over. But guess what? It's not the same, it's not even close. I mean, I I mean you you're good, you're good. I don't get me wrong, but I loved I loved you live last night. You last night you guys rocked the house.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, I can't beat live shows.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Yeah. So so um uh you've been doing this a long time then.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Eleven years.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Eleven years. Yeah. Wow. What uh uh what's your what's your ultimate goal? You said you want to be you want to put together together a band.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Uh Western Wyoming is just really hard to tour out of it's so far away from everyone. Sure. And so I needed to uh go somewhere a little more financially feasible. And so I came over to Boise in October. Oh okay. I was already playing I was already I've already been playing Idaho myself. Sure, sure. Plus I played in David Henry band, which is a Boise based band. Right. And so it kind of made sense to to go go to Boise, you know. I'm like, well, there's a lot of gigs I can play. There's already a band I'm in. Um there's uh the there's people that I can play and you know play with and put together a band. Yeah, yeah. Like just a lot more potential and drive a lot less miles.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Well, what I love about this, and and that we're noticing uh uh I noticed it last night because one of your guitar players plays with Ryder and the Thunder rolling thunder. What's his name?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

No, that was uh um Antonio.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Antonio, cool kid, yeah. Uh um uh I need to sit down with him one of these days. I've interviewed Ryder, but he's he's really talented uh guitar player. Right, right. And I and I and I know and I know Tyler, I've interviewed Tyler as well. Followed Tyler a bunch. I've I actually uh uh he was playing in, I was in Fort Worth, Texas. I had my daughter, uh took her on a trip down there, and I see Tyler's playing in Fort Worth. So we went and saw him. We went and watched him play, and and that's when Johnny Shoes was still playing with him. And but anyway, we went and saw him and hung out and had a great visit. And then uh I Shanda and I were down doing interviews in Austin, uh-huh, and they were playing at uh oh my gosh, which venue was it? A legendary venue there in Austin. And and I can't remember which anyway. I walked in, I'm standing there, and he comes walking out of the back room and goes, Byron, what are you doing here?

SPEAKER_01 15:22

And I said, Well, you know, I I came all the way here to watch Tyler and the Tyler Road is our our paths crossed touring through Montana. Yeah, and so I went and crashed their show and got up and played some titles. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Well, I love that I love that, and I I that's what I love about the music deal. You know, Jeff Crosby. Yep, of course. You know, Andy was there at your show last night. In fact, I'm I had scheduled an interview with Andy while we're here for Tree Fort, but had never met him. Now I've interviewed Jeff and I've seen Jeff play probably 20 times, maybe more. And I'm standing there videoing you and taking some pictures of you guys on stage last night. And Andy comes up, puts his arm around me, and it and he was like, Yeah, because I was thinking he's like, get over here so you got some better. And I look and I'm going, that guy looks familiar. Finally goes, I'm Andy Crosby. And he recognized me, but I didn't recognize him. But anyway, no, it's a cool the music deal's so cool. And Idaho has so many talented so much talent. Oh my gosh, yeah. Well, even I was I was just sharing with with uh Corey and and uh Pops. We just started because I've never seen this happen in southeast Idaho. We just started doing uh what we call Thursday in the round. We're doing songwriter rounds very cool on Thursday nights. My long game is to have a full-blown songwriter festival in Idaho Falls.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Would be very cool.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

We do we love songwriter festivals. We do Red Lodge, we do Livingston, we do Whitefish, we do we're doing Cedar Edge, Colorado. We got invited to come down to that. It's coming up in June. Rodney Crowell's headline in that deal, and we're looking forward to sitting down with Rodney Crowell. So that'd be cool. Yeah, but uh anyway, so so what's uh who really influenced your music as a as you grew up? You started talking about the old school stuff your grandparents listened to, what your parents listened to. What really uh spoke to you as you got a little bit older? Because you're young, you're probably what are you, 30?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

36.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

36. So about the same age as I've got a kid just your age, 37. And I know what what they listen to a lot of stuff I've never heard of.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Well, let's see. I liked I liked a lot of old country. I did like that kind of hang of stuff. And I got that from my grandpa.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Um from my f from my parents though, I really got into rock and roll.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones. Yeah. You know, like like rap, that's just yeah, that's the stuff I grew up on.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

A C, D C, Metallica. I actually learned to fall in love with Metallica because of my oldest son. My oldest son's gonna be 43. So he kind of introduced me to Metallica.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

I was kind of just into everything really though. Um then when I was a teenager, I wanted to play punk rock, because that was kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Um he was either punk rock or screamo. I had a lot of friends who played Screamo, but I was into punk rock, and so I was in a punk rock band. Okay. And then uh after I graduated high school, uh my career path took me into cowboying ranching. Right. Kind of hard to play in a punk rock band by yourself. Right. So yeah, I uh ended up going back to acoustic guitar and then like relearning old country.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Sure. Sure. Yeah, because that's a good one. Well, when you're by yourself out on the ranch, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Yeah, yeah, you want to learn those old cowpoke songs and so I got in yeah, I got into cowboy tunes and just old country and stuff. I I feel like I have a pretty good pretty good education in an old country music, you know. I do I do cover a lot of that stuff. Um a lot of uh Texas Americana, Guy Clark, oh love Guy Clark stuff.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

One of my favorite songs, and I I was always under the assumption that Guy never cut it, but it's one of the f it was the first song he ever wrote. You know which one it is. Uh Step Inside This House. Lyle Lovick plays it. And Guy hated it. Guy says, Why do you play that? Don't play that anyway. So it's not that great. And he said, if that's a bad example of someone's first song, yeah, that's a great bad example, because that's a great song. Uh I I love that song. And and I got to meet Lyle 25 years ago, and so we've we've uh seen him play a handful of times and got to hang out with him after the show. And what a cool guy. But I love Guy Clark. I love I love uh LA Freeway, I love the Cape. The Cape's probably oh my god, how do you meet that song? Yeah, a fantastic writer.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Um yeah, that's that's definitely what inspired my musical taste and writing into what I'm doing today. Cool.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Well, you're an you're an incredibly talented guitar player. I mean, I I'm I'm in awe. Uh I love I love watching.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

I feel like there's so many great guitar players in in Boise, though. Well, I'm telling you, Jeff Crosby's probably one of the most important things.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

He's pretty good. Well, Antonio that I was playing with is a really good yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Oh, there's some talent here.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah, there's some some incredible talent. Noble, Noble's incredible too, Neil. So many good guitarists. Yeah, cool. So are you writing a lot of your own stuff? Um, we did a mostly original set last night. Was it mostly original? Yeah, I think we did one traditional and one cover, and the rest was all of it.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

So the the the song, the song you did, I I I don't know the title of it, but the one we came out and danced on. Uh uh, yeah. Oh, I I uh I could quit, but I won't, or whatever you what do you call it? Uh oh Firewater. Firewater, that's the one. That's the one I love that. That's a great song. Yeah, that's a great song. Yeah, a lot of fun. Well, you had a great crowd in there last night and they really got into it. It seemed like they were digging it pretty good. Yeah, cool, cool. So, where can where can our listeners find your music?

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Oh, I searched for Reckless Rooster.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Reckless Rooster on all streaming. That's how I found you. Yeah, so cool. Well, when we when we post this, we'll make sure before when you leave here, get your information to Miss Shanda, your phone number and all that stuff, and then we'll we'll send you a copy of this and let you know, and then ask you to share it on your social media. And and uh we want to help push your music and get people out. If you're gonna be over on our side of the state, please reach out to us. Oh, yeah. Uh, we'd love to see you come by past you all the time. Yeah, yeah. If you need anything, holler at us. We're just off the freeway there at Shelley. So thanks for your time, man. This has been a lot of fun. Hey, for Musical Milders Podcast, I'm your host, Warren Delphin, here with Mr. Robin Edward. We'll see you guys somewhere down the road.