Music of the West
By Hugh McLennan
Oct-Nov 2007
Cowboy Songs of the Northern Rockies
Loyd Bishop and the Birch Island String Band
Frank Ritcey is a longtime horseman and packer who wrote all the lyrics and his pal Loyd Bishop set them to music and provided the vocal and instrumental work.
Loyd Bishop is a retired high school teacher who is spending most of his time making music these days. Of his pal Frank, he says: “It’s a good thing he can’t sing or play a lick, otherwise I wouldn’t have had much to do on this CD. As it is, I have done everything. The Birch Island String Band is just a name I use to pretend that I’m not alone in the studio.”
Frank’s words carry the bite of breeze from a frozen high country lake, and the earthy outlook of a lifelong mountain man. There are songs about good horses, old dogs, good cowboys and legends of the West. “That winter in ‘83 when we were wrangling out of Olds, my horse had froze in mid-leap jumpin’ cross the creek, had to leave him hangin’ there, he didn’t fall down for a week.” Is an example of the wry word pictures in these songs.
Hank is the first song I played on The Spirit of the West. It’s allegedly about what happened when Frank picked the wrong song to sing to his horse.
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