News

The Cow Ponies are going on a little hiatus for a couple of months as our founder and band leader John recovers from surgery and we get our new keyboard player Jeff Stehr up to speed on our songlist. Keith Bolog, our pedal steel player, is no longer with the band—we wish him well.

Because of John’s surgery and drummer Tom Mohan’s motorcycle accident, The Rock-a-dials / Cow Ponies show scheduled for December 28 at Circle-A Café in Riverwest (Milwaukee) has been cancelled. In our place are two great bands: Resist Her Transistor (our drummer Andy is their drummer too) and Spudbucket (our bass player Tom T is their frontman). John and Robin of The Cow Ponies hope to be out here on these streets by then—we’d love to see you at Circle-A for this really cool show. 8-10 p.m. $5 cover.

In the meantime, we wish you a very happy holiday season, and we look forward to seeing you late winter/early spring with some new music, a new rockin’ line-up—and our new CD, produced by Mike Hoffman. Back soon!

Love,
The Cow Ponies

We are pleased and very excited to announce that we are working with Semi-Twang’s Mike Hoffman, who’s producing our second CD — an EP with 4-5 new songs, preeminent among them our crowd faves “Free Range Girl” and “On the Back Roads.”

Mike has recently performed with Semi-Twang and The Delta Routine, and he and the band Yipes are currently on tour (they’ll be at Shank Hall in Milwaukee this Saturday, Feb. 16). We love and adore Mike (much respect) and are really happy to be working with him on this new project.

Into the studio we go, y’all — again! xo

 

May was a great month for The Cow Ponies: We attended the Wisconsin Area Music Industry (WAMI) Awards, were played on commercial radio, and had a great lil’ story written about us.

The first time Duncan McManus played us on FM106.1 – Milwaukee’s Best Country! was Sunday, May 13, when he spun “Halfway Between Heartache (and the Blues)” from our debut CD Easy to Fall on his “Homemade Jams” show at 10 p.m. He played “Steel Train” the following Sunday, May 20; John and Robin streamed it on Robin’s cell at the WAMI Awards as they were wrapping up.

Tonight, June 10, at 10 p.m. Duncan’s playing us again, and we’re thrilled! “Some of my favorite new stuff,” he posted on Facebook. Thank you, Duncan and FM 106.1: Your support of our original music means a great deal to us. 

On May 24, Shepherd Express, Milwaukee’s pre-emminent news and arts paper, ran a story about us. Back in April, John and Robin met with the esteemed Dave Luhrssen, managing editor and long-time writer at the Shepherd, over coffee. The result: A story we absolutely love titled “Cow Ponies Play With ‘That Pure American Invention.'” Thank you, Dave, for such a wonderful piece!

Thanks also to these wonderful indie radio stations that  are playing tracks off our Easy to Fall CD: WMSE 91.7FM (Milwaukee School of Engineering); WFAQ 103.3FM (Mukwonago); and The Great Unknown Radio (Wisconsin Indie Music). We were also WCCX 104.5FM‘s “Band of the Month” for April (Carroll University, Waukesha, Wisconsin). We love and appreciate you.  

We didn’t win the 2018 WAMI for “Best Country Artist.” But it was a blast to attend the awards ceremony, and it was, is, and always will be an honor to have been nominated. We can always call ourselves “The WAMI-Nominated Cow Ponies” now, and in our book that’s pretty dang cool. Thanks to all who nominated and voted for us, and thanks to WAMI for putting on an entertaining show! We’re proud to be members and part of it all.

      

At the end of February, Robin had just gotten into her car after a meeting to kick off a new freelance writing project. She started the car and checked her phone. There was a notification from Thea: 

“Congrats to The Cow Ponies for their WAMI nomination for Country Artist of the Year!!!”

OMG, Robin wrote back, we had no idea. Thanks for the heads-up!

And thank you to the Wisconsin Area Music Industry organization for the nomination. We’ve been on Cloud 9 about it, and are extremely honored to be included among the eight nominees from around the state in this category. We seriously did not even imagine being nominated, and are so happy we have been.

Sunday, March 25 is the WAMI Nominee Reception at Saloon on Calhoun in Brookfield (where John & Robin just performed a few weeks ago at the Amplified Artist Sessions), and we’ll be there. The 38th Annual WAMI Awards ceremony is Sunday, April 15 in Appleton, WI this year, and we’ll be heading up for that too. In the meantime, and for a long time afterward, we’ll be floating on the ether and looking forward to playing our music for you throughout the year. Thank you, WAMI! And thanks to all of you who nominated us! xoxo

Check out the complete list of nominees.