Western music tastes best outdoors and Thursday night, Nov. 5, the award-winning Western singer Juni Fisher served up a great performance in the courtyard of La Hacienda de Sonoita.

The audience is captivated by Juni Fisher’s music and stories in the courtyard of La Hacienda de Sonoita during a recent evening concert.

Fisher, the first woman and the first performer on an independent label to win the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s prestigious Wrangler Award, is nominated for songwriter of the year, female vocalist of the year, song of the year, album of the year and entertainer of the year by the Western Music Association.

Accompanied by her guitar, Fisher told stories and jokes and sang her ballads in the candlelit courtyard. It is not just her singing voice, which is brilliant, but it is her narrative voice that sets this performer apart.

Fisher does not approach her ballads straight on, but comes at her stories from surprising angles. She twisted the story from the old song “Sweet Betsy From Pike” so that it was told from the point of view of the Shanghai rooster, who escapes the cooking pot and the misfortunes of his fellow travelers to hide out in the sage.

She told the story of her great-grandfather’s journey as a young boy to become a cowboy in Colorado through the voice of his horse, an old nag the boy buys for a few coins. “And we all know what that first horse we can afford looks like,” Juni pointed out. The horse complains about his green rider, but says, “I guess I’ll let him ride. At least we’re going somewhere.”

One of her most famous songs, “Red Velvet Slippers,” was No. 1 on the Western music chart, a distinction that Fisher jokingly calls going “aluminum foil.” In this ballad she tells the story of Feleena, the girl made famous in the song “El Paso? sung by Marty Robbins. “What if it wasn’t Feleena’s fault?” she asked herself. “What if magic slippers made her do bad things?” Many of her songs seem to have their roots in Fisher asking the question “What if?”

Braided through Fisher’s ballads are characters that weave back and forth through the narratives. A mention in one song leads to a minor character becoming the focus of the next, entwining the songs into a more complex whole.

Fisher is scheduled to perform at the 100th anniversary of the Pendleton Round Up this year and has been researching and writing new songs to commemorate the early days of rodeo. Of particular interest are the stories of the women who rode saddle broncs in the early 1900s. The tale of Bonnie McCarrol, a bronc rider killed in a wreck at the Pendleton Roundup in1929, is told by her ghost bemoaning that she can’t make one more ride.

It was a nice touch to have Dutch oven cake during intermission, prepared by Tom and Cheryl Rogos, owners of La Hacienda. The concert was a joint production of PattyWagon Enterprises and La Hacienda de Sonoita.