Country Music Star Chancey Williams Says Success Rooted In Wyoming

Chancey Williams isn’t just singing country music in a costume when he’s performing live. He grew up a Wyoming cowboy in Moorcroft and still goes home to work on his family’s ranch. 

His dirt-under-his-fingernails lifestyle has always inspired his songwriting. Ultimately, it’s earned him a massive national following that's growing. 

“I stay in my lane and sing about authentic stuff that I’ve actually lived versus, a lot of times, artists just sing about whatever,” Williams told Cowboy State Daily. “I feel like I have to sing about stuff that I did and have accomplished in my life.

"That way it’s more authentic.”

So far, his authenticity has taken the singer-songwriter places. 

Big places. 

Not only has he performed coast to coast across the United States, representing Wyoming everywhere he goes, he’s also ticked off a few major bucket-list items for a musician — Red Rocks and both The Ryman Auditorium and Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, for example. 

Not to mention his 2024 induction into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame.

Cheyenne Frontier Days Start

The Frontier Days honor is particularly meaningful. It’s where he got his start as a musician, playing eight years straight at the “beer tent” and then eventually opening for acts such as Toby Keith. 

Williams is also one of only two people who can lay claim to both performing music professionally on the Cheyenne Frontier Days’ stage and competing professionally in its rodeo. The late Chris LeDoux is the other who can make such a claim.

“I made the College National Finals twice, so definitely I competed at a national level and it was great,” Williams said. “I loved it. I made the high school national finals in saddle bronc riding, too, and I won a couple of rounds at Cheyenne Frontier Days in rookie bronc riding. It was a fun career for sure, and I still miss it.”

Williams attended Casper College for three years on a rodeo scholarship then transferred to University of Wyoming for his fourth rodeo year. 

Music wasn’t a main event yet.

“I kind of always had the band through college, just kind of for fun,” Williams said. “I enjoyed singing. It was a nice side job to have a band and sing.”

High School Band Tried Hard

Williams started playing music with a group of school friends during his senior year of high school in 1998 just for fun. There was a talent show coming up, and the band had roughly eight songs in their repertoire. 

They performed well enough that someone in Moorcroft paid them $200 to play for a New Year’s Eve party. It was an epiphany for Williams to make that kind of money doing something that was so much fun, but he never had an inkling where it might lead. 

He had other ideas for his career at the time. There was Rodeo, for one. And there were the political science and public administration degrees he earned from University of Wyoming, for another. 

After he finished grad school, though, he ended up with an internship in Nashville, driving the late Toby Keith around. 

It changed everything. 

Rodeo Has A Shelf Life

The internship is the only time Williams hasn’t lived in Wyoming. But he got there through Wyoming, thanks to a friendship with the LeDoux family. 

“Dad and Chris grew up rodeoing together,” Williams told Cowboy State Daily in a 2024 interview. “And then me, Will, and Cindy went to college together.”

When Williams needed an internship to finish his master’s in public administration, he was told he could pick anything anywhere — even Nashville. 

That would be fun, Williams decided, to see the inside of the music business before heading off on a more permanent career path. 

So he called Will LeDoux to see if their manager, TK Kimbrell, had any internships for a Wyoming cowboy. That led to an internship with Kimbrell’s TKO Artist Management firm, as well as the internship with Keith. 

“There’s a lot of kids who graduate from Belmont (College) in Nashville that intern all over town,” Williams said. “I think they hired me because I flew down and I was from Wyoming. I was a cowboy who was friends with the LeDouxes.”

The job itself put him next to a superstar and started a new train of thought. Maybe what he really wanted to do with his career was pursue music.

“I had always known, growing up rodeoing, that there’s an expiration date on rodeo,” Williams said. “You can’t do it forever. So even though I loved it, I thought maybe there’s more of a future in music for a long-term career.”

Star Continues To Rise

Eventually, Williams would open for Keith six times. He also performed Keith’s “Should’ve Been A Cowboy” opposite him on a Cheyenne Frontier Days stage.

That was a dream come true for Williams, who grew up listening to Keith’s music through the ‘90s and has always considered him one of his heroes, along with Chris LeDoux.

The road to fame, though, has been slow and winding for Williams. 

For a long time, he was playing opposite so-called “bro-country“ music flooding the airways with a style that blends repetitive country lyrics with hip-hop, hard rock, or pop. That was much different than the gritty authenticity that’s been a hallmark of Williams’ work. 

Williams resisted leaning into such trends and focused on building a following for the kind of music he wanted to sing: Songs such as “Rodeo Cold Beer,” “The World Needs More Cowboys,” and “Wyoming Wind.”

Now, with shows like Taylor Sheridan’s popular “Yellowstone” television series stoking western culture’s popularity, Williams’ music has been coming into its own.

It’s been deeply satisfying to see his independent label taking off, with magazines such as “People” describing him as country music’s “most intriguing” new country music star.

But the most satisfying moment happened just recently when he was back home in Wyoming, headlining the University of Wyoming’s recent Cowboy Kickoff Concert. 

“It kind of came full circle,” he said. “Before the concert last Friday, I got asked to come speak at the College of Business to a marketing class about marketing for music. So it felt full circle. I went to school there and I’ve accomplished something in my life that people want to hear me talk about.”

That night, he showed those students and many others what a kid from Wyoming can do if he puts his heart into the work and keeps the faith.

More To Come

There’s more on the horizon for Williams’ Wyoming fans to watch, with a new album called “Thirsty and Blue” coming out soon, which he believes is his best yet. 

There’s also a movie debut next week for a Louis L’Amour film adaptation called “Flint,” in which Williams plays a ranch hand, and he is soon to host an episode of Fox Sports show’s “Wild World of Western Sports,” about rodeo in Cloverdale, Canada.

“But still, my passion’s playing live,” Williams said. “My long-term goal is just to build our songs and build our brand big enough where we’re playing nationwide in front of thousands of people every night.”

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Below: Chancey Williams talks with RFD-TV about his Wyoming roots, Cheyenne Frontier Days and cowboy culture.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.