Caden Gillard’s story isn’t your typical rodeo-to-music journey. After being diagnosed with leukemia in 2009, he found comfort in learning guitar while recovering in the hospital. What started as playing for nurses and fellow patients eventually led him to the rodeo arena, where he rode bulls at the professional level.
While getting his start singing between Go-Rounds, an injury shifted his focus to music full-time. Since then, he’s opened for Cody Johnson, played at countless rodeos and venues, and embraced his identity as a cowboy musician.
“There’s a romance to rodeo that, I mean, maybe people who play other sports have that, you know, that same sort of romance,” he said. But to me, I feel like rodeo and just the cowboy lifestyle in general, is there’s something so special and romantic about it, and I say that in the most masculine way, but it is. There’s something beautiful about the lifestyle.”
A few days prior to the release of his latest single, Just Outside of Dallas, he coincidentally joined us in Fort Worth for an interview.
TCC: For starters, just tell me a little bit about your background in music and rodeo. Just give me the quick version of your story.
CG: I was diagnosed with leukemia and whenever I went into the hospital, I just started learning how to play guitar and stuff and, and so from there, I started writing my own songs and just playing for the nurses and other patients on the floor. And every day, I would get unhooked for an hour to walk around the floor. And there was a there was a picture on the wall that said, ‘seven months after transplant’ of a guy riding a bull, and I’d always wanted to ride bulls, and I rode sheep and stuff like that. My dad rode bulls.
So naturally I wanted to grow up to be like my dad. And so when I got released, I was a junior going into my senior year in high school, I started getting on bulls, and I high school rodeoed my senior year. And after that, man, it was just like, I was hooked. I was gonna go to the NFR and, you know, I was gonna travel and pro rodeo and do all that stuff. And so, you know, naturally, when I first started, I wasn’t very good. I had a lot of try. I got better and better.
And so, long story short, I got hurt, and I had just opened up for Cody Johnson after a ProRodeo, actually. I walked up on the deal. The director of the rodeo saw me playing and he was like, Man, you want to open up for Cody Johnson tomorrow night? Heck, yeah, first show I ever played almost 4000 people, that’s acoustic. I didn’t even have a guitar that plugged in at the time and and so, yeah, man, it just, when I got hurt a couple weeks later, I started using that as leverage book some shows.
TCC: When you first got started playing music, who were you influenced by?
CG: Man, when I went into the hospital, I just started getting out of my skateboarding phase, so I listened to a lot of rock and, like emo music, I guess you would call it, like Blink 182 and Simple Plan and My Chemical Romance, stuff like that. And you can hear it in my videos, I would sing kind of with that, I guess you would call it Midwest accent.
TCC: The whiny?
CG: Yeah, exactly. And then obviously I evolved. I stopped using an accent so to speak. And now, I sing with more of my natural accent, which is kind of country accent. Now, when I write songs, you know, some songs will be more traditional, and then some songs will be, like heavier rock, because, I mean, as a bull rider, you want to feel like you could run through brick wall, you know?
TCC: So when you got started, was it a lot of rodeos, county fairs, that type of thing?
CG: Yeah, it was. It was mainly like bull ridings. I did a lot of those backyard bull ridings.
TCC: The connection between music and rodeo feels stronger than ever, what’s it like to be a real cowboy who plays country music at this specific time?
CG: I love it. I mean, personally, I love it. Because even though it’s growing and becoming more common, it’s still very niche. So, as a real cowboy, you can connect on it on a deeper level. Because, I can tell right away if a song was written by a cowboy, if it’s cowboy related, or anything rodeo related, you can always tell if it’s legit or not. And I feel like that really comes through in our music. Chris Ledoux is one of my all-time heroes. George Strait, another cowboy, and they’ve really leaned into that, which is something that I honestly want to lean into.
TCC: How are rodeoing and being a musician similar? Because they’re both strange lifestyles.
CG: It’s a true passion, if you aren’t passionate about it, you’ll get burned out real quick, you know? And like this weekend specifically, we live in outside of Nashville, okay, we drove 10.5 hours yesterday to be here. And then we have to drive another seven hours to Alpine, Texas to play tomorrow night. And then after that show, we have to leave from there and drive all night to Baytown, Texas, 9.5 hours. You better love it, you know?
TCC: Tell me about your newest song, Just Outside of Dallas.
CG: So I started writing this song, I don’t know, probably about six months ago, and I ended up writing a song with the same chorus, and it was slow. I felt like it was good, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. And so, we were in the midst of picking out songs that we were gonna go cut in the studio. And we picked out seven songs, and, I don’t know, a week before we actually went into the studio, I sat down, and I came up with a new melody for the for the song. I mean, I sat down, I said, “I-20 westbound, running around, hammer down, living free.” And then, I started kind of going from there. And it just started painting a picture. And then I got to the chorus. I’m like, I feel like this chorus from this song could work here. And so I just took it and I copy and paste, bam, and then literally, within five minutes, I had this whole song written out. And Dallas is actually considered our number one streaming city, so I think it’s going to do really well.
Parts of this interview have been condensed for clarity. You can follow Caden on social media here and listen to his music here.