NO. 1 WITH A HEATER
“The Rodeo Song” was a worldwide hit for Showdown. Nearly 40 years later, the band members reflect on the wild ride and the emotional fallout.
Don’t pretend you have never heard it. At some point—a birthday party or bush party, camping or fishing, a rodeo or a rave, in a bar or a back seat—the catchy country tune, with the unforgettably raunchy lyrics, grabbed your attention.
Now, all these years later, when someone warbles, “Well, it’s 40 below,” you know you know what comes next, even if you don’t have a heater in your truck.
“The Rodeo Song,” with its toe-tapping naughtiness (10 f-bombs and assorted other profanity), with its underground popularity, endures. Even radio-friendly versions are surefire crowd-pleasers because listeners can easily—and lustily—fill in the bleeps.
What you probably don’t know is that it was sung by an Alberta band called Showdown. “The Rodeo Song” was on its 1980 debut album, Welcome to the Rodeo, which sold more than 200,000 units, earning double-platinum status.
But it didn’t stop there. According to SoundScan, sales of “The Rodeo Song” have exceeded 111,000 in the United States since 1991. In Canada since 1996, purchases of the single are approaching 30,000, including more than 2,100 last year.
Showdown ended up earning a 1982 Juno Award nomination for top country group. Heady stuff for four guys who, immersed in the then-bustling bar scene, had been blasting country covers six nights a week.
Now, nearly 40 years later, the band members—lead singer/fiddler Garry Lee, 66, a music teacher in Edmonton; guitarist Charles Holley, 63, a member of the Calgary-based Silver Creek Band; guitarist Kelly LaRocque, 62, the evening-shift supervisor at the Calgary Food Bank (and, full disclosure, my second cousin); drummer Paul McLellan, 59, a high-school librarian in Sooke, B.C.— discuss in separate interviews their notorious two-minute ditty, the origins and popularity, the fallout and legacy.
“Garry and I set some very lofty goals,” Holley says of the group’s early days. “We talked a lot about how to get through this maze. Instead of going week by week, place to place, collecting your paycheque and wandering aimlessly around the business, how do we push our way through the BS? Then we got lucky. Extremely lucky.”
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a cold winter weekend in 1979, Showdown was playing a hotel in Drayton Valley, Alta. Lee woke up Saturday and wandered across the street to another bar where, the previous night, he’d forgotten his coat. He saw someone with a guitar setting up for an afternoon jam, so he grabbed a coffee and settled in. Lee: There was just me and another guy in the bar and he said three or four times (to the musician),
“Hey, buddy, do that song.” And he finally did it and what he did was “The Rodeo Song.” Holley (who joined Lee at the bar): We put a tape recorder under the table and taped it. We went back to our room and listened to it again and thought, We could do this. So I got the acoustic out and Garry got the fiddle out and he started sawing away. We said, “We’ll just make this sort of a hoedown.” We created a rough arrangement.
LaRocque: I remember Paul saying, “You’ve got to hear this song!”
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to Holley, Showdown played their souped-up rendition of “The Rodeo Song” that same night—four times, in fact. But Lee insists they waited until the next evening. McLellan says the song was unveiled days later at a University of Alberta dance. But everyone agrees on one thing—the song was an instant hit.
LaRocque: People hadn’t heard anything like that before. Nothing as risqué as that. It was the craziest thing we’d ever heard—or played.
Holley: We played it at least twice a night every single place we went, basically 15 times a week. Word was getting around.
Lee: The band was already pretty popular and the song pushed it over the top.
McLellan: We would turn “The Rodeo Song” into this big half-hour thing—play it really slow, really fast, slow it down, do some talking in the middle— to try to get some mileage out of it.
At the time, Showdown was in the middle of recording an album at Damon Sound Studios in Edmonton. With room for a 10th track, “The Rodeo Song” was a last-minute addition. Holley: There was some talk that we should play this song for our mothers first and see what they think. Lee: Why not? When you’re playing it three or four times a night, it was a no-brainer. McLellan: (Producer Garry McDonall) heard it and he said, “I think you guys have a hit on your hands.”
art was shot at Dirks Rodeo School near Medicine Hat, Alta. Warning stickers—“The Rodeo Song recommended for ADULT audiences only” and “Not Suitable for Airplay”—were added. First, though, they got permission from Gaye Delorme, the man who wrote the song they’d heard covered by the musician in Drayton Valley. (Lee politely declined to discuss the royalty arrangements.)
Lee: I called him … he just kind of laughed at me and said, “Yeah, go ahead. I don’t care.” We just did that (agreement) verbally.
LaRocque: I remember Gaye saying, “You may not want to put that on an album. Your record-buying public is your relatives.”
who died seven years ago in Calgary, was a Grammy-nominated musician. He also did work for Cheech & Chong. How he came to write “The Rodeo Song” is another story—or stories. It may have been hatched in Brooks. Or Red Deer. Or Okotoks. Possibly late one wild night. Or early one hungover morning. But the lyrics, scribbled quickly, took hold.
McLellan: In my opinion we just got lucky. I mean, the musicians in the band were all talented. They were all good players. But, really, the star of “The Rodeo Song” was Gaye Delorme, who wrote it. RCA picked up distribution rights, band members were doing a brisk business selling cassettes, 8-tracks and LPs off the stage, for $10 a pop. McLellan: We could keep a buck each from each album. We were all making tons of money, just off one-dollar bills. Crazy.
Holley: I think we sold more than 20,000 units ourselves. It is amazing.
everyone, however, was sold on Showdown’s signature song. The Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority’s efforts to ban it backfired.
LaRocque: They were saying we couldn’t play it. And we said, “Oh, really?” We were playing the Paddock in Regina … and CBC News came down that night and did an interview with us. We said, “The Saskatchewan Liquor Board has offered us the best publicity for this song that we could have ever not paid for.”
McLellan: One of the radio stations in Cal- gary got fined for playing it on their speakers outdoors. That kind of publicity made album sales go even higher, right? Pretty interesting. country-music community, however, distanced itself from Showdown. Holley (recounting the slights): Betraying the faith. Real country musicians would not bow to that level, wouldn’t need to use that kind of language to further their endeavours. Traitors. Really not that good to begin with.
Lee: There were some artists who were quite
pissed off about it and they didn’t hide their views. I’m not mentioning any names, but there was some backlash.
Holley: It didn’t bother me at all. If anything, it made us even more determined. a wave, the band headlined at the El Mocambo, a Toronto venue previously played by the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix. At music festivals, they shared billing with Rough Trade and Trooper, with The Nylons and Matt Minglewood, with Long John Baldry. The song was used in the Stephen King movie Sleepwalkers.
Lee: It basically became a worldwide hit. It was pretty neat having a famous song.
Holley: Oh, extremely fun. You couldn’t have had more fun if you’d planned it that way. But you’re not taking people’s advice, like you should. Probably drinking way more than you should. There were a lot of women around that weren’t around before, so you were maybe screwing up relationships that were really quite important.
rapid rise was soon derailed. McLellan quit after six months, angry at the lack of communication about money. He sued Lee. To coerce LaRocque and Holley into providing statements about the group’s financial arrangements, he sued them, too.
On their own lawyers’ advice, according to McLellan, they declined.
McLellan: Garry, the leader of the band, had all the profits and he wasn’t willing to even tell me what was going on or give me any of the money. So it all got messy.
Lee: We were all really young and inexperienced in business. I can speak for myself—I screwed a lot of things up. None of it ended very well. It’s too bad we weren’t able to carry on with it.
Holley: There was some controversy over how people should be paid. I’d rather not talk about that. -------Everyone
went their separate ways, but Lee hired studio musicians to slap together another Showdown album, Loaded Loose and Rowdy. (“I try to forget about that one.”) “The Rodeo Song,” on the other hand, had lasting appeal.
Lee: I have students who are teenagers. Sometimes they come to school and smile at me and say, “Guess what my grandpa played for me?” Or, “Guess what my dad played for me? Is that really you?”
LaRocque: A guy came up to me (in the late1990s after a gig in Munich, Germany) and said, “You were in das band,” and he whips out the album for me to sign. That happened all over the place.
Holley: You could hear it in a disco in Adelaide or you could hear it somewhere in Thailand. It’s amazing. It’s a worldwide hit. But it didn’t turn out like worldwide hits usually turn out. I mean, it’s not “She Loves You.”
McLellan: Last week, some of my high-school students were singing it. They didn’t even know I was the drummer. of them play “The Rodeo Song” anymore. But there’s no hint of shame. Lee: We had a lot of fun, met a lot of people, became a little bit famous.
LaRocque: Even now, I’ll have people say, “Were you part of that ‘Rodeo Song’”? It’s still a song you can play around a camp fire.
McLellan: I’m proud, because it’s kind of cool, right? It’s a connection to popular country culture in Canada.
Holley: Great song. I’ll bet it sold a million copies all around the world. For a country band from Edmonton and Calgary? I’m really proud of that. S