Gather 'round the fire fer cowboy poetry fest

Humor, harmony and a hankerin' for the Old West.

That's what you find in abundance at the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Heber City, which will be held Nov. 3-8.

Now in its 15th year, the gathering has earned a reputation as one of the biggest and best of such festivals in the country.

"We get so many people that come from all over," says Tom Whitaker, founder and driving force behind the gathering. "I think the reason we stand out is that we go beyond poetry. We bring in a huge number of headliners, so there's nonstop entertainment. There's horsemanship. There's Dutch oven cooking. There's something for everyone who is at all interested in Western culture and the cowboy lifestyle."

The gathering started when Whitaker and a couple of his friends discovered a mutual interest in cowboy poetry and decided to have an evening of it. "We'd never been to a gathering, but we thought how hard could it be?" Whitaker went to the town hall, put down a $250 deposit to rent it for one of the few days available, got artist Robert Duncan to do "a little drawing for a poster, found a friend to do a Dutch over dinner. Then we told people they had to pay $5 for the dinner, and the poetry was free."

People turned out in droves and had such a good time, they wanted to do it again. "After three years, we outgrew the building and decided to move to the high school. People told us it would die, because that was too cold and formal. But we got the Bar J Wranglers to come down from Wyoming, and they sold out and put us on the map."

This year's gathering will move to the new high school, and while the Bar J Wranglers will still perform, they will be joined by a slew of other Western entertainers, including Michael Martin Murphey, Don Edwards, Sons of the San Joaquin, Riders in the Sky, and making their first appearance, Asleep at the Wheel. There will also be a number of other local and regional favorites.

Baxter Black and Waddie Mitchell will be back with their unique brands of cowboy poetry, and will also be joined by local and regional poets of all ages.

There will be a Wild West Show; the Cowboy Poetry Express train (where the audience sits and the entertainers move from car to car); a Buckaroo Ball; the Buckaroo Fair, with vendors offering all things Western; evening concerts; continuous music and poetry, including some open-mike times for anyone who wants to participate; cowboy church and more.

One new addition this year, says Whitaker, is the Mustang Makeover Competition, where cowboys have taken wild mustangs and had 90 days to train them, and then the horses will be shown and auctioned off. Also new this year are some theatrical presentations of "Annie Get Your Gun."