Andy Nelson
Andy Nelson is a man of many skills, including rodeo announcer, humorist, emcee, poet, award-winning entertainer, sound engineer, author, farrier, and humanitarian. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
With his brother Jim, Nelson cohosts a weekly syndicated radio show, “Clear Out West (C.O.W.) Radio,” which is a leading source for contemporary and vintage cowboy poetry and music, cowboy lore, and practices. The brothers were named DJs of the Year by the Western Music Association and the Academy of Western Artists. In July 2014, he was presented the Cowboy Keeper Award for his work as a cowboy poet as part of the National Day of the Cowboy celebration.
Nelson was born and raised in Oakley, Idaho. He learned to shoe horses from his father, Jim, who was a farrier and traveled throughout the Great Basin with his sons with his work. Nelson shoed horses while in college at Utah State University, where he studied for a pre-veterinarian major. He also worked for many years as a hand on a southern Idaho ranch. He currently lives in Wyoming with his wife, Jaclyn, and their children.
In addition to hosting his radio show, he travels around the Western United States performing cowboy poetry and humor. He won the Western Music Association Male Poet of the Year Award in 2006 and 2013. He was awarded the Skinny Roland Humor Award from the Academy of Western Artists.
He honored his father by writing an award-winning book, Riding with Jim. He works to preserve cowboy culture by recording the voices of cowboy poets and preserving their poetry. Nelson has co-produced nine volumes of The BAR-D Roundup from the Center for Western and Cowboy Poetry. His work has been included in anthologies, such as Wyoming’s Cowboy Poets: And Their Poetry and The Big Roundup: Classic and Contemproary Poetry from CowboyPoetry.com.
He has also released five CDs of his poetry and humor, including How I Taught Bruno a Lesson, Andy Nelson Stew, and Full Nelson Shoeing.
