LeDoux Finds Calm After The Storm

"Some Things Never Change" is not just the title for one of Chris LeDoux's new songs. It's also an apt description of his dogged perseverance: even in the face of some recent and seriously troubling health issues. When doctors told him his liver was in a bad way, his very survival was put on the line.

LeDoux's latest album is called "After The Storm," and his own well-publicized personal storm arrived in the form of a life-threatening bout with primary scerosing cholangitis, a disease that can lead to liver failure and required him to have a liver transplant last year.

His 'after storm' circumstances included a restlessness with the whole healing process and questions about whether or not this tough rodeo cowboy could still continue his active ranch lifestyle. But LeDoux was nothing, if not blunt and direct when it came to asking the doctors about his physical future.

"Is there a chance I could really tear something loose?" he asked the doctor. "And the doctor said, 'No, we sewed you together real good.' They put everything back, and made sure everything was going to stay."

This was welcome news, since when he's not on the road performing his high energy country music in concerts, he has a new barn he's building, waiting for him back home.

"We're irrigating right now," LeDoux explains about his ranch. "We're building a barn, and we've been working on that all winter. And we'll have to brand here shortly. So, we're still doing everything."

Sure, he was concerned about his abilities to do his ranching chores. But his fans weren't even certain at first if he was completely ready to return to the concert stage.

"The first year we started back, they looked at me and seemed to be kind of worried," LeDoux recalls with a laugh. ""Maybe you oughta just take it easy," they seemed to be saying. You could just see it in their eyes. But there was a happiness there, too."

Let's face it, there's only so much doctors can do for you when it comes time to face your post-operation life. LeDoux has made a lot of such new life adjustments all on his own.

"You gotta figure out some stuff on your own," he says. "I can't overdo it sometimes, and I'm startin' to kinda figure that out. I'm probably back to about 90 percent. Of course, part of that is probably due to my just getting older."

When faced with a life and death situation, such dire circumstances can't help but make a guy become more than just a little reflective. But LeDoux didn't ever overdramatize his personal situation.

"I was really sick, so I thought if it's my time to go, then I guess I've had 50 good years. If not, I just sort of went with the flow. I've always felt fortunate that I've been able to do the things I've wanted to do. I've had dreams since I was a kid and was able to go ahead and try to fulfill 'em. Most things have really sorta fallen into place, with some work and some luck. If it was my time to go, then I was ready."

"Then I got to thinkin' afterwards, 'Man, how selfish can that be? I've got a wife who's still got the rest of her life to live, and she might want to see me around a little bit.' So, I guess I had been kind of a selfish guy."

He can't really be too very selfish of an individual, however, to have made his marriage last for 30 years and counting.

"We're all selfish, I guess, but if you want to make a relationship work, then you have to give," he advises. "But my wife's the one that's been doing the most of the giving, though. She's an angel, for sure."

Some people, when facing the possibility of death, start thinking back over all the things they've taken for granted in life. But LeDoux is not that sort of a man. Nevertheless, the long weeks of healing did begin to take a toll on his emotions. Sometimes it takes an illness to remind us the simple joys of just feeling good, and such scenario was certainly true for LeDoux.

"I don't think I ever really took anything for granted much," LeDoux says. "I've always really appreciated everything. I think it's maybe a little more keen now than it was. Especially right after (the operation)."

"For a couple of months right after, spiritually, I just felt like I was dead. It was odd. It was like your spirit just goes in a hole and hides or dies or something. Just to find a little moment of joy or a little spark of life or a little bit of zap flowing. Man, I'd cling to those moments like you wouldn't believe."

"But you know how it is when you step out on a spring day and you feel great. Those moments were so few during that whole time. They might last a minute, but boy they were just wonderful. But then you would get in this funk again, and they would go away. But as the healing process took over - you know, your physical healing - I think the spirit starts healing too. So (from) just a sunrise on a certain particular day, man, you just felt like hollerin' 'Yee-haw!'"

The waiting, as Tom Petty once sang, is sometimes the hardest part, and this long healing process he went through was as hard on his family, as it was on LeDoux.

"They were at the hospital for a couple of months," he recalls. "My wife was there, and Ned, our second son, stayed the whole time too. You could see, man, they were about to go nutty. I was doing everything I possible could to get well enough to get out of there. When we left, I was still pretty sick. But at least we were out of there, and we were home. And that really felt good."

Garth Brooks has been a champion of LeDoux's music for a long time, but he's more than just a big supporter of this man's music: He's also willing to give LeDoux greater gifts than just good career advice. He put his own health where his mouth was by offering to donate a portion of his own liver for the transplant.

"He just told me, "Look I'm your guy. You might as well just forget about asking anybody else," LeDoux recalls with amazement. "Let's go do this thing."

"He was bound and determined. He went through all the tests, which were pretty grueling. They poke you here and there and take little pieces of you to check things out. And he went through three days of that, but he just wasn't compatible."

Had Brooks had his way, this organ offer would have remained a public secret. But LeDoux just has too much love and respect for his friend to let such a loving act go unnoticed.

"He was ready to do it, but he just wanted to keep it quiet," LeDoux says of Brooks. "But I said bologna! He's been getting too much bad press. People have been bad about him, so I thought, 'You know, people need to know about the kind of guy he really is.' He also does so many other things that nobody ever hears about. So, it was like, get off his case everybody. He really is a great guy."

LeDoux is no cosmetic cowboy: he sings the life he lives. One gets the feeling, when listening to him talk, that he'd have trouble giving up either his music or his cowboy way of life. Both of aspects of his life are just so near and dear to him to ever surrender.

"I like all of it. They say variety is the spice of life, and it's really nice to have different variations in life, so you don't kinda get stuck in a rut. And you appreciate each part more when you've got two or more things to do. When you get away from one for a while, you really appreciate when you get back to it."

The buzz from a concert crowd is a strong stimulant, but LeDoux is a man who likes to keep himself busy, so the wait time in between performances can sometimes start to get to him and make him a little stir crazy.

"There's a lot of lag time, especially if you're in a big city somewhere. There's not a lot to do. Then you just gotta hang around, and walk the streets and go hang out under the underpass with the homeless guys. (Laughter) I'm just kidding."

One of LeDoux's favorite things to do is eat. And he's eating a lot better now than he did during some of his much leaner rodeo days.

"You couldn't really afford much. You'd kinda scrape through your riggin' bag and find quarters sometimes when you weren't winning. If you went in and bought a hamburger, you damn sure better eat everything. Because it might be a while before you eat again. But nowadays, I find myself leaving some on the plate and feeling kind of guilty about it."

"After The Storm" differs from many of LeDoux's previous albums, in that it is one of his softer sounding recordings. In fact, only a few of its more upbeat selections - like "Don't It Make You Want To Dance" and "I Don't Want To Mention Any Names" - have even found their way into his nonstop, action-packed live shows.

Behind the scenes, however, LeDoux has developed a newfound appreciation for his quieter better half, and his woman's soft heart truly inspired the creation of this reflective new album.

"After going through the operation and everything, I just looked at things a little differently - especially in (the album's) dedication to my wife. I knew she was solid, but man I didn't realize she is as solid as she is. She went through a lot. Hangin' in there with me through all this recuperation, and being scared that I might not be here anymore. Yeah, she just kept everything together. The album is kind of dedicated to her, and a lot of the songs I picked kind of reflect that."

It's the rough terrain of life that puts relationships to their ultimate tests. If a bond his shaky to begin with, trouble will only sever it further. But if the foundation is strong at the start, problems can sometimes reinforce an already formidable fortress.

"If you put people in a crises or some kind of an odd situation, the real personalities come out," LeDoux observes. Such is the case with our most serious relationships, such as our marriages, as well as with a few our less vital companionships.

"I used rodeo with some guys and we were, you know, pretty good friends," LeDoux remembers with a chuckle. "And then we got in like a cabin situation, and it was like, holy cow. It's like this beast is just exposed. I can also imagine how that can happen in a marriage situation. Either they rise to the challenge, or they just turn. I'm real fortunate (with my wife) in that I have one who arose to the occasion."

LeDoux has certainly risen to the occasion, like a bloodied fighter with enough strength to still stand and answer the bell, even though he wasn't close to being at his best. In addition to the recent completion of his latest studio album of new material, he's also re-recorded a few older songs for his second box set, ÒChris LeDoux The Capitol Collection (1990-2000)" out in June.

Box sets are trophies of successful careers because flashes in the pan just don't get such lifetime retrospectives. And this new collection is a further reminder for LeDoux of his more than respectable musical longevity.

"Usually, if you've got a career that lasts two years, you're pretty lucky," he explains. "Yeah, it's pretty amazing how it's lasted like this."

By Dan MacIntosh

There was a moment during the 2001 TNN Awards in Nashville when all of us in the audience drew a collective sharp breath. In the middle of an already high-energy performance of For Your Love, Chris Ledoux jumped on a mechanical bull and violently jerked around the stage for several minutes. Not bad for a guy in his fifties recovering from a liver transplant. But LeDoux, champion rodeo rider, has always been good at handling whatever life (or bulls) throw at him and expects no sympathy. In Cowboy Up he sums up this attitude with the words, "You gotta cowboy up/ When you get throwed down/ Get right back in the saddle/ As soon as you hit the ground/ You've heard that the tough get going/ When the going gets tough/ Around here what we say is/ Oh, you'd better cowboy up!"

Positive thinking is key to the album, with everything from the title down being an uplifting call to think just how bright the future is. It's his 29th album, and it occupies familiar territory; the freedoms and hardships of life as a hard-working cowboy. As he sings in the David Lee Murphy song Scatter The Ashes "This rodeo life's all I know." He also includes the first rodeo song he ever wrote, Bareback Jack, a story about a young rodeo rider just starting out, a favourite amongst his live audiences. Don't It Make You Want To Dance ("…don't it make you want to smile") is a great three and a half minute fiddle-whirling, foot-stomping singalong. Just as chirpy, but this time pure Western Swing, is I Don't Want To Mention Any Names.

There's a couple of romantic numbers, there as thankyous to his wife for helping him through his illness. But it's all placed in the context of being a straight-up, honest-to-goodness cowboy and he avoids the overtly slushy metaphor - he simply describes her love as his "daily bread" - and the songs are all the more heartfelt for this.

There's also an appearance from his friend Garth Brooks. Brooks had always been influenced by LeDoux's music and his legendary wild antics on stage, and referred to "a worn out tape of Chris LeDoux" in his song Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old). These little words gave LeDoux's career a massive boost, gaining him recognition beyond the rodeo and Western circles in which he was already known and loved. The two are such firm friends that Garth even offered to donate part of his liver for the transplant operation. They have duetted in the past, notably on the Grammy nominated hit Watcha Wanna Do With A Cowboy, and here Garth donates his vocals and his song Some Things Never Change (incidentally no relation to the Tim McGraw song of the same name). It's both a compelling homage to the life of a cowboy and tribute from one friend to another.

Sue Keogh - April 2002

Tennessean.Com Review

Chris LeDoux nearly died last year from liver disease. He knows full well how close he was treading to the precipice: in the liner notes to After the Storm, he thanks his wife, his friends and the University of Nebraska Medical Center. His remarkable recovery after last October's liver transplant is reason for revelry, regardless of the quality of his artistic output, but it would also make it a bummer to have to write that After the Storm is a sorry album.

Thankfully, After the Storm's dusty country music presents LeDoux at his best.

Garth Brooks appears on the opening cut, a pretty song Brooks wrote with Jennifer Pierce called Some Things Never Change. It's reminiscent of Brooks' rootsy, fiddle-drenched early career hits like Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old), work that was indelibly influenced by LeDoux's most affecting material. Then it's straight to Kevin Welch's well-crafted Millionaire, and then to Rusty Wier's Don't It Make You Want To Dance, previously recorded as Don't It Make You Wanna Dance in similarly buoyant (meaning ''cheerful,'' not ''capable of floating'') fashion by Jerry Jeff Walker. After that, LeDoux keeps on singing the good stuff, from Larry Cordle and Lisa Palas' line-in-the-sawdust tale I Don't Want To Mention Any Names to LeDoux's own wry cowboy story, Bareback Jack.

If it takes a brush with mortality to spur such creative assurance, then most everyone would wish for LeDoux's future efforts to be fatuous and scattershot. But since we know he's OK now, it's good of him to provide us evidence that his musical being is as healthy as his newly-healed body.

— Peter Cooper, Staff Writer

The Valley Times

"It looks like this old couboy will remain," former rodeo star Chris Le Doux sings on this first album since a life-threatening illness forced him to undertp a liver transplant in October 2000. Not surprisingly, the aptly titled "After The Storm" is all about making the most of life and paying heed to things that really matter.

LeDoux has mostly opted for material by others for this outing (everyone from Kevin Welch to David Lee Murphy), and he's come up with an album that's memorable for its moments of tenderness and reflection. Prime examples: the clebratory "Don't It Make You Want To Dance," which delivers a lesson on savoring life's joyous moments; the life-affirming "Some Things Never Change," a duet with Garth Brooks; and the love ballad "I Would For You," which is blessed with a hauntinly sweet fiddle intro.

Longtime fans who view LeDoux as one of the few authentically Western things left in count-and-western music needn't fret that their hero is going soft, however. "Cowboy Up" and the old cowpoke lament "Scatter The Ashes" are gretty stuff straight out of steers-and-saddles country, and the playful "Bareback Jack," the first rodeo song the singer ever wrote, closes this worthy effort.

---Greg Crawford, Knight Ridder Newspapers