When more than 2,000 people showed up on April 19 for the Cowboys and Creatives trail ride and bonfire hosted on a farm in Winston, Georgia, organizers were ecstatic. The attendance showcased a growing interest in Black cowboy culture amongst metro Atlanta residents.
The event offered an opportunity for attendees to ride their horses around the farm (although organizers say extreme temperatures meant they couldn’t have a lengthy trail ride). Local vendors also provided a variety of food options, ranging from vegan offerings and fresh pressed juices to lemon pepper wings.
Cowboys and Creatives co-founder Elle Capone, who goes by Pony Baby, said attendees requested hookah following their trail ride in January, so they included it in April. V-103’s Greg Street co-hosted the event where attendees also line-danced and listened to live performances.
The large crowd created some logistical issues, however. Capone said she initially received notice from local police that people were illegally parked, despite shuttles having been arranged to accommodate overflow traffic to and from nearby hotels.
“When I’m talking to the sheriff, you can imagine, I’m like, ‘Sir, I’m doing everything I can. We’re getting it under control,’” Capone said. “15 people jumped the fence while I’m talking to the sheriff. He looks me dead in my face like, ‘You don’t have control of this party. Shut it down.’”
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The event ended hours early, at around 7:30 p.m., instead of the advertised 11 p.m. Organizers say they offered inconvenienced ticket-holders refunds or free entrance to a future event.
Despite the early ending, Capone said attendees have responded positively to the event. “Folks are saying everything from ‘Y’all are the next Woodstock’ (to) ‘Y’all are the next Freaknik,’” she said. “It feels really, really good.”
The recent Cowboys and Creatives event, alongside a more traditional trail ride scheduled to occur in May, offers a glimpse into the state of the current trail riding scene.
Capone hosted her first trail ride on Butner Road in January. She’s hosted and promoted parties for more than a decade and said she was inspired to host a trail ride after purchasing a horse in November.
She’d only had two riding lessons at that point and said she hadn’t realized how expensive horses are to maintain. Among costs she hadn’t considered were a trailer and a vehicle that can support towing in order to transport her horse to events.
“I wondered how many other people were in the same position as me. I was like, ‘I’m going to bring the trail ride to the city — as close to the city as I can.’ I brought the horse community to me,” she said.
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alongside fellow promoter and horse rider Shar Bates, Capone’s Cowboys and Creatives is hoping to host a similar event in July, although they’ve yet to nail down specifics logistically.
Folks looking to attend a trail ride before then can attend one this weekend, although it will look a lot different from the one hosted by Capone and Bates.
The Atlanta Saddle Club Association will uplift Black cowboy traditions when they host their fifth-annual trail ride May 2-4 in Toomsboro, Georgia. The organization’s president, Jadon Relaford, said he expects the event to only attract a couple hundred people, and according to him, that’s intentional.
He said his event won’t have a live concert. It won’t have an R&B or rap set. Instead, he said, the family-friendly trail ride will focus on horsemanship. In addition to the actual trail ride, there will be rodeo games such as barrel racing, pole bending and more.
“As you can see, a lot of the trail rides lately have been… um… catching the attention of a lot of your cousins,” Relaford said.
“The trail ride scene has really, really changed, big time. It used to just be people who were in the community, who understand the cowboy community and understand how to be respectful. Then it switched over to people that were hosting these (party-centric) trail rides. They were doing concerts, and they were having rap artists and stuff. When you do stuff like that, you start to draw a different type of crowd.”
“We really, really want to cater to the essence of the cowboy culture,” he added.
Country Family Reunions
For Black cowboys, trail rides are akin to family reunions.
Generally formatted as two-day, kid-friendly events, they typically begin with a campout on a Friday evening, with people often traveling from hours away to attend. During the first evening, attendees often eat, socialize and party, performing line- dances and listening to zydeco music.
On Saturday, they wake up early and embark on a trail ride that can last 20 to 30 miles and take hours to complete. Afterward, there’s more food and dancing as well as rodeo games.
Credit: Courtesy of Atlanta Saddle Club Association
Credit: Courtesy of Atlanta Saddle Club Association
Trail rides were never organized with social media in mind. In Georgia, the Wrightsville-based Tri-County Saddle Club is responsible for organizing and distributing a list of trail rides each year.
Teon Tillman, president of the nonprofit organization, said cofounder Larry Johnson usually contacts saddle clubs throughout Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina. The communication helps Tri-County organize dates to host trail rides and ensure there’s no overlapping.
Tri-County hosts the largest trail ride in Georgia, and because the organization has operated since 1989, its leaders tend to know most of the saddle clubs in the region. It’s not a hassle for Johnson to hop on the phone with other Black cowboys to gather information since it often means catching up with friends.
Credit: Courtesy of Atlanta Saddle Club Association
Credit: Courtesy of Atlanta Saddle Club Association
Until recently, the annual list was never longer than a page. Recipients are required to send an addressed, stamped envelope to receive their copy.
Tillman has been president of Tri-County for four years and has attended their trail rides most of his life. He remembers the events averaging 100 people during his youth. Their March trail ride attracted about 7,000.
“You got more outsiders coming in, and they don’t really understand the tight-nit [community] that the trail riders and the horse associations [have],” he said, noting that a lot of newcomers are only interested in partying and line-dancing.
Recently, crowds seem drawn to these events by social media videos of viral line dances created to songs such as 803Fresh‘s “Boots on the Ground” and Tonio Armani’s “Country Girl.”
This has created a logistical nightmare at Brown Farm in Ty Ty, Georgia, for host Elijah Brown. Trail rides on his family farm used to be free, and the Browns would cook for guests, often frying fish and hush puppies purchased from donations.
Today, they charge $10 per day. They said it’s necessary to pay food vendors and accommodate growing attendance.
Credit: Courtesy of Cowboys & Creatives
Credit: Courtesy of Cowboys & Creatives
Tanva Plummer, Brown’s girlfriend, said newcomers often behave in ways that feel inappropriate.
“I feel like the kids come out of the clubs, and it [has become] a fad to learn the steps. They’re turning the line-dancing part… I call it ‘Freaknik in the woods,’” she said. “It’s never been that.”
Plummer said a woman attended an early-April trail ride wearing a G-string adorned with fringes around her waist. “It was so degrading as a Black woman,” she said. “Us women that are country and us women that ride horses don’t dress like that. We dress like the men. We share [their] boots.”
Brown said more than 2,000 people attended the event. “The trail rides don’t feel like family reunions anymore,” he lamented. Now, they feel like more like city-based festivals.
I’m just going to go back to the horses. We don’t need them problems out here in these woods,” he added.
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Traditions vs. The Future
Myeshia Babers, assistant professor of Black studies at Western Washington University, said recent conversations about trail rides get at long-standing questions about how traditions are passed down between generations, as well as how to maintain cultural traditions when they receive mainstream attention.
Like many Black cowboys, she believes two key components of trail rides are that they are horse-centered and family-friendly. For next year’s list of trail rides, Teon Tillman said Tri-County Saddle Club is doubling down on only featuring events meeting that criteria. Ultimately, many Black cowboy organizations throughout Georgia are hoping the original intent doesn’t get lost in the recent expansion.
Relaford said there’s room for both traditional trail rides and the events catering to the new party crowd. He also believes the phrase “trail ride” has caused chaos and confusion. “We need to be able to separate and understand the difference between the two,” he said, noting that these parties are more akin to “Dukes and Boots” events than actual trail rides.
This is hard to do, though, when much of traditional trail rides planning occurs offline and within insulated communities, resulting in social media users typically only seeing events hosted by party promoters. Black cowboys also say in the era of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter,” new saddle clubs pop up regularly, making it increasingly hard to vet the growing number of organizations.
The organizers of Cowboys & Creatives don’t belong to a larger cowboy organization, but they insist they’re not just capitalizing from the current moment. Horses, Capone said, are too expensive to just be “trendy.”
“I spent my 401(k) on a horse. You can’t push me out of this community; I invested my children’s future in it. I’m going to be here,” she said.
The group’s intention is not to disregard the history of trail rides, the promoter added. “We understand there’s a tradition, and we respect it. We’ve been telling our community, ‘Don’t go and play in them people’s face. We’re creating a space for you here.’”
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Babers referred to trail rides as a “turn up and a testimony” for Black folks looking to reclaim joy and space.
“Trail rides actually are not suddenly trendy. They’re part of an ongoing tradition Black communities, especially in the South, have maintained and are just now being amplified,” she said.
“In my research, I’ve seen how this moment — post-2020, post-uprisings — is pushing Black folks to reclaim joy, heritage and space on our own terms.”
Capone agreed. “We’re not trying to replicate or duplicate anything that anybody has. We literally are carving out a space that is a fusion of different things,” she said, noting she was shocked to learn about the division the increased interest in trail rides has caused.
“We’re going to be here. We’re going to have our own space. We welcome everyone with love, no drama, and we’re going to continue to have Black joy because we need that. It’s healing for us. It’s healing for our people.”
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