Review by Rick Huff
Here’s a gentle little album from singer/songwriter Ed Meyer featuring himself on vocals and guitar, Jimmy Carter handling lead guitar and bass duties and Kevin Carter masterfully filling in fiddle. Meyer writes of the creative process “it has taken me more than a year to write the songs for this CD.” The intention is for there to be a light dovetailing of the stories (“Dayworking Cowhand,” “Cowboy Dreams”) and on to a conceptual wrap-up of achieving those goals (“More Than This Cowboy Could Dream”).
Western stories and Rick Huff’s picks
Vocally Meyer’s tender tenor smacks a bit of Gordon Lightfoot. The songs are mainly narratives as opposed to rhyming verse with music and basically feel like a chronicle of an earlier time. Additional picks include “Forever Home,” two songs that celebrate contributions of the frontier wife (“Strong Minded Woman,” “Doubts and Fears”) and Meyer’s and Ric ‘Yonder’ Goodell’s 2025 IWMA Team Penning entry “If We’d Only Had A Rain.”
It’s a mellow acoustic collection, not earth-shattering in its impact, but does everything need to be? Eleven tracks total, recommended.
— Rick Huff
Cowboy Dreams track list
Track order and titles as printed on the CD artwork.
- Day Working Cowhand
- Hard Lessons
- Cowboy Dreams
- Forever Home
- Long Dusty Trail
- Strong Minded Woman
- Doubts and Fears
- Spunky
- I Wanna Be Like You Dad
- More Than This Cowboy Dreamed
Bonus track
If We’d Only Had A Rain
Explore Ed Meyer and more Western music reviews
Read Ed Meyer’s International Western Music Association profile for more about the singer and songwriter. Explore more reviews by Rick Huff, including his review of Don Holladay – Early Modern, or browse our Western Music collection.
Listen to Ed Meyer – Cowboy Serenade
This artist audio selection is from Cowboy Serenade, a different Ed Meyer album. It is not a track from Cowboy Dreams.