Chancey Williams’ Thirsty and Blue album is out. The record, his eighth, is also one of his most personal. Unlike most artists, Williams is a full-time, real-life cowboy, who also happens to have a successful music career as well.

“I’m always looking for stuff that fits what I do, that stays authentic to me, but maybe pushes the envelope a little bit,” Williams tells Everything Nash. “The title track, ‘Thirsty and Blue,’ was the song that Brice Long and Shawn  Camp wrote. They wrote it a few years back. But that’s a song that not everybody can pull off. Me being a real cowboy from Wyoming, I said, ‘You know, I want to do that. I’ve never cut anything that sounds like that. It’s different, but still fits the cowboy way of life.’

Indeed, the chorus of “Thirsty and Blue” says, “Thirsty and blue, what else could I do / But cinch up the saddle on this ol’ barstool / Hey, hey, bartender, won’t you bring me a few / This cowboy’s thirsty and blue.” For Williams, it was the perfect song, even though it’s one of the six of the 11 songs on the record that Williams did not write.

“Brice actually sent that to me the night before we were gonna track, and I said, ‘Hey, let’s track that tomorrow. I just wanna hear how it sounds.’ We didn’t really plan on it being the title track or the tour name, but we got to shoot this music video for it in Mescal, Arizona, at the same movie set where they filmed the movie Tombstone, which is one of the greatest Westerns of all time.”

Chancey Williams’ “Things a Cowboy Ain’t Ever Gonna Say” Duet With Ned LeDoux

Included on Thirsty and Blue is a humorous song called “Things a Cowboy Ain’t Ever Gonna Say,” written by Williams and Long.

“Me and Brice write a lot together, and it seems like we always end up writing a cowboy song,” Williams explains. “We got in the room that day, and he was like, ‘Let’s not write a cowboy song today. Let’s write something else.'”

From there, the two talented songwriters had the idea to write things that cowboys don’t say, coming up with clever lines like, “That steak right there is just too rare / No I’m good I don’t want another beer,” and, “Toss your hat over there on the bed / Let ’em wait till mornin to get fed.”

“We just started making a laundry list of all the little insider things, how cowboys talk,” Williams shares. “Like, ‘I’ll just leave that gate open / We’ll be right back.‘ It’s taboo to leave a gate open on a ranch. ‘Toss your hat over there on the bed.’ Cowboys putting their hats on beds is super bad, bad luck. It’s a superstition thing. So we just made a laundry list of all those things, and we recorded it.”

“Things a Cowboy Ain’t Ever Gonna Say” also includes the line, “You don’t really care for LeDoux or Strait,” which is why Williams asked Ned LeDoux to join him on the song. However, since LeDoux’s touring schedule prohibited them from shooting a music video, Williams got a life-size cutout of LeDoux instead.

“We called it Flat Ned and did a bunch of filming with it,” he adds. “And it was a lot of fun. Got a lot of good laughs.”

Chancey Williams Looks Ahead After Releasing ‘Thirsty and Blue’

Williams might be a working cowboy, but he also is a full-time musician, with a busy concert schedule to prove it. For now, Williams is content to do both, even if it does mean he gets very little rest.

“We’re trying to build that fan base, one fan at a time, and expand our geography across the US,” Williams says. “I try to play new places all the time and gain new fans. I got another eight songs already cut, so I need about another two or three for another album that we’ll probably put out next year. I just try to write and record all the time. You never know what song’s gonna take off. We’ve had some success with some rodeo songs, and some Nashville-type songs too. So just always continue to push forward.

“This business is crazy,” he continues with a laugh. “I never would’ve guessed, and it’s changed so much with these digital platforms and streaming. I think it’s for the best, but I’m always trying to navigate. … There’s a lot of noise out there, but I try to be unique and authentic. I think at the end of the day, those artists that have been authentic and truthful to their fans will rise to the top. And that’s how we’ve built our whole career, is just being true to who we are and true to our fans and being authentic.”

Find Thirsty and Blue at ChanceyWilliams.com.