WADDIE MITCHELL & DON EDWARDS

TO PERFORM AT SMOKE IN THE VALLEY

Buckaroo poet Waddie Mitchell and Cowboy Balladeer Don Edwards will perform together on Saturday, October 16, 2004 at the inaugural Smoke in the Valley, SASS Black Powder Championships at Founders Ranch, New Mexico.

Billed at the Bard and the Balladeer, Waddie Mitchell and Don Edwards have shared the stage for many years with their individual styles of Cowboy poetry and music and will share performances from their CD The Bard and the Balladeer, Live From Cowtown.

Waddie Mitchell will share his award winning stories with cowboys and cowgirls alike amidst the rolling hills of Founder’s Ranch. From his earliest days on the remote Nevada ranches where his father worked, Waddie was immersed in the cowboy way of entertaining, the art of spinnin’ tales in rhyme and meter that came to be called cowboy poetry, a Western tradition that is as rich as the lifestyle that gave birth to it. Within his stories, told in a voice that is timeless and familiar, are the common bonds we all share, moments both grand and commonplace, the humorous and tragic, the life and death straggles and triumphs that we each recognize.

Waddie Mitchell has performed to audiences all over the globe and on a variety of television shows including Larry King Live, TNN, Good Morning America, The History Channel, PBS and Country Music Television. Waddie Mitchell was named one of the Top 20 most influential artists to influence Nevada by the Reno Gazette Journal. His series of recordings for Warner Bros. Records’ subsidiary label Warner Western and more recently for the Western Jubilee Recording Company have received critical acclaim.

Don Edwards has been entertaining audiences with his cowboy ballads for over 30 years and is noted as, “the best purveyor of cowboy music in American today” by Bobby Weaver of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. As a small child, Don was exposed to a vast cross-section of music from classical to jazz and blues to western swing by his father. Edward’s taught himself guitar at age 10 and chased the rodeo and worked ranches in Texas and New Mexico during his teens. In 1961, he landed a job as an actor/singer/stuntman at Six Flags Over Texas and he was to stick with music from then on. He made his first record in 1964.

In addition to Don’s singing career, he can be seen in Robert Redford’s film, The Horse Whisper, playing the part of “Smokey”. Redford felt that by using Edward’s in the role of “Smokey” he was giving his audience “the real deal”. Edwards has twice received the National Cowboy Hall of Fame’s “Wrangler Award” for Outstanding Traditional Western Music, one for his recording Chant of the Wanderer in 1992 and for the second time in 1996 for West of Yesterday.

Tickets for this SASS Sanctioned Black Powder Championship Concert are free to participating Shooters and Conventioneers. Additional tickets are $20 and can be purchased from the SASS Mercantile online or by calling toll free 1-877-411-SASS.

Smoke in the Valley, The SASS Black Powder Championships is produced by the Single Action Shooting Society and takes place October 14-17, 2004.

# # #