The Sons of the Pioneers featuring Roy Rogers Jr. will perform twice at Brownwood’s Lyric Theatre at 2:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 23. Tickets, for $35, can be purchased at the theatre or at brownwoodlyrictheatre.com.

The following press release was issued by the Sons of the Pioneers regarding their upcoming performance:

The Sons of the Pioneers, who galloped onto the music scene in 1934 and forever transformed cowboy music with their thrilling harmonies and poetic images of the West, still shoulder the standard for Western music today, enchanting audiences of all ages.

The heralded group is celebrating its 87th year of continuous performing and carrying the legacy of their landmark, Grammy-winning music to new ears. Originals like “Cool Water,” “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” and “Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma,” forever rooted in Western lore, are stirring new audiences throughout the United States and Canada.

When Roy Rogers (then Leonard Slye) and gifted songwriters Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer began developing their trademark “Pioneer sound” in the early ‘30s, little did they realize they were launching a juggernaut that would become one of the most decorated and longest-lived groups in American music history. Through the years, gifted singers and instrumentalists have rotated into the group to keep the Pioneers’ musical campfire burning brightly.

“These songs are masterpieces and are just a part of who we are as Americans,” says Tommy Nallie, the current leader and only the fourth “trail boss” in the group’s history. “We stay true to the music, and audiences are hungry for it.” Another development that Rogers—whose storied film, TV, and recording career earned him the sobriquet “King of the Cowboys”—might not have foreseen is the addition of his son, Dusty, into the group in 2018. “How many guys get to join their father’s group that their dad started 87 years ago?” says Rogers. “It’s almost unheard of.”

In addition to Nallie, who sings melody and harmony and plays lead guitar, and Rogers, who sings the “middle” part (in the Pioneers’ lexicon), the group’s other four members are: Ken Lattimore (tenor and lead vocals, fiddle), John Fullerton (baritone and lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Paul Elliott (lead fiddle, harmony vocals), and Chuck Ervin (bass, harmony vocals).

The group continues to extend its rich recording legacy, too, adding “85 Years of Harmony” in 2019 to its already massive music catalog. The album’s 15 all-acoustic selections honor the group’s traditional, intricate arrangements while showcasing the current group’s considerable instrumental and vocal skills. Nallie says he’s thrilled with the recording and hints that more are already in the works.

The Pioneers’ songs have been recorded by an astonishing range of performers, including Bing Crosby, the Boston Pops, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Frankie Laine, Johnny Cash, Riders in the Sky, Michael Martin Murphey, and even the Muppets. Their songs are in more than 100 Western films and continue to be used widely, such as in the Coen brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” (1998) and “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” (2018), Clint Eastwood’s “The Mule” (2018), and in Ken Burns’ epic “Country Music” TV documentary (2019). A Broadway musical about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, “Accidental Heroes,” is due out in 2022.

The Pioneers are the most decorated group in Western music, winning honors such as the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Western Music Association Hall of Fame, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Texas Swing Hall of Fame, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, to name a few. The group’s renditions of “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and “Cool Water” have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and the Smithsonian Institution has named the group one of America’s “National Treasures.”

“No other group had as profound an effect on the history of Western music,” writes music historian Douglas B. Green, also known as Ranger Doug of Riders in the Sky. “Their lyrical musical portraits virtually define the romanticized West … painting its colors as no one had done before or has done since.”