Cheyenne Musical Legend Michael DeGreve Dies At 78

Michael DeGreve, Musician Who Linked 1960s Rock Royalty and a Wyoming Hotel Lobby, Dies at 78.

Michael DeGreve, a musician whose life traced an improbable arc from the psychedelic scene of 1960s Hollywood to three decades as the beloved bard of Cheyenne, died on May 11, 2026 at his home in Grants Pass, Oregon. He was 78.

The death was caused by complications from prostate cancer, Kristen Reitinger, his wife who cared for him during his illness, confirmed to Cowboy State Daily.

Though his career began in the rowdy orbit of rock-and-roll icons, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, DeGreve came to feel most at home at Cheyenne’s Hitching Post Inn, where his request-driven sets and skill for story telling helped turn a hotel lobby into the capital city’s preeminent social hot spot.

“It was a meeting place… where we all got together and had a drink and felt like family,” DeGreve told Cowboy State Daily earlier this year.

Hollywood Hills

Raised in a Catholic household in North Los Angeles, DeGreve was raised without a father but “twice as good a mom,” he’d told Cowboy State Daily. 

Tall and athletic, he became an All‑American basketball player at Verdugo Hills High School, earned the attention of legendary UCLA coach John Wooden, and received college scholarships.

He was intent on getting to the NBA, but those plans unraveled after an ACL tear delayed his college start and led him to a summer job at the Los Angeles Times, where he fell under the influence of music critic Pete Johnson.

It was an addictively electric period in American popular music, especially in Hollywood, where the Doors were still an opening act at the Whisky a Go Go, and Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield were regulars along the Sunset Strip.

The scene was irresistible, and DeGreve threw every part of himself into a new passion: playing guitar.

“The hippie thing bit me,” he’d said.

He walked away from basketball and dropped out of college to join a band called the Lid, before emerging as a solo performer. 

By the early ’70s, he was a familiar figure in Hollywood’s creative circles, and he’d later reflect on those years with a mix of ambivalence, humility, and gratitude. The culture’s hard-partying and penchant for psychedelics helped enrich DeGreve’s life perspective, he’d said, but he also conceded that he was fortunate to survive unscathed as many in his cohort succumbed to addiction or premature death.

He stayed grounded in those years with the help of Eastern spiritual philosophy, which remained a through line in his life and work.

In the 1970s, DeGreve’s band, the Truth, recorded an album with major Motown producers for an unlikely hybrid later described as “Peter, Paul and Mary meets Jefferson Airplane meets Motown.” 

Around that time, he married the actress Susan Sennett, a star of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" and a regular in national advertising campaigns. Together they were regarded as a young Hollywood power couple.

Behind the scenes, however, he was restless, eager to tour and live in motion. The marriage ended within five years.

The Hitching Post

Shortly after their divorce, DeGreve arrived in Cheyenne in a Volkswagen van. He’d come with the intention to play a two‑week gig at the Hitching Post Inn, collect a check and then get back on the road.

Instead, he stayed for the next 30 years.

“It was an amazing place. It was just a hotel in a small city, but it had a vibe about it,” DeGreve told Cowboy State Daily in February, 2026. “It was my space, man. It was really a wonderful time.”

DeGreve played requests from a repertoire of roughly 500 songs, all committed to memory, and bantered with guests he came to know by name. 

“He's not just a singer, he's a classic entertainer. He interacted with his audience, he would read his audience and react to the mood they were in that night,” said a Hitching Post patron and friend of DeGreve, Mark Harris. “It was an amazing thing to watch. It was kind of magical."

He drew crowds six nights a week and even had “groupies,” including a superfan who bought him a $20,000 Martin D‑45 guitar. 

Though he was treated like a celebrity, he never acted like one, said Brian Lenneschmit, a Cheyenneite who marveled at DeGreve’s ability to bridge cultures; he was as respected by draft-card burners as he was by active-duty soldiers and vets, which stemmed from his earnest love for people.

"He was always interested in people's lives. He asked where they were from and wanted to actually know them. He just knew how to make people feel at home and included," Leneschmidt said.

Beyond the Hitching Post Inn, he’s remembered for co-headlining with Neil Young a benefit concert Frontier Days Stadium for victims of 1985 flash flood that killed a dozen people in Cheyenne, as well as his album, "Gypsy’s Lament," recording during his Cheyenne years, which became an international success and made him rock royalty in Russia.

His time in Cheyenne came to an end in the early 2000s when new owners took over the Hitching Post Inn, which was later destroyed in an arson fire. After stints in Wisconsin and Las Vegas, he settled in Grants Pass, Oregon in 2021, the same year he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had already spread to his bones by the time it was detected.

His heart, though, was always in Wyoming. 

“For everything I’ve done, that time in Cheyenne was my life,” he told Cowboy State Daily earlier this year. “I’ve had a lot of great chapters, it’s been an amazing adventure, but (Cheyenne) was a really, really wonderful place and time for me.”

Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.