I Can Still Make Cheyenne

The song is about the life and sacrifice of a rodeo cowboy. It begins with a phone call from a cowboy on the rodeo who is always on the road. He phones home to his love to check in and also to apologize for letting the rodeo and the life he is leading take precedent over their relationship. During the conversation, the cowboy assures her that he is coming home. However, her tone alerts him that something is wrong. The chorus reveals that the woman has gotten fed up with the life he has left her with and has decided to leave him and go with another man. He then explains that as much as it pains him, he will go on to his true passion, the rodeo. The woman is shocked by his reaction, but even though he momentarily has second thoughts about his decision, he still feels that his love of the rodeo will mend his heart. Cheyenne is the most prestigious rodeo around. Without telling her, he was going to skip Cheyenne to come back to her. He was going to give up Cheyenne to be with her, one of the biggest sacrifices a cowboy could make.

George Strait's manager, Erv Woolsey, had a killer idea for a song. He pictured a rugged rodeo dude, constantly on the road, reaching out to his wife or girlfriend. But guess what? She's had enough, and she's moving on to greener pastures. No love lost there. So what does our rodeo hero do? He jumps in his truck and heads straight for the legendary Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo in Wyoming. Now, Woolsey and his buddy, songwriter Aaron Barker, were thick as thieves. These Texas boys living it up in Nashville knew how to have a good time together. Late nights were the best when Woolsey would start spilling his guts. "He comes to me with this wild idea about a cowboy calling home and saying, 'I'm coming back!'" Barker recalled to The Tennessean. "But his old lady fires back, 'Don't bother, cowboy. You're never around. I'm outta here!' And you know what the cowboy says? 'Well, fine then! I'll just keep movin' on to the next rodeo,' and it happened to be Cheyenne." The idea bounced around Woolsey's mind for a couple of years, but Barker wasn't exactly a cowboy himself. He needed a crash course before he could write the song. And who better to teach him than the man himself, George Strait? The country star introduced Barker to the rodeo and gave him an education. Barker put Woolsey's vision into words while holed up in a Nashville hotel room. Once it was done, he shared it with Woolsey, who corrected him on a few technical pointers. For example, there was this line that went, "Didn't make the short go again." Barker had no clue what a "short go" was, so he threw in the word "finals." Made sense to him, but Woolsey put him straight. "No, no, no! It's the short go," he said. He made sure the technical language was on point.

Strait recorded "I Can Still Make Cheyenne" with his longtime producer George Brown at Emeralds Studion, Nashville, on September 28, 1995.