About Ross
A lifetime in the making
Ross Gilchrist has been playing music for most of his life, although there was a 30-year intermission along the way.
Growing up in a small town in Saskatchewan, music was one of the things that showed Ross there was a bigger world beyond the one he knew. By 14, he was playing guitar in a band with musicians several years older than him. At 16, he left home.
Then music took a back seat. For the next 30 years, Ross poured his energy into hockey, business and building a career. When he eventually returned to music, he didn't just pick up the guitar again. He taught himself to play drums and began exploring music in an entirely new way.
Decades after those first experiences in Saskatchewan, they have found their way into No Sad Cowboy, a deeply personal collection of songs about where Ross came from, the people and experiences that shaped him, and the life he chose to build.
The title track began with a chance conversation and a single line that stopped Ross in his tracks. From there came a song about growing up without much, wanting something different, and refusing to become the proverbial sad cowboy defined by the hard things that happened along the way.
Creating the album became its own journey. Over two years, Ross immersed himself in the craft of songwriting, learned to listen to music differently, and collaborated with an extraordinary group of musicians, including producer and coach Wynn Gogol of One Ton Studios, to turn the songs he heard in his head into something real.
No Sad Cowboy is the result: personal, hopeful and unmistakably Ross — an album several decades in the making.
