Cowboy poet and songwriter Mag Mawhinney will be one of the three artist performing at the 14th Annual Cowboy Concert at Martin Exeter Hall in 100 Mile House on Jan. 18.
The other two performers are Kelowna cowboy singer Jeremy Willis and singer/songwriter Tim Hus who is based in Alberta.
This will be the first visit to the Cowboy Concert as a performer for Mawhinney who currently lives in Cobble Hill on Vancouver Island.
Concert organizer Mark McMillan says her work is “humourous and fun.”
Mawhinney received the Western Music Association’s 2013 Cowboy Poetry Book of the Year Award for her book, Western Spirit, on Nov. 23, 2013.
Mawhinney also received the Will Rogers Award for Cowgirl Poet of the Year in 2012, presented by the Academy of Western Artists in the United States.
Many area residents will remember Mawhinney, as she was raised in the Forest Grove area.
In 1949, her father pre-empted some land between 100 Mile House and Forest Grove, at the very end of what is now Bisset Road, and he became a horse logger.
“I was eight years old and my sisters and I went to school at Forest Grove. I remember the old orange school bus, which had a broken radiator and my mother would have to run out with a kettle to fill it up when we heard the horn tooting down the road.
“We sang songs a lot on that bus and the Houseman girls, who were a bit older than us, taught my sister and I how to yodel.
“On the weekend, they would sometimes ride their horses to our place and take us for a fast ride behind their saddle. It was a lot faster than my sister's old pony would go.”
Mawhinney says they listened to music on a wind-up gramophone and even won a singing contest on amateur night at the old Forest Grove Hall. The song they sang was Hank Snow's I'm Nobody's Child.
During the Cowboy Concert, she will be reciting cowboy/western roots poetry.
My husband, Vernon, and I have visited the McMillans' Meadow Springs Ranch many times, which has inspired me to write quite a few poems about the western way of life.
Tickets are $15 and are available at Work n Play Clothing, 100 Mile Feed & Ranch Supply and The Log House Western Wear.
The concert at Martin Exeter Hall, behind The Lodge in 100 Mile House, starts with a matinee performance at 2 p.m., followed by an evening show at 7.
The 100 Mile House Cowboy Concert benefits the BC Cowboy Heritage Society student scholarships.
For more information on the Cowboy Concert, contact 1-888-763-2221.