Reckless Rooster is a musician who lives in Pinedale. He travels across the intermountain states, Texas and Oregon to perform his music. He drives so much that every five to six weeks he has to do a 5,000 mile oil change.
“We just did three days in Montana. Island Park, Idaho last night. I'll go home for, like, one show at home, but then we'll go to Nevada for another four days,” he said. “Within the last month, I did, like, four shows in Idaho, four other shows in Nevada. Just on, like, everywhere all the time.”
Reckless Rooster has been playing music since he was six years old, first beginning on the piano. Now, he plays the fiddle and various other instruments. In 2015 he began to tour and play music professionally. His music’s main genre is country but he said he likes to mix it up.
“But a subgenera that’s come up for sure [is] definitely folk bluegrass, a little bit of punk rock and that stuff,” he said. “I started out playing punk rock in high school, like, in punk rock bands and stuff. So there's still a little bit of that in there.”
Rooster supports his music career by fighting fires for the volunteer fire department’s Sublette County Unified Fire. It covers all 5,000 square miles of Sublette County. During the summer they send an engine out to help fight large fires all over the West. The last four summers, he chose to hang up his fiddle to join that engine.
”The people on that crew get paid, like, a lot of money,” he said. “Entry level for a firefighter doing that was about $1,000 for a two week deployment.”
He put the money he made from that into savings to support what he was passionate about.
“So I was like, ‘Yeah, you can sign me up for that.’ And people were like, ‘Well, what are you going to do about your gigs in the summer?’ And I'm like, ‘I guess I'm not going to play in the summer anymore,’” Rooster said.
In October he released a new album that is a collection of songs he has been performing live for several years but hadn’t yet gotten in the studio to record. They are mainly country but with a hint of bluegrass and punk.
Rooster will tour across the West with other artists this May through October.
He is preparing for another tour this summer May through October across the West with other multiple artists.
