Before it could exist, the father-son duet featuring a previously unreleased Chris LeDoux vocal track had to survive 21 years of inattention, a FedEx delivery and the spite of outdated technology.
Ned LeDoux, son of Wyoming rancher, rodeo cowboy and renowned country singer Chris LeDoux, released a father-son duet last week titled “One Hand In The Riggin’.”
Though the song’s been performed and recorded for more than 20 years, only a handful of people had ever heard Chris LeDoux sing it before its release last Wednesday.
The song’s lyricist Brenn Hill was an up-and-coming songwriter in the early 2000s when he made friends with Bruce Bouton, the head of the musicians’ union and an A-list steel guitar player in Nashville, Hill told Cowboy State Daily.
“He took me under his wing and was introducing me to people around town,” said Hill, of Bouton. That’s when Bouton had the idea: “He wanted me to write a song for Chris LeDoux.”
Chris LeDoux had been recording an edgy breed of country his son now calls “rodeo rock” since 1970. His rogue concert stage tactics and music both inspired major parts of the career of Garth Brooks, who is the no. 1-selling solo artist in U.S.
Hill had a little poem in his head that went “One hand in the riggin’, one hand on the wheel.” He pitched that to Bouton, who happened to have a melody in mind for it.
“The song just fell out, kind of a magic moment,” Hill recalled.
Chris LeDoux recorded the song in Nashville in 2003. At that time, he was already battling the cancer that would later prove fatal, his son Ned told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
But “One Hand In The Riggin’” didn’t make it onto Chris LeDoux’s album of that year, “Horsepower.”
“(There was) intense pressure to finish the record,” recalled Hill. “They were in such a hurry to get that out,” and they weren’t going to wait for the song.
At the time, Hill was heartbroken. He was still scrambling for funding, for renown, for a bit of independence in the tough music world and had to obey the forces that controlled the business.
Now he’s grateful and thrilled that it happened that way, he said.
Ned and Chris LeDoux (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Ned LeDoux performs at the Watershed music fesival in 2021 in Washington state. (Getty Images) 
Chris LeDoux performs on state in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1994. (Getty Images) 
Ned LeDoux performs at the Watershed music fesival in 2021 in Washington state. (Getty Images) 
(Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Ned LeDoux in a studio in Nashville. (Courtesy Mark Sissel)
It’s Time To Sing
Chris LeDoux died of cancer in 2005, at the age of 56.
His son Ned, a drummer since age 6, had been drumming in Chris’ band, the Western Underground. After his dad’s death, Ned started drumming for South Dakota-based band Dustin Evans and the Good Times.
He stayed in that role for 10 years.
One night roughly 12 years ago, the band members were hanging out and playing old songs. Dustin Evans got up to get a beer and handed Ned LeDoux his guitar.
“Here, why don’t you play one of your dad’s songs,” said Evans, to the younger LeDoux.
“I said, ‘I know the words to all Dad’s songs – I just don’t sing,” recalled LeDoux. But he was curious whether he could carry his dad’s melodies, and he gave it a shot.
It was infectious. Ned LeDoux started singing to friends, to his own empty basement and into the cheap motel rooms that housed him on the road.
He played his first solo gig in 2014.
“People say I sound like my dad,” said Ned LeDoux. “And that’s probably the best compliment I could get.”
Because Of Cowboy Poetry
Ned LeDoux played at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, in early February of this year.
Brenn Hill, whom the younger LeDoux befriended after his dad’s death, watched from the audience.
After the set the two friends visited, and Hill floated the idea of resurrecting Chris LeDoux’s vocal track on “One Hand In The Riggin’” – for a father-son duet.
“I almost couldn’t wait for him to come off stage so I could tell him that idea,” said Hill.
LeDoux loved the idea. His team was amazed Hill still had the original vocal track.
But it was recorded in a format called “radar,” a fleeting format that was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s but is obsolete now.
Hill couldn’t simply make a copy of the original. He called up recording studios to see if they had the technology, and no one did.
So he popped the original disk into a FedEx box and sent it to Ned LeDoux’s manager Mark Sissel, and his producer Mac McAnally.
“I told the lady at FedEx, ‘This can’t get lost. This is really irreplaceable,’” Hill recalled.
When Sissel sent a text saying the track arrived in Nashville, Hill exhaled a sigh of relief.
Crackling
Sissel was “all excited” about the track, which arrived in a box littered with notes about how it could not get lost. But when the men went to play it, the track crackled and sounded unusable, McAnally told Cowboy State Daily.
They didn’t lose hope, but their hearts sank, he said.
“We ran it across a couple technical tricks and got the data to transfer,” said McAnally. And they were surprised to find in the end that not only was the track usable, it was “outstanding – a classic Chris LeDoux vocal.”
McAnally also recorded an electric guitar strain to lead the song. This differentiates it from many of the other, earlier versions, which feature a fiddle and a lighter, Texas-country sound.
The heavier instrumental edge is meant to match Chris LeDoux, said McAnally.
“I opened shows for him and saw what a force he was on stage,” he said. A world champion bareback rider, LeDoux’s country music style blended chilling rock balladry with genuine rodeo doggedness.
McAnally also had to separate the father’s voice from the son’s voice. They sound so much alike, it’s difficult for listeners to tell who is singing where, so to help, McAnally placed their voices on different points of the stereo spectrum – so they could sing to each other.
Now, the producer is just grateful that he got to be part of the late artist’s last musical rodeo.
“We are so blessed to have that (duet now),” said McAnally. “Because Ned never acknowledged he could sing until years after Chris was gone.”
Ned could hear his dad while recording his own vocal portion, said McAnally. That translates to a sentiment that, the producer says, is audible on the final product.
“A duet across time between the father and the son is an amazing thing,” he said. “It stands the hair up on my arms.”
Contact Clair McFarland at clair@cowboystatedaily.com
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
