Before Orville Peck’s latest cover, this swingin’, cowboy-lovin’ ballad had a life of its own
Brokeback Mountain certainly popularized the idea of a closeted cattlehand in the mainstream, one songwriter picked up on the subtext more than 20 years earlier.The man was performer and musicologist Ned Sublette, who left no room for interpretation when he penned “Cowboys Are Secretly, Frequently (Fond of Each Other)” in 1981.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.A waltzing, mid-tempo country tune begins, “Well, there’s many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas / There’s many a young boy who feels things he can’t comprehend.” Later declaring: “No, a small town don’t like it when a cowboy has feelings for men.”Now, queer country crooner Orville Peck is making headlines for his celebratory cover of the track.
But its story began many moons ago.Although Sublette identifies as straight, he connected with the solitary feeling of being “different in any way” in a small town.
He grew up in Portales, New Mexico before later moving to New York in search of something more. “Big cities are full of people who left small towns because they felt somehow stifled or disapproved of,” he told MyWestTexas.A longtime fan of urban cowboy ballads like “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” Sublette was also hip to the LGBTQ+ community’s connection to Western sensibilities.“[Where I lived in Manhattan], there was a bar on Christopher Street, at the time the epicenter of New York gay, called Boots & Saddles, which I used to walk past a lot,” he told MyWestTexas.
One day at the piano, the inspiration came together and “it practically wrote itself.”Like its swinging contemporaries, the lyrics are largely tongue-in-cheek, with phrases like “A cowboy may brag about things that he’s done with his woman/But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer.” Still, its staying power likely comes from the turns of phrases that proved surprisingly insightful.
