Here's a wonderful article, courtesy of Highways West.

Funny reading about Elko, Nevada this morning, as I was just talking about Elko a couple of days ago. I mentioned that I was going to Pahrump, Nevada to a friend, and he said he knew of a great Basque restaurant there, and I started talking about Elko and its heavy Basque influence. Seems the Basques have an affinity for our high deserts. It's no surprise though, since sheep do well in both places, and we all know that Basque sheep's-milk cheese is one of the finest things you will ever taste.

Anyway, the article doesn't explore the Basque angle, but the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is a fascinating collision of two strands of American life that aren't as alien to each other as a lot of people might think.

There is also an especially neat observation regarding the transmission of the poetry.

Hang around for a few days and two things about cowboy poetry become clear. One is that the text on the page is like a score waiting to be played. It's one thing to read Vess Quinlan's poems. It's something else altogether to hear him recite them. The phrases are perfectly matched to his rich baritone drawl. In fact, it's that fusion of meter and inflection that makes cowboy poetry so well suited for setting to music.

Quinlan is the rule, by the way, not the exception. To say these poets bring the printed text to life is to miss the point. The printed text really isn't the cowboy poem, just a way of storing it.

It's not exactly a new observation, as oral traditions are as old as civilization, but I like the twist of printed text as mere storage; or as a score. That might also help illuminate the old problem of lyrics so often being leaden on the page, but gold in the performance.