Alan Moberg, Canada’s country star and writer of the famous Williams Lake Stampede song will be performing in the Let R Buck Saloon behind the Stampede Grandstand starting at 4:30 p.m. Friday, July 1 during Stampede.
“In about 1969 I was just beginning to write songs,” Moberg says in his biography.
She says a local publisher commissioned him to write some songs for recording artist Spade Neilsen.
He says the publisher was also a realtor selling lots on the newly established 108 Mile Ranch.
“I wrote some five songs with Cariboo themes, one of them being the Williams Lake Stampede,” Moberg says.
“Well, for whatever reason Spade didn’t record his album so I recorded three of them on my first album, Walk In His Moccasins.
“Though I had never been to the Stampede I had been through the town and saw it as part of the last of the western frontier.
“The first person I ever met from there was a First Nations cowboy who was hitch hiking outside our home in Langley on the old Trans Canada Highway.
“I invited him in for a sandwich. This incident fuelled my romantic notions about the Cariboo and was probably the seed for my song Cariboo Sunrise.”
He says their first contact with the Stampede song was Bill Leckie a longtime manager at CKWL Radio.
“He was enthused about the tune and played it on air immediately,” Moberg says.
“In co-operation with the Kinsmen Club we played the first ever Stampede dance at the War Memorial Arena in 1970 and continued for eight or nine years.
“As well we played pancake breakfasts in the Overwaitea parking lot.
“I liked this venue because we met all ages there from kids to grandparents.”