Bob Petermann to Headline Farm in the Dell Harvest Fest

 

November 21, 2019

Jeri L. Dobrowski

Courtesy of Tom Herzog

As the annual Farm in the Dell Harvest Festival takes place November 23rd, the featured performer will be Bob Petermann, as after dinner entertainer and prior to the fund raising auction. We hope you'll join us!

(From Petermann's webpage)

Montana rancher Bob Petermann is as handy with a vintage Gibson guitar as he is with a rope. And he's a pretty fair roper.

Raised in the remote Cedar Creek area of Wibaux County, the Petermann ranch didn't receive electricity until 1966; phone service arrived in 1973. While the rest of the country was watching television, the Petermanns entertained themselves with country and western and gospel music. Bob's father played the fiddle, his sisters played piano, he and an older brother played guitar. It was his older brother, Ernie, who taught Bob to play chords when he was eight years old.

Today, Bob and his wife, Kay, make their home on the family ranch. Cattle and horses graze the rugged landscape. His repertoire has grown to include nearly 200 old cowboy classics, country tunes, gospel standards and songs that he himself has written. He's honed the collection around cattle drive campfires-singing to dudes from all over the world-and at venues across the West.

Petermann has three recordings to his credit: Takin' up Slack, Cowboy to the End, and A Couple Good Horses to Ride, and one book, Cowboy Poetry Fever.

What you'll discover on his recordings--in his mellow, soothing music and poetry--are songs and stories straight from the ranch. There's no embellishment to take away from the down-home sound developed over the nearly-six decades since he learned to chord and sing along with his family.

Bob's style of cowboy music has been described as "purist." He says that was one of the greatest compliments he's ever gotten. Far from trying to fit in with the fringe-and-sequins crowd, he's only too happy to pull on a pair of jeans, a rather plain Western dress shirt, boots and black hat before taking the stage. It's part of staying true to his heritage.

"I need to keep my music real," he said, "My poems and songs are a way of recording events from my generation so they won't be lost somewhere down the road."

Petermann has been a featured performer at Badger Clark Days, Hot Springs, S.D.; the Cowboy Roundup, Sheridan, Wyo.; Jim Thompson's Heritage of the American West, Spearfish, S.D.; the Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Medora, N.D.; the Old West Days Nebraska Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Valentine, Neb.; the Montana Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Lewistown, Mont.; Bob Penfield's Cowboy Opry, Lemmon, S.D., and other venues. He is a featured performer at the 2007 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev.

 

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