Cheyenne is where a young bareback rider named Chris LeDoux first began turning eight-second rides into western legend, eventually winning the 1976 PRCA Bareback Riding World Championship 50 years ago.
This summer, his son is bringing that legend home.
To mark the anniversary of his father’s world championship, Ned LeDoux is launching the Bareback Jack Tribute tour. Playing in select cities, it will start at the Lincoln Center in Cheyenne on July 24 during the 10-day Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo.
Cheyenne was just the most appropriate venue to kick off such a tour, Ned said. The city was the start of both his dad’s rodeo and his music career.
“My dad rodeoed there and he played the main stage there,” Ned told Cowboy State Daily. “And dad always kind of called Cheyenne Frontier Days his Grand Old Opry of the West.”
What Ned most remembers about his dad, though, wasn’t the championship ride. It was the way he was always there for family.
“He was the best,” he said. “Him and Mom both. The best parents a kid could ever ask for.”
LeDoux led by example, Ned said, demonstrating values such as hard work and integrity every day.
“It was always fun to be on the road with him, playing drums for him,” Ned said. “He was the same guy on the road that he was at home.”
Maybe We Should …
The tribute tour developed as Ned and some of his bandmates were talking about this year being the anniversary of his father’s world championship.
“They thought, ‘Well, maybe we can just do a few select shows and just call it the Bareback Jack Tribute and play nothing but dad’s stuff,'” Ned said. “And we already play a handful of his songs anyway, but we were like, ‘Well, what if we bring back some of the songs that maybe some of us have never played, or the last time we did play those songs was when we were playing with dad.’”
The collection of songs for the 90-minute set will bring back memories not just for the band but for LeDoux’s many fans as well.
“I mean, with dad’s catalogue, we could pay for four or five days,” Ned said with a chuckle. “So, we just kind of picked out some of our favorites and I think some of the fan favorites as well. So it’s just going to be a lot of fun.”
Why Bareback Jack?
The title of the tribute tour is also the first song LeDoux wrote. It was created during his high school days in Cheyenne, and it’s all about his own budding passion for roughstock events.
“I’ll come flying from the chutes with my spurs up high,” the chorus line goes. “Chaps and boots reachin’ for the sky. Spurrin’ a wild with my head flung back. You’ll all know me, my name’s Bareback Jack.”
While traveling the college rodeo circuit, LeDoux usually had his guitar with him and would often sing for his fellow cowboys.
“Bareback Jack” became their underground anthem. It was also featured on LeDoux’s first album, Songs of Rodeo Life, produced by his independent record label American Cowboy Songs.
“Bareback Jack was also kind of his nickname,” Ned said. “So of course that song is definitely going to be in the mix.”
The set list will also include other favorites such as “Take me to the Rodeo,” “Eight Second Ride,” and “Running Through the Rain.”
Broken Collarbone And More
LeDoux’s bareback championship ride came during what had been a difficult year.
He broke his collarbone in Phoenix and was battling a slew of other injuries.
That year, the NFR was a “clean slate.” The year’s earnings weren’t factored into the World Championship standings.
That was fortunate for LeDoux, who was able to return home to Kaycee and heal before entering the NFR in Oklahoma City.
He was third in the world standings and four other cowboys still had a mathematical shot at the world title.
LeDoux didn’t just need a good ride. He needed a spectacular one.
“Man, the electricity and the adrenaline at the NFR could power New York City for a year,” he wrote of that time in “The Finals: A Complete History of the National Finals Rodeo (1998).”
LeDoux’s mom had made a homemade strap to help keep everything that had been broken in place, and so far it seemed to be working.
LeDoux didn’t know just how much he was going to need that strap.
Riding Stormy Weather
The horse he drew was called Stormy Weather. It was a horse absolutely no cowboy wanted to draw that year — least of all LeDoux and his recovering collarbone.
Stormy Weather had slammed five-time bareback world champion Bruce Ford to the ground earlier that year.
In fact, the horse had thrown so many guys and jerked so many collarbones apart already he was in the running for bareback horse of the year.
“This is the only ride of my life that matters,” LeDoux said at the time. “Live or die or get crippled, it doesn’t matter. This is the demon we all must stand up to at some point in our life.”
The horse always looked like a beast to riders, but with LeDoux there was a different vibe, its owners, the Steiners, would later say.
“You’d have to have seen other people on him to know,” Bobby Steiner told ProRodeo Sports in a February 2026 article. "Everybody knew that horse and he was one of the all-time baddest eliminators. For Chris’ gold buckle, he didn’t just draw it. He earned it by that ride.”
LeDoux went on to score a 78-point ride. When the dust had settled and the final math was done, he had won nearly $5,000 at the finals, putting him at the top of the world standings.
That earned him the trophy saddle, as well as a gold buckle for his belt.
Even when LeDoux’s bronc-riding days gave way to touring with a band, Ned said his dad never stopped thinking like a cowboy.
“We might be 2,500 miles away from home, and he’s thinking about where he should build his tack room,” Ned said with a chuckle. “He’d be in the back of the bus drawing up blueprints, like where the stalls should go, where the tack room should be. Then he’d call me back there to go over it.
“He was always thinking about building something, He was never boring, that’s for sure.”
All About Gas Money
LeDoux wasn’t looking for record deals when he started recording his songs and selling cassette tapes from his gear bag.
It was all about the gas money to get to the next rodeo.
But his family loved the idea, and they were his most supportive fans.
His mom, Bonnie, hand-wound eight-track cassettes for him in her kitchen. His sister added labels to his records. His uncle and other siblings helped sell tapes at feed stores and other events.
That homespun effort helped build a fan base that now spans grandparents, parents and children who are turning up at Ned’s shows.
“Maybe they got one of Dad’s eight-tracks or cassettes back in the '80s, and went to a bunch of shows,” Ned said. “Then they started having kids and introduced Dad’s music to them, and then their kids started having kids. It’s just kind of continued through the generations.”
LeDoux And Garth
LeDoux’s record deal was a long time coming. By the time he signed with Capitol Records in 1991, he’d already released 22 albums on his own.
Though he didn’t have major financial backing for any of them, he sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
LeDoux’s music career got a big break in 1989, thanks to the Garth Brooks song “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)." The song, which hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs that year, included a LeDoux call out in its third verse:
“The competition’s getting younger
"Tougher broncs, you know I can’t recall
"A worn-out tape of Chris LeDoux
"Lonely women and bad booze
"Seem to be the only friends I’ve left at all.”
Brooks would play with LeDoux at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1996, and the two became close friends. LeDoux died in Casper in 2005 at age 56.
“When you define the title ‘Cowboy,’ it’s as much about what you do out of the saddle as you do in the saddle,” Brooks told ProRodeo Sports News in a 2026 interview. “Chris was a success at being a cowboy on a horse and on the ground. He was true and honest, a loving husband, father and friend.
“Nobody gets to lead the perfect life. But for the record, if I could ever be half the man Chris was, I feel I would have lived a perfect life.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
