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By Darcy Ellis
Editor
10-8-2009 Fans of Westerns made before the advent of color television know how to distinguish, upon first glance, the good guys from the bad – the heroes of their serials and matinee features from the villians they’ve been charged to dispatch.
It all comes down to the characters’ choice of wardrobe, believe it or not. As the now well-known mantra among classic Western fans testifies, “good guys wear white hats.”
These were obviously simpler times, at least as represented on the silver screen, so free of extraneous pressures and negative influence, of moral ambiguity, that one’s place on the side of right or wrong was decided by their donning of a white Stetson or a black one.
These were also times when the cowboys in white hats – and the actors who played them on television and in the movies – abided by and preached what is known as the Code of the West: a Ten Commandments for the sagebrush set, as it were.
Decades later and far removed from the simplicity of a Roy Rogers picture, three musicians are striving to carry on the best traditions of the Old West – to keep the Code alive – through their songs, stage presence and personal example.
It’s really only fitting that The Cross Town Cowboys, raised on equal parts Westerns and country music, are returning to the Lone Pine Film Festival as one of several acts slated to provide that authentic boots-and-spurs sound.
Festival attendees can catch the band live at 3 p.m. Friday at the Lone Pine Museum of Film History, and at 9 a.m. Sunday during the annual Cowboy Church service at Anchor Ranch. The trio plans other performances at sites around Lone Pine throughout the weekend.
Featuring Buffalo Bryan on stand-up bass, Dusty Hart on guitar and Robby Bausch on acoustic guitar, The Cross Town Cowboys (named for the place any good cowboy goes to worship) perform and record what they call a mix of traditional and original Western music.
Their sound has more specifically been described as “unique, jazzy, Western-swing,” found in recordings and live performances that are gaining recognition for the trio in the Western music community and on radio stations (more than 170) across the country.
The group’s first album, “Save the West!” was nominated “Best Western Swing Album of 2009” by the Western Music Association.
At the heart of their music and current rise to stardom, according to the band, is that desire to embrace and project the wholesome values and character not seen since the days of the singing celluloid cowboys.
It is with that influence that The Cross Town Cowboys endeavor to live by the Code of the West, the tenets of which can be found in their live performances and recorded music.
For Hart, the Code of the West boils down to “being a good guy.”
“Roy Rogers told me one time that being a good cowboy was not about hats and boots,” Buffalo Bryan added, “but the values you keep in your heart. That really stuck with me and he was a really good ‘good guy.’”
For Bausch, the Code basically means “living by the Golden Rule,” treating others the way you want to be treated and basically endeavoring toward virtue in all your affairs.
“Otherwise we’d be hypocrites trying to promote that and not living it,” Buffalo Bryan continued. “We are who we say we are. We extend that in our personal lives and our professional lives.”
All three came to their philosophy by way of the Western, more specifically, those men (and women) in the white hats riding off into the sunset at the end of so many old movies and TV shows during the 1950s.
Their childhood heroes were also huge musical influences on the members of The Crosstown Cowboys, who each grew up in various areas of Southern California.
Buffalo Bryan counts Rogers, the King of the Cowboys, among his inspirations as a young lad in Van Nuys (“back when you could still have horses”), along with Gene Autrey, Dale Evans and Hopalong Cassidy.
Hart admits to owning the Hopalong Cassidy hat, vest, lunch pail, badge and toy pistol set as a child growing up in Montebello, while Bausch, a transplant to the San Fernando Valley from St. Paul, Minn., found inspiration in just about any old Western where the good guys wore white hats.
It wasn’t so much serendipity as a result of their shared affinity for the West that brought Hart and Buffalo Bryan together in the spring of 2006, when they were introduced to each other at the Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival by a fellow musician.
That October, the duo was opening for the Wilshire Boulevard Buffalo Hunter’s Club at the 17th Annual Lone Pine Film Festival and two years, several hit songs, various other festival performances around the state and a swelling fan base later, Buffalo Bryan and Hart recruited Bausch as the third permanent member of the group.
This weekend’s trip to Lone Pine will be Bausch’s second visit to the area, following a Crosstown Cowboys performance last year as part of a fundraiser for the Lone Pine Museum of Film History.
Buffalo Bryan and his wife have been attending the Film Festival for the past 19 years, and in fact he said the festival is where he and Hart started writing songs together.
“I love the area up there,” said Hart, who owns a trailer at Aberdeen where he enjoys fishing on vacation.
The trio’s return to the Film Festival, on its 20th anniversary, will not only be a treat for attendees of the event and fans who’ve come to look forward to The Cross Town Cowboys crooning in the lobby of the Dow Villa, but also for the band members themselves.
At home on the range, The Cross Town Cowboys will also be enjoying the intimacy of playing smaller venues – by far their favorite settings for performances.
“When you play on a stage 50 feet away with 500 people in the audience, there’s a disconnect,” Hart explained.
When the group last played the Festival of the West and the P.A. system went out mid-set, the band decided to make the most of the situation.
“We stepped down off the stage and played acoustically,” Hart said, while Buffalo Bryan noted that audience members started pulling their chairs in around the band to hear them perform.
It was a magical moment for The Cross Town Cowboys and for those audience members, and isn’t all that surprising given the band’s penchant for putting on great shows.
And again, it all goes back to that original white-hat philosophy.
“We are there to entertain them. Every show we do is our best show because anything less is cheating,” Buffalo Bryan said. “Roy Rogers told me, ‘Never forget who you work for.’ We owe it to the fans to give our best every time.”
“There’s bad guys in high places,
Evil do-ers all around.
It’s time to pull together,
Time to save our town!”
– From “Save the West!”
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