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March 29th, 2024

wade bowen spotlightWade Bowen in a promotional photo. Bowen will be taking the stage at this year’s High Plains Music Fest in September. Courtesy photoELLY GRIMM • Leader & Times

 

With thousands of shows under his belt, Wade Bowen has been making a name for himself in the country music world for the past two decades. 

Bowen will be bringing his Texas-inspired musical skills to Hugoton as one of the entertainers for this year’s High Plains Music Fest, set for Saturday, Sept. 10 at Dirtona Raceway. As Bowen’s bio tells it, he had quite the interesting musical education growing up. 

“Born in Waco and schooled in the clubs surrounding Lubbock’s Texas Tech University, Bowen was raised on a steady diet of hardscrabble country realism and rock showmanship. His mother loved Elvis, the Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival, while his father spun Texan giants like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson,” Bowen’s bio noted. “His first concert was a peak-theatrics Alabama show, but even then, it was the lyrics which spoke the loudest.”

Ultimately, Bowen began writing poems and short stories to express his creative spark. And then in college, the songwriting skills came out more, Bowen’s bio noted. 

“Writing songs is just something you have to get out of you, it’s something you have to do,” Bowen noted in his bio. “I think it’s the same reason firefighters run into a burning house to save someone, it’s a calling. You can’t really be taught, you just have to have that instinct.”

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wes cossman band spotlight pageWes Cossman Band in a promotional photo. The group will be taking the stage at this year’s High Plains Music Fest in September. Courtesy photoELLY GRIMM • Leader & Times

 

This year’s High Plains Music Fest promises a fun lineup full of talent for those who turn out to this year’s festivities, which are scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 10 at Dirtona Raceway in Hugoton, with music starting at 6 p.m.

One of the groups that will be taking the stage will be the Wes Cossman Band, and Cossman said he and the group are excited to make their High Plains Music Fest debut. 

“The main thing I'm excited about is we've got a couple new songs we're going to be performing, and we're really looking forward to seeing how the crowds respond to that,” Cossman said. “It also looks like it'll be a great lineup that night, the other groups who will be there are really talented and we're ready to show them some support too since they'll be on the same stage as us. We have done concerts in that area before, but this will be our first time at the High Plains Music Fest, so we're really excited about that too. It's always great being in that area because the people are great and they know our music pretty well, so I think we'll have a pretty decent crowd for our set.”

As Cossman tells it, his interest in music was piqued at a young age. 

“I was part of some bands in high school here and there and in college, and my current band has been together for a few years now. We're all pretty local musicians and we've all got some sort of roots here in Kansas,” Cossman said with a chuckle. “I'd started a band in high school and then we just really started going for it. I started performing more for people around that time and doing music a little more extensively, and I just haven't stopped since then. The creative side is always the best part for me, it's always great putting together a song or something like that and ultimately seeing people enjoy it when it's being performed.”

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shania twain netflix documentary spotlightShania Twain prepares to start a song at a past concert in this scene from Netflix’s recent documentary “Not Just a Girl.” Courtesy photoELLY GRIMM • Leader & Times

 

I’ve mentioned here many times how much I enjoy listening to music, something that has given me great joy since I was young. When I was growing up in the mid-1990s (and I’m not sure exactly how), I was introduced to Shania Twain’s “Come On Over” album and pretty much INSTANTLY became a fan. In my experience, there aren’t too many people who hear the opening notes of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” and DON’T want to just absolutely jam out. 

So recently, when I heard Netflix had put together a documentary about Twain about her life and career, titled “Not Just a Girl,” I knew I had to watch it. Within the first few minutes, I felt an absolute wave of nostalgia and contentment as I watched and heard songs of hers I hadn’t thought about in quite some time, and I spent the next nearly 90 minutes with a huge, ridiculous grin on my face. 

The first thing I liked about “Not Just a Girl” was how laid back the overall tone felt. Besides Twain, there are a handful of other music figures interviewed throughout the movie (some I knew, some I didn’t), and each one of the interviews featured felt like a casual conversation, and I loved it. There was laughter and some cursing amongst all the reminiscing, and each of the interview subjects legitimately seemed to have a blast being part of the project. With all of that in mind, I also liked how honest and straightforward everything was. Twain is very open about her feelings about starting out in the music industry and how hesitant she was with some aspects because she was so new to everything at that point. And when her divorce from her husband and manager came up, there was no bitterness or blame or anything like that, she just talks about her feelings during that time very matter-of-factly, and it definitely seems like she’s healed from that time in her life. The movie overall almost felt like one of those “Behind The Music” shows, and it made for a pretty interesting watch. 

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