Chuck Pyle has performed for more than 40 years, recording with big names like John Denver since his beginnings in Iowa. His unique style of songwriting with the acoustic guitar has earned him the nickname the “zen cowboy.” 

The Gazette: Who taught you to play the guitar?

Chuck Pyle: I taught myself. Probably would’ve saved me some time if YouTube was around. So much, so available. (It’s) quite amazing really!

Gazette: How did you define success then?

Pyle: I was shy, analytic, more interested in my personal best than besting others and guitar was the perfect avenue: a seemingly infinite corridor with treasures at every step, found and learned, rounding me out in ways I didn’t suspect at the time.

Gazette: How do you see it now?

Pyle: Now I am so fortunate to look back on my work and realize it was more about industriousness than ambition. Ambition is all about political aspiration. Industry is about creating, about attainment without the popularity or gaining the world’s approval. Can’t say I wasn’t in the right place at the right time though. Time and place are essential.

Gazette: Tell me about your guitar-playing style.

Pyle:  When I became impassioned with playing guitar, I began to look into the many styles of performance: bands, solo, duo, orchestral. I wanted to do them all. Presenting with nothing other than a voice and a guitar, I began to see how unique it would be to play guitar like a stride piano, and not just folk-style alternate picking. But I mean really knocking it out of the rhythmic park, playing the vocal and finger rides in a non-symmetrical grouping around the downbeat of a thumb, where the thumb is so steady that the beat rolls like a lop-sided wheel. Some parts of it on the back side of the “center,” some on the front side, dividing up the measure into smaller parts than just quarter notes and eighth notes. It’s what good drummers do all the time. Somebody started calling it “Chuck Pyle Fingerstyle” and it stuck.

Gazette: What sets it apart from others?

Pyle: Lots of people play with this sensitive a feel but it’s usually jazz and blues, not folky-folky, western singer-songwriter stuff, and then it’s only when they are having a good night. You seldom see it in the classical world and when you do, it’s recorded for posterity on Deutsche Grammophon. Do I get “there” every night? Mostly, yes, but it’s because I don’t have to depend on a band. If one person’s off in a band, the beat’s irregular — lop-sided one way and then the other, which causes one to start for the car, or maybe just try to remember the last time you balanced your checkbook.

Gazette: Where did you get the nickname as the Zen Cowboy?

Pyle: I wrote a country hit in the ’70s, then, turned around and wrote a satire about Colorado’s 12-step movement centered around Boulder. With the Naropa Institute coming into its own, and Ken Wilbur’s amazing books, “Zen, or Something Like It,” was fashionable. I did an interview in a short-lived weekly called The Orangutan. They were quite clear about why they named me the Zen Cowboy: It was because of the contradictory nature of someone writing about Eastern spirituality in a Western country style. Of course, it helped that I had shaved my head … and wore western clothes.

Gazette: Explain what you mean when you say “always ride the horse in the direction it’s going.

Pyle: No one rises to low expectations but once you begin to see that your course is toward personal disaster, it’s always a good idea to re-assess your direction. The “horse-sense” metaphor is a good one for capturing the intuitiveness of the whole process of living.

Gazette: Did you have that idea when you first began writing?

Pyle: It was THE idea. I learned to, first, approach the internal judge to see if it was mis-firing, like with that sloppy kind of perfectionism that makes you quit before you even get started. On the other hand, if I was writing with that certain kind of clarity I knew I could look back upon in awe, then I knew I was on the right track.

Gazette: Who do you see as your influences?

Pyle: William Shakespeare, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jerry Jeff Walker, Willy Nelson, Leonard Cohen, Mississippi John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis, Champion Jack Dupree, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Hoagy Carmichael, Doc Watson, Tommy Dorsey,  Bobby Collins. And the list goes on.

Gazette: Where do the stories in your music come from? Are any of them about your life?

Pyle: My stories are all about the funniest and saddest parts of my life, with the boring and tedious parts left out. The trick is to know what’s interesting and what’s not. Everybody has good stories in their life, it just doesn’t seem like it because they had to live it one day at a time, the boring parts included. Talking about yourself can kinda make your eyes glaze over if you don’t single out those moments that are actually significant and hold onto them by putting them into a story.

Gazette: Describe your favorite experience while performing on-stage.

Pyle: Having rows and rows of people singing along as far out there as you can see.

Photo by