Ian Munsick Is Emphasizing the ‘Western' in Country & Western Music
Ian Munsick was making his debut at bucket-list venue Red Rocks Amphitheatre just outside of Denver in June 2024 when he noticed someone step onstage.
JoRee LaFrance, a member of the Apsáalooke/Crow Nation, which hails from southeastern Montana, appeared in front of the crowd and said she had a message for Munsick from the Crow Tribe. At the time, the 31-year-old Munsick from Sheridan, Wyoming, was fresh off the release of a documentary titled White Buffalo: Voices of the West, in which he explored the relationship between cowboys and native tribes and relied heavily on interviews with members of the Crow and Blackfeet Nation.
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'I owe so much to you and your family, and I am here to honor you,' LaFrance said, 'and to adopt you into my clan.'
Munsick, whose 2023 album White Buffalo also featured music influenced by Native Americans, was floored.
'I was freaking out,' Munsick recalls. 'I knew once I saw them walking out what was gonna happen, but that was the biggest headlining show we had played up until then. For that to be the icing on the cake made it way cooler. Looking back, it may have been just the cake in general.'
It's too easy to point out that Munsick's entire career has been built around a love of the American West, or to say that he pays no lip service to his mountain roots. His music is so tethered to the culture and lifestyle of his rural Wyoming upbringing that it's likely Munsick the artist wouldn't exist without it.
So, once the Crow Tribe adopted him, it was a given that he was going to write more about it. The result is his 20-track album Eagle Feather, which dropped on Friday.
'When I got adopted into the Crow Tribe, they gave me an eagle feather as an emblem of adoption,' Munsick tells Rolling Stone. 'I've always known about who they are, but it really hit me then that I have brought them honor in a way. That's always been my goal as an artist, to paint an accurate picture of the West — especially the Rocky Mountain West.
'And my first two albums were Coyote Cry and White Buffalo, so this was a cool way to do an animal trilogy.'
Munsick is talking about the LP at Nashville's Blackbird Studios, where he recorded and co-produced it with Jared Conrad and Jeremy Spillman. His Western roots shine through even during this interview, which is laced with aw-shucks gratitude. But when he gets to the heart of Eagle Feather and the people who helped bring it to life — such as Lainey Wilson and Flatland Cavalry leader Cleto Cordero, both of whom have duets on the LP — he especially lights up.
'This is one that I hope you will hear as an album and not just a collection of tracks,' Munsick says. 'Even though we live in a climate that is extremely track-heavy, I feel like all of my favorite artists — and yours — make albums. From front to back, this is the first album that I've made that I used the same producers and engineers and team. Hopefully, it feels like the most cohesive.'
Munsick has already teased plenty of Eagle Feather, with singles like 'Horses Not Hearts' and 'Cheyenne' showcasing his range as a songwriter and as a musician (he plays guitar and bass onstage). The former song is a tongue-in-cheek, high-tempo promise of love, the latter a heartbreak tune. But both fit the picture he wants to paint of Wyoming.
Munsick wrote or co-wrote 18 of the 20 tracks, including a collaboration with the white-hot Stephen Wilson Jr. on the title track, a song that is poised to become Munsick's signature number. His duet with Lainey Wilson is 'Feather in My Hat,' and he says his mind instantly went to the 'Heart Like a Truck' singer when he wrote it.
'I only want to collaborate with people who I am truly a fan of their music, and more importantly, who they are as a person behind closed doors,' Munsick says. 'I can confidently tell you that every artist I've collaborated with is a great human being, and Lainey is that. She grew up in a ranching community, and believe it or not, there's not a lot of artists who grew up that way in country music. She understands these lessons.'
The Cordero duet is 'God Bless the West,' a moving song that celebrates wide open spaces. But when Munsick asked Cordero to sing on the track, the Flatland singer couldn't help but having some fun with his friend.
'I was at home, literally chopping onions for dinner, and Ian texted me and said he had a song and could hear my voice on it,' Cordero says. 'I listened to it right then and there, and it immediately was a hit with me. I sent him a video of me crying and said, 'Dude, that song is so beautiful. I'm so touched that you asked me to be a part of it.' Then, I panned the camera down to the onions and said, 'Just kidding, dude!' But I seriously did love to be a part of it.'
The two men performed the song Thursday night in Nashville during Munsick's headlining show at the Pinnacle and will have more chances to re-tell the story when Munsick and Flatland share the bill on four shows in June.
They're part of a high-profile touring summer for Munsick, who will also play the Calgary Stampede and Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeos and the Pendleton Whisky Music Fest in Pendleton, Oregon, another major rodeo town. For now, that environment — those cowboy towns — is exactly where Munsick wants to be.
'Cowboys are good people, and their word is their bond,' he says. 'They are the best humans on Earth, and I will die by that. I've always known that I have the responsibility to paint them in an accurate light, and this is about as accurate as it gets.'
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose fourth book, Never Say Never: Cross Canadian Ragweed, Boys From Oklahoma, and a Red Dirt Comeback Story for the Ages, is set for release on April 21.
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