Liner Notes - BELOW THE KINNEY RIM - -Les Buffham


As I so state at the onset of this album, I covered a lot of ground to come up with the material within. A six-year time span with lots of writin' and recitin' around the country. I chose the lyrics to "Below the Kinney Rim" as a poem for the title cut because the song had been so good to us. After the song, which I co-wrote with Michael Fleming, received "Song of the Year" awards from both the Western Music Association and The Academy of Western Artists, I started playing with it as a poem and grew to like it a lot.

Because of space restraints I was unable to say in the liner notes on the album how those words came to be so I will take advantage of the opportunity here. The Kinney Rim is a high desert plateau that runs north to South a few miles East of and parallel with highway 430 in South Western Wyoming between the town of Rock Springs and the Colorado Border. It is in the background of the cover photo. My Dad's oldest brother, my uncle Kirk, used to chase the wild horses around there back in the late thirties. I barely remember the old fellow but my Dad told me many stories about him. It seems he had the "Wild Horse Fever" pretty bad. Dad said he would take a little sack of beans and rice and flour and salt and pepper and camp on the trail of those horses. He'd rope a few and tie them up or hobble them then back track and pick them up.

One day while traveling Highway 430 I caught a glimpse of the Rim in the distance and got to wondering what my Uncle might be thinking if he were still here today. Thus came the inspiration----
"Montana Lullaby," I wrote as a private thing just to share with my little granddaughter but somehow it grew away from that and I must say I'm amazed how popular it has become. It has been recorded by several other artists and just keeps going on and on. I had to include it just for her as well as dedicate the album to her.

I tried to include and arrange material on this album to compliment the song lyrics and as in my past projects reveal a bit of my life and the part of the West where I grew up and spent my Cowboy years. Though I do love to make people laugh or at least smile, there are four pieces on this album about Cowboys passin' on. I didn't mean to get morbid but I felt these were stories that I just had to tell. Number sixteen; "The Ballad of Little Joe Carr" is a true story and a part of Browns Park Colorado history.

I was truly blessed to have the wonderful talents of my good friend and mentor, Dave Stamey, co producing the album. Also for his great vocals on the song poems, "We Rode Away" and "Cowboy Blessing." Also the talents of west coast superpicker Chris Scarbrough.

I do hope you appreciate our efforts here and that perhaps they take you back with me in my memories --- to those blue shadows --- below the old Kinney Rim.