Rock-and-Roll Cowboy It s a dilemma I ve suffered ever since I got hooked on the cowboy life. I love to ride. I love the West. But I also love rock-and-roll. Turns out Wylie Gustafson feels the same way. The Western singer, songwriter, and leader of Wylie and the Wild West confesses he grew up singing Rolling Stones tunes while riding on Montana cattle drives. Hang-n-Rattle reveals not only Wylie the rocker, but also celebrates the West in a new way. Much of that fresh insight comes from his songwriting partnership with rodeo poet Paul Zarzyski. It s like Lennon and McCartney in cowboy hats. Together, Gustafson and Zarzyski wrote seven of the 13 tunes on the album. Wylie s music sounds like a penned-up horse set free to run and jump and kick. This guy can rock. And the album is full of standouts that ll make you grab your girl and head for the dance floor. If You Love Me, Double Wild, and Cravin 8s are memorable not just for the terrific music, but for Zarzyski s lyrics as well. The wordsmith unleashes a rapture for not just the West, but for life itself. To hell with lookin before you leap, he declares in Ain t No Life After Rodeo. Cowboy grit ... Apache pride ... Wild hearts will collide, Zarzyski writes about a blazing love affair. The West is still wild as she ever was!  Of course Gustafson has no problems composing songs on his own, and the quieter moments on this record are spellbinding. Settin sun clings to the top of the hills, he sings in Blue Mountain Serenade. And my soul whispers be still ... be still.  Produced by John Carter Cash and recorded at Cash Cabin Studios in Hendersonville, Tenn., Wylie s studio band sounds as good as it gets, and Gretchen Peters shines throughout on background vocals.  The times they are a changin , reads the liner notes. So is Western music. If Hang-Rattle is any indication of the change to come, count this cowboy in. --Mark Bedor- American Cowboy Magazine"Thanks for the breath of fresh air, or maybe more accurately, the sand-blasting of cowboy/rodeo music on your CD, Hang-n-Rattle! This is goin'-down-the-road music for a generation longing for LeDoux. Nostalgia and reminiscences have their place, but it seems to me that this album is about being in the moment. It's about youth and vitality and is sorely needed not to just preserve Western culture, but invigorate it, to breathe life into it. --John Reedy Twistedcowboy.comI'm so eager for people to hear this album in all of its bold, dazzling breadth. It should come with its own fireworks display! I am drawn in by the complexity of each piece and the excitement of the whole. It's a listener's banquet. --Margo Metegrano Editor CowboyPoetry.com