Aaron Ryan

1 week ago | whiskeyriff.com | Aaron Ryan

God bless Chris LeDoux. The rodeo cowboy turned country star sadly passed away back on March 9, 2005 from cancer after being diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, a few months earlier. LeDoux, who was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, first started riding horses when he would visit his grandparents in Wyoming as a child, participating in his first rodeo at the age of 13 before his family eventually moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming while he was in high school.

1 week ago | whiskeyriff.com | Aaron Ryan

One of the biggest artists in country music – ever. Luke Combs has had a seemingly meteoric rise over the past few years. The first time I saw him was in January 2017 at Iron City in Birmingham, a venue that holds just over 1,000 people. Muscadine Bloodline was opening for him, and it was just a couple of months after his debut single “Hurricane” had been released.

1 week ago | whiskeyriff.com | Aaron Ryan

Talk about a stacked lineup. Cheyenne Frontier Days is of course legendary in the rodeo world, but they’re equally legendary for the incredible country music concerts that they bring along to Wyoming every summer. The rodeo, which started all the way back in 1897, is the “World’s Largest Outdoor Rodeo & Western Celebration” and draws upwards of 200,000 people to Cheyenne – nearly quadruple the city’s population for 10 amazing days during the summer.

1 week ago | whiskeyriff.com | Aaron Ryan

Here we go again. It seems like every year there’s controversy over NASCAR’s “win and your in” playoff system. Under the current rules, a driver automatically qualifies for the 16-team playoffs by winning one of the first 26 races of the season, which means that on any given week a driver could jump into the playoffs and shake up the entire playoff race. And that’s exactly what happened this weekend.

1 week ago | whiskeyriff.com | Aaron Ryan

Which one is it? Morgan Wallen has a new song on his latest 37-track collection, I’m The Problem, called “20 Cigarettes.” It’s already become a favorite among his fans on social media, and it’s actually one of my favorite songs on this latest project from Big Loud Records (full disclosure, I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet). The song tells the story of a night that starts out with a fresh pack of cigarettes and ends when the final “lucky cigarette” is smoked.