The Western Troubadours

Kerry Grombacher and Aspen Black, both award-winning solo artists, have worked together as a duo, The Western Troubadours, since 2014. Influenced by the English ballad tradition, the string-band music of Aspen’s Appalachian home, and the corridos of the desert Southwest, where Kerry has lived and worked, their songs tell fascinating stories of explorers and settlers, Indians and cowboys, and lawmen and outlaws whose lives shaped the West. As a duo, or as solo performers, they’ve worked with libraries and arts councils from border to border and coast to coast, and they’ve appeared at events such as the Durango Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Georgia Cowboy Gathering, the Newport Folk Festival, and the Louisiana Folklife Festival.

Kerry Grombacher plays guitar and mandolin. He wrote “Range of the Buffalo,” the International Western Music Association’s 2021 Song of the Year, and his songs have been featured on the ABC-TV adventure travel show, “Born to Explore,” and on the Putumayo World Records CD “Cowboy Playground,” which was released in over 60 countries. He has released six albums of original songs, and his songs have been recorded by a list of artists that includes Jim Jones, Belinda Gail, The Texas Trailhands, Gary Prescott, and Trails & Rails. There is a room named for after him at the Sands Motel in Grants NM, on Historic Route 66.

Aspen Black plays guitar and bass. Her original song, Born to be a Cowgirl, won the 2024 Western Writers of America Spur Finalist Award for Best Western Song and was #1 on the western radio charts in 2023. She also won the 2023 IWMA Songwriting Contest (Gospel category) and was a Top Five nominee for Female Performer of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. She received a Will Rogers Medallion for her 2018 CD of Cowboy Poetry, “Tales From the Road,” and her “Lovin’ the West” won the Rural Roots Music Commission’s 2017 Classic Western CD of the Year award. She writes from the perspective of a horse trainer, champion barrel racer and extensive traveler, working in communities all over the west.