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Lee: There was just me and another guy in the bar and he said three or four times (to the musician), “Hey, buddy, do that song.” And he finally did it and what he did was “The Rodeo Song.”

Holley (who joined Lee at the bar): We put a tape recorder under the table and taped it. We went back to our room and listened to it again and thought, We could do this. So I got the acoustic out and Garry got the fiddle out and he started sawing away. We said, “We’ll just make this sort of a hoedown.” We created a rough arrangement.

LaRocque: I remember Paul saying, “You’ve got to hear this song!”

Photo by Greg Southam / Postmedia / Swerve

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According to Holley, Showdown played their souped-up rendition of “The Rodeo Song” that same night—four times, in fact. But Lee insists they waited until the next evening. McLellan says the song was unveiled days later at a University of Alberta dance. But everyone agrees on one thing—the song was an instant hit.

LaRocque: People hadn’t heard anything like that before. Nothing as risqué as that. It was thecraziest thing we’d ever heard—or played.

Holley: We played it at least twice a night every single place we went, basically 15 times a week. Word was getting around.

Lee: The band was already pretty popular and the song pushed it over the top.

McLellan: We would turn “The Rodeo Song” into this big half-hour thing—play it really slow, really fast, slow it down, do some talking in the middle—to try to get some mileage out of it.

At the time, Showdown was in the middle of recording an album at Damon Sound Studios in Edmonton. With room for a 10th track, “The Rodeo Song” was a last-minute addition.