Cowboy musician R.W. Hampton, who ranches in New Mexico but has made Amarillo his home for the past several years, has 15 IMDb movie credits to his name. But it’s likely that one clip that has been viewed more than any other. At least by his own family.
It’s a moment in the 1985 film Wild Horses, starring his buddy Kenny Rogers. Though Hampton originally signed on to be featured only in a campfire scene, he was asked to stick around and film more shots.
”One of which was a barroom fight where I get knocked out with a pool cue,” Hampton laughs. “My kids used to rewind that back and forth, all the time.”
Forty years later, Hampton is still appearing on screen (his latest, Sod and Stubble, premiered this year) and, more importantly, is still keeping alive the tradition of cowboy music: “I don’t want to ever sound boastful,” he says. “I’m a cowboy who sings.”
Earlier this year, the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame honored Hampton with its prestigious 2025 Spirit of Texas award.
(This interview has been edited and condensed.)
CC: How’d you start playing music?
RWH: I always had a love for music. I grew up north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area with music, whether it was with church, or just listening to records in the evening. I started playing the guitar and singing. We’d had a family tragedy when I was 14, just a terrible car wreck where four people perished, including my sister, who was 9 at the time. So, during that time, I’d just go shut my bedroom door and sit on the edge of the bed and play music. When I started working for ranches for a living, along with my saddle and my gear and my bedroll, a guitar always followed me. I’ve always joked, but it’s true, that I never was good at cards or dice or anything in the evening. And so I just played the guitar, and I learned a lot of the old cowboy songs, and then I learned to write songs about the things that we experienced every day just out in the big open country.
CC: Why is it important for you to keep the tradition of cowboy music alive, and how hard is that to do in 2025?
RWH: I’m so proud of our heritage, especially here in Texas, the cattle industry here around the Amarillo area. And I think there’s people here that you might see at United, but they just don’t even really realize—and it’s not their fault—but they don’t realize where their beef comes from. And I think it’s important to know that there are men and women still doing the job that cattle folks did 150 years ago. I enjoy taking the lifestyle that is so near and dear to us here in the Texas Panhandle, and I love to share it all over the United States.
CC: How often are you in Amarillo or the area? What drew you here?
RWH: We would often, as ranch people, come in maybe once a month. We would load up after school on Friday, get the kids, come to Amarillo and stay in a motel, see the latest movie, eat a couple of meals, then we’d go to Sam’s and Walmart and get the supplies we need. Maybe we had doctor’s appointments or something. And then Sunday evening, we’d head back. My wife, Lisa, said, with the money we spend on motel rooms here, we could buy a house. I really warmed up to the idea, so we bought a neat 100-year-old house in the Oliver-Eakle neighborhood. There’s a sense of history here.
CC: What did it mean to you to win the Spirit of Texas Award?
RWH: If you look back on the people that have been awarded that Spirit of Texas Award, you know, talk about humbled. The “Spirit of Texas,” sounds kind of corny and cliche-ish, but you talk to people from other parts of the world and other parts of the country, and Texas is its own place. And so being given an award because people feel that you embody the qualities of the Texas spirit, that just meant so much to me.
CC: Tell me a little about Sod and Stubble.
RWH: It’s a beautiful story. I play a doctor by the name of Doc Poole—yeah, I’m not a doctor, but I have played one on TV. But anyhow, I think it’s a great story of faith and family. They lost children, they lost crops, but, as we used to say, they made a stand. And it’s just an important story [saying] that things don’t generally happen overnight. They take time and persistence and commitment and conviction. I’m really proud of that film. We’ve got another film project, and I don’t think that I’m cleared to give you the name, but it’s by the same company and we’re going to be finishing it in the spring. It’s kind of a Panhandle story.
Sod and Stubble is available to rent now on digital platforms.
