Luke Bell, Wyoming’s Ramblin’, Pickin’ Poet
Photo: Mike Vanata | Western AF
Written By: Meredith Lawrence
“He's a poet and he's a picker, he's a prophet and he's a pusher / He's a pilgrim and a preacher… partly truth and partly fiction,” sings Kris Kristofferson in his seminal song, “Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” inspired by famous wanderers like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Johnny Cash. The song’s titular character belongs not to any one being, but rather to a small cohort of singer-songwriters whose poetry of the human condition is so piercing it separates their music from their mortal lives. Wyoming’s Troubadour, Luke Bell, was clearly cut from the same block as Kristofferson’s itinerate rambling man.
Photo: Mike Vanata | Western AF
Though his tumultuous, storied, and sweet life ended too soon, Bell’s version was something different than rote wanderer—more joyful than lonely and brooding. Incorrigible and charismatic, he had a way of making anyone near him feel included, even when playing on stage to a packed room.
“His music gets you up to dance, it can make you cry. We were all a part of it, and felt it together,” says Western AF co-founder Mike Vanata, who grew up in Cody, WY as did Bell.
Vanata first met Bell near the end of high school. At a party at Vanata’s house one night, Bell played a country cover of The Gourds’ “Gin and Juice.” It was pretty good. Vanata asked if Bell knew any more songs. Nope, Bell said, just the one; but he was going to be a country singer one day. “You should probably learn more songs,” Vanata remembers quipping.
Bell rode that courage in conviction to record three albums, and together he and Vanata filmed music videos for his first album (untitled), a project that laid the groundwork for Western AF. After that, Bell released another album, before his third, 2016’s Luke Bell, which as Vanata puts it, “shot Luke into the stratosphere.”
Full of gumption and longing, Bell’s lyrics cut to the quick of human existence. On Luke Bell, (his only album widely available through streaming services) Bell shifted effortlessly from the album’s bluesy love-sick “Sometimes,” to the coy, plangent “Hold Me,” the spare “Loretta,” and jangly “Working Man’s Dream.”
Bell effortlessly mixed levity and introspection, nowhere better than in the jazzy road song “Glory and Grace,” and “The Bullfighter,” his beloved, mournful tune about a hapless matador. Bell ends with the raucous “Ragtime Troubles,” and bittersweet, unrequited country love story, “The Great Pretender.” Traversing a monumental distance in the space of 10 songs and 33 minutes appeared effortless for Bell, who was equally comfortable inhabiting each character.
“He had a big shit-eating grin and infectious laugh. You couldn’t help it but love the guy,”
The album’s success scored Bell appearances at SXSW and the CMAs and opening slots for some of the biggest names in country music, including Willie Nelson and Dwight Yoakam. But he remained the goofy, sweet, rambler to his core, blithely pulling musician friends onto bills with him at the last minute, and earnestly jumping in to help anyone in any way he could.
“He had a big shit-eating grin and infectious laugh. You couldn't help it but love the guy,” says Riley Downing of long-time New Orleans roots music band the Deslondes. Downing recalls many fond evenings spent passing songs around a campfire and hanging out over a few beers with Bell, who had a gift for turning up and fitting in just about anywhere.
Perhaps the most prescient track on Luke Bell, “Where Ya Been,” feels autobiographical. It’s simultaneously a remarkable homage to the intoxicating magnetism of a good night out and to the isolating, shadowy world of mental illness: “Hey, mister in the mirror, where's my friend? / I went out on the town and I ain't seen him since / Hey, hey, where ya been?”
Photo: Mike Vanata | Western AF
Not all souls fit the rigid expectations of our society and many times it was hard to say where Bell had been; his peripatetic lifestyle took him from Cody to Nashville, Austin, New Orleans and many other towns. Bell also struggled with mental illness, which marked his last few years of life. He was found dead on August 29, 2022, at the age of 32.
But the circumstances of his death cannot diminish his spirit. Some of the brightest flames burn too hot to linger. The best we can do is soak in their light while they last. Or, as Bell put it in his song, “All Blue”:
I'm bound to wander through the tall grass
And find the biggest skies I can find
Lord, I can find
All blue, Lord, all blue
I'm all blue and I can't say
The reasons that I feel this way
But I gotta go
Lord, I can't stay
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