Juni Fisher

The problem with Country Music is it is now run by, and the awards are voted on by, people who spend all their time texting messages like “OMG! That is so totally great!” And that the masses can be spoon-fed auto-tuned slop; as long as they see that person on billboards and on videos, they believe it’s good. Bring back awarding the on pitch and talented singers…so many of them get left out!

In order for me to survive on the road all I need is a cellphone, a GPS, a laptop, three hats, three or four or five pairs of boots, a saddle, guitar, ukulele, sound system, enough clothes to keep them all guessing and an oil change every 4,000 miles.

The best part of the country for Western music is anywhere west of the Colorado line…that is the magic line in the sand.

The person who influenced me most growing up was my Dad. He was better than Roy Rogers to me.

Fly-fishing is an addiction for which the equipment fits in the trunk of a car, and it can, when allowed, drag your life into ruination the same way team roping, horse racing or rodeo can. But give it up? Never! Not ever!

My mother taught me to be nice, but slip a zinger of a practical joke in whenever possible.

The best advice I’ve ever had was to never make a life-changing decision unless fully dressed.

The dumbest advice I ever got was to turn that mean pet Rhode Island Red rooster I had when I was in high school loose in the yard so he could be out with the hens. Those poor hens.

The secret to riding is keeping a leg on each side, your crack in the middle, the horse’s head in front of you and its tail behind you.

I hate to complain, but I cannot stand the people who stand in front of the coffee at the truck stop, adding four grains of sugar and two drops of cream at a time to their coffee, and have to taste it 20 times before they finally move out of the way, as though they have never had a cup of coffee in their entire lives. Those of us who know how to doctor up a cup of truck stop coffee are wanting to just grab the cup from them, fix it for them and say, “You will by golly get yourself out of the way now.”

One thing I would not do again is say with conviction that I know my way down a stretch of the Little Red River in Arkansas, nor that I am sure I can handle rowing the new drift boat through the narrow channel of water between the rocks without cracking it up on the rocks, especially when witnesses can retell the wreck and expound on it with each telling.

If I wouldn’t have made it in music I probably would have stayed in the saddlery business, or maybe tried roller derby.

What history has taught me is to let the not-so-good things be, and let the people who don’t do the right thing dig their own graves. And if something is good, to do it again.

Juni Fisher, Cowgirl Balladeer

Juni Fisher’s outstanding guitar picking and songwriting have earned her numerous awards, including “Album of the Year” for Gone for Colorado. She’s also the first woman in the history of the Wrangler awards to win “Outstanding Western Album” from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. You can catch Juni in concert at the Western Music Association Festival and Awards show on November 16-20 and at the Monterey Cowboy Poetry & Music Festival on December 2-4. When she’s not on the road, she makes her home in Franklin, Tennessee.