If you ask his son, Wyoming’s late troubadour Chris LeDoux has one more song to sing.
From Kaycee, Wyoming, LeDoux was a world champion bareback rider and renowned country singer. He inspired country superstar Garth Brooks and collaborated with him on the 1992 hit “Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy.”
One of LeDoux’s best-known tracks is “This Cowboy’s Hat,” a chilling country-rock ballad distilling a cowboy’s deepest loyalties.
LeDoux was 56 when he died of cancer in 2005. Brooks memorialized LeDoux that year with the country hit “Good Ride Cowboy.”
LeDoux’s son Ned, whose voice bears an uncanny resemblance to his father’s, debuted his first album in 2016 and has been making music since.
On Wednesday, Ned LeDoux, now 47, unveiled a track his dad recorded shortly before his death: “One Hand in the Riggin’.”
Never Released Before
Though the song’s writer Brenn Hill posted his own recitation of the tune to YouTube nine years ago, the public hadn't heard it in Chris LeDoux’s voice before this week, announced Ned LeDoux in a Wednesday video on X (formerly Twitter).
“We’re talking (a recording of) 20-something years ago now,” says Ned LeDoux in the video.
Hill was an up-and-coming singer/songwriter, and “a big fan of Dad’s,” the younger LeDoux continued. “He asked Dad if he’d like to sing on this song with him, and Dad agreed to it.”
For some unknown reason, the version of Chris LeDoux singing that song was never released.
As the years wore on, Ned LeDoux befriended Hill, whom he calls a “great songwriter” of traditional cowboy music.
The pair discussed the hushed track in February at a cowboy poetry convention, Ned LeDoux said in his video.
“He said the timing wasn’t right back then,” Ned noted.
He then quoted Hill: “The Lord has a plan for everything: I think what his plan is, is for this to be a duet with you and your dad.”
Ned LeDoux agreed.
He said they put new lines for drums, bass guitars, plus Ned’s own vocal track onto the song — then Ned’s producer Mac McAnally plugged Chris LeDoux’s vocals in last.
“I can tell the difference between me and Dad, our voices,” Ned said with a smile, adding, “It might be kinda tricky for some.”
The track’s description on YouTube credits both LeDouxs, Hill and Bruce Bouton as its composers.
There’s Always One More Rodeo
“One Hand in the Riggin’” has the catchy twang of ’80s and ’90s-era rodeo country, and a lyrical message of doggedness already familiar to Chris LeDoux fans.
It tells a story of a rodeo cowboy — wracked with solitude — who got bucked off at a show, didn’t make the short go and had to drive half the night just to make it to Cheyenne, Wyoming.
“There’ll be another bronc to ride and I just might have a chance, if I keep one hand in the riggin’, one hand on the wheel,” the first verse and chorus say.
“What it is that keeps me goin’, sometimes I just don’t know,” the second verse progresses. “For all the years that I spent ridin’, I don’t have much to show. And while she waits there alone, hopin’ I’ll come back to stay — there’s always one more mile to drive, down another lonely highway, I keep one hand in the riggin’.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
