Patti's After-Party: Lacy J. Dalton In-Depth Q & A

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I’m proud to say this is my first Q & A format interview for Center Stage Magazine. I generally reserve these for the most interesting conversations, and that’s because sometimes, I want people to “hear” the whole conversation as I heard it. The following is essentially a transcript of my chat with the fabulous Lacy J. Dalton. She’s celebrating her actual 80th birthday on October 13th, and sharing all the fun with fans and friends in Nashville at an October 15th show at 3rd & Lindsley. This was my second time speaking with the divine Ms. Dalton and truth be told, she’s one of the best conversationalists around. Her music is terrific, but her mind is just full of interesting thoughts! Sit back, grab a nice cup of “Black Coffee” or whatever else you like, and do a little eavesdropping. I hope you enjoy this.

One more thing, we laughed a lot during this chat. We talked about some very serious things too, but I trust you'll know when to insert your own private laugh track.

Center Stage Magazine: Hello

Lacy J. Dalton: Good morning Patti, this is Lacy Dalton.

CSM: How are you doin’?

LJD: I’m sorry I ran a little over with the last interview, so I’m a couple minutes late.

CSM: Oh, you’re fine! So, I talked with you quite a while ago when you were celebrating the anniversary of “Black Coffee.”

LJD: Wow! Well, that’s been a minute Patti.

CSM: It has, but I can’t believe we’re celebrating your 80th birthday. Do people actually believe it? I think you’re lyin’! 

LJD: Well, it happens to be true. I have a hard time believing it too. I don’t know about you, but when I was really young I thought I wouldn’t live past 30.

CSM: Me too!

LJD: I thought it was the end of the line.

CSM: Yeah, but here we are, we’re just hangin’ in there somehow. I don’t know how we did it.

LJD: You’re probably not nearly as far along as I am.

CSM: I’m 61, so not that far off.

LJD: It’s funny when you realize that you’re actually 80, it doesn’t seem like I thought 80 would feel. 

CSM: You know, I just talked to Debby Boone recently and she was turning 70 and she said almost exactly those same words. She said something like, “It doesn’t feel like what I thought it was gonna feel like.” I told her when I turned 60 it didn’t feel like I thought it would either, so I guess if we’re all still here, we'll just keep doing what we’re doing day by day, and with that it doesn’t really make a difference I guess.

LJD: You know, I think the spirit that’s in us truly is eternal, and if we’re in touch with that and we don’t pay too much attention to numbers, I don’t think it makes much difference if you take fairly good care of yourself and you’ve been lucky healthwise. If you don’t feel well and you’re bent over with rheumatoid arthritis or Parkinson’s Disease or something like that, it might be a different scenario. I have been, knock on wood, very grateful to have good health most of my life. I mean, I’ve had a few little adventures, but I’ve not had debilitating diseases, which I think must be very, very hard.

CSM: I think you’re right. I was diagnosed with leukemia a little over three years ago and I didn’t know how long I had to live, but here I am, and I was just at the oncologist’s and hopefully, I’ll be able to stop taking medication soon. So you never know.

LJD: That’s wonderful. My sister said you have no idea how it feels when they tell you that you have cancer.

CSM: That’s true, especially when it comes out of nowhere. I’m in a really good mood today, so you caught me on the right day.

LJD: Good! I’m very glad and I’m glad they diagnosed you.

CSM: Me too, even though it was quite a shock, but I’m glad you’re still here and you’ll be celebrating at 3rd & Lindsley. That’s a pretty cool way to celebrate a big birthday.

LJD: That place is magic to me because I’ve come out a couple times for Country for a Cause, which is a big benefit concert that we do for the children’s hospital in Nashville, and it’s so nice for me because I live so far away. I’m kind of like the weird cousin from the west coast and I don’t get to see so many of the people that I’ve worked with. I’ve worked with so many wonderful people, like T. G. (Sheppard) and Kelly (Lang) and Moe Bandy, and so many others.. A lot of those people that I don’t get to see very often are going to be on my show at 3rd & Lindsley and I’m thrilled that they’re coming! Terri Gibbs is coming and she’s been my favorite for a long, long time. She has that fabulous song “Somebody’s Knockin’” (she sang it a little for me) and she sings that just as good, if not better than she did when it came out in 1981.

CSM: Such a great song and I think everybody knows it.

LJD: I remember the first time that I heard it and I love her voice, it’s such a soothing voice. She’s also such a kind and good person. Then there’s Makenzie Phipps, she’s young and just starting out. She was on The Voice and she’s so talented, she’s gonna be there too.

CSM: Oh yes, I’ve chatted with her a couple times and she’s amazing.

LJD: She’s so much fun and she’s hilarious.

CSM: She is hilarious, and she’s got a cat that’s hilarious, I don’t know if you know that. Her cat’s name is Jared and he’s cross-eyed. He has his own TikTok channel. She told me, “He’s got more followers than I’ll ever have.” jaredthecrosseyedcat He’s very dapper, he wears a bow tie. He’s really cute.

LJD: That’s really smart. I had Carl the Christmas Dog. This year was Carl’s last year, but one year we wrote a song and made a video. It’s on YouTube and if you haven’t seen it, go to Carl the Christmas Dog on YouTube.  (Definitely worth the watch, I watched it twice.) He plays himself, but it’s fun and people really love animals. I’m so grateful that this upcoming “Not Dead Yet” birthday party has turned into a benefit for wild horses. I’ve had a foundation for wild horses since 1999.

CSM: I love that too and we’re gonna talk about those horses, and it’s not just horses, it’s burros too, right?

LJD: That’s right, wild horses and burros and they’re in terrible trouble right now.

CSM: How did you first come up with the idea of starting the Let ‘em Run Foundation? 

LJD: Well, I used to play all these theaters and arenas in this area, and I played for years and years and years and I made friends up in the mountains with a lot of the people that were the tech people in the showrooms. They had homes up in the Virginia Highlands, and Reno, Nevada sits in a long valley called the Truckee Meadows Valley, and on the west side, the Sierra Nevada mountain range rises up to about 8,000 feet. On the east side, there’s a smaller mountain range called the Virginia Range, and it has what is arguably the largest herd of wild horses on private land anywhere in the country. So these horses are up here and I made friends with some of the tech people. I had a good friend who had a radio show in Reno called It’s All in the Cards, and she would read tarot cards on the radio. People would call in with a question and she’d throw three cards and tell them what she thought. She was so much fun.

CSM: That does sound fun.

LJD: So she invited me up to her house one day after I’d done a stint at one of the casinos for a couple weeks. It was just really cool. Virginia City used to be a very big town in the mining days, and it’s not been gentrified, it’s still just like it was a hundred years ago. It’s so cool. A lot of the towns have been gentrified until they look like Knott’s Berry Farm. Virginia City is still the way it was and they don’t allow corporate stuff in there, you know, the coffee shop has to be a “mom and pop” coffee shop. It really is a fun place to visit. It’s still very much like the way it was.

CSM: I would love that place.

LJD: So I went up to visit her and we had just had dinner and we had some candles lit and were about to have some tea. It was right when the sun was going down and I heard this sound outside and I said, “What am I hearing out there?” She put her finger up, and I’ll never forget this, she said, “Listen, there’s a horse coming.” So I went out on the front porch of her little Victorian house on E Street in Virginia City, and coming up the road were a band of wild horses, just as if they owned the place.

CSM: Wow.

LJD: It was amazing, and you can see seven counties from there. I saw those horses and I thought, “If these horses can live here and be wild and free, then I can too, and I’m gonna move out here.” It just happened in that instant after seeing those horses. People were just walking up to those horses, tourists love ‘em. That’s why I eventually ended up where I am, which is about eight minutes down the road towards Reno in the Virginia Range, the smaller mountain range. I’m at about 6,700 feet, which is a pretty good elevation. The wild horses still walk through. In the old days about 30 to 40 would walk through my yard every day, and they would bring their babies and graze out in the front of the house. I loved having them, I still do, but we only get about a dozen or so at a time now. What got me into wild horse rescue was watching one beautiful bay stallion. They’re sort of reddish-brown and they have black manes and tails, and from the knees down they’re often black. This particular bay stallion was a very beautiful horse. He had two white socks on his back legs and he was so proud. 

CSM: Awww…

LJD: He would come through the yard and he’d look at me when the babies were born. He would stand and look at the house and look at me. I formed sort of a bond with him. There's a little road that goes to my house. It’s the only paved road up here in this area where I live. It goes down to the main road that goes down to Reno and up to Virginia City. It’s a switchback, miserable road, but there’s one long, straight stretch right down from where my ranch is, and the tourists have to blind their way up to these hairpin curves. When they hit that long, straight stretch and they go slightly up the mountain, they just slam on the gas pedal and rage. I’ve seen many of the wild horses killed there.

CSM: Oh no.

LJD: Yeah, many of them, maybe 10 or 12 by the morning I went down there and found that beautiful bay stallion dead.

CSM: Oh no, that’s heartbreaking.

LJD: I just knew these horses needed a place for themselves. They’re a danger to themselves and a danger to motorists. They need a sanctuary, their own place. I needed to do something, I could not stand by and watch this happen anymore, it’s too heartbreaking. So I went to my friend, who was my manager at the time, and she was also the manager of a big tourism bus company that took tourists to Northern and Southern California and all over Nevada. I said, “Caroline, I have to do something. I can’t do this, not one more day. I can’t watch this ever again, these horses need their own place.” She said, “I’ll tell you something right now, we need to form a foundation.” I told her I didn’t know a thing about starting a foundation, but she said, “Well, I do. We’re gonna get us a lawyer and we’re gonna have a foundation, and the only way you’re gonna save these horses is by tourism. The ranchers hate them because they eat their grasses. A herd of 200 horses will come through and eat all their grasses before their cattle even get there, so they’re hated here.” 

CSM: Oh wow. 

LJD: So I said to her, “That’s hardly their fault,” and she said, “The problem is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) doesn’t have the manpower to go and round up those horses in a timely manner.” So the ranchers not only hate the horses, they hate the Bureau of Land Management. Instead of seeing these horses as a tourism asset, which they absolutely are, they see them as a major nuisance. I’ve written to numerous agencies, including the BLM and the state of Wyoming and I said to them, “Why don’t we have a 500,000 or 750,000 acre block of the BLM set aside for the wild horses near Yellowstone Park? The horses can literally pay for themselves by being a place where people can always go and see wild horses in nature just the way they’ve always been.” I told them it would be a place where touristscan go there in a non-invasive way and go on safaris and horseback rides. There can be a Bureau of Land Management wild horse training center, wild horse museum, a gift store and a wild horse interpretive center. Some of these things I’ve done and almost got this done in Nevada years ago. We had an area where the BLM was actively working with us to get a big piece of land, and what this will do is allow the horses to earn their own way by people being able to come and see them in a non-invasive way and interact with them. It could be as much of a western heritage thing as you wanted to do, right there near to Yellowstone Park. The tourism would be ecotourism, which is the best kind of tourism of all because these are not the kinds of people throwing ice cream wrappers on the ground. These are people who are coming to see the natural wonders of this country.

CSM: Right, and they want to keep those natural wonders beautiful.

LJD: That’s exactly right. These are the kind of worldwide tourists that we want to come here. If they did the slightest feasibility study, they would find they would have to do this on BLM land. If a private contractor would try and do this there’s a lot of liability, and the liability expenses are enormous. The bottom line is, if the BLM were to allot a big, big piece of property for a sanctuary, and don’t tell me if you’re from Japan and you’re coming over to see Yellowstone, you wouldn’t spend an extra day or two to go close by to see the wild horses the way they really are in the west. It would be a seasonal thing from May to September because after that the snows come, so you’d only have these irritating ecotourists (said very sarcastically) for part of the year. It would also provide jobs for people in Wyoming, Montana or Idaho, or wherever the closest place you can get to Yellowstone Park would be. People could enjoy one of the most legendary and important icons of the great American west that we have. We would not have won the west without these horses, and these horses are the progeny of those horses that won us the west.

CSM: That’s amazing. Just think of horses having babies for generations, so you know the ones running around today are a part of all that. It’s in their genealogy. 

(At this point you could hear some dogs barking and Dalton explained that she has six dogs on her ranch. I assume they had something to add to the wild horse conversation, but since I’m not yet fluent in “doglish,” I can’t be completely sure.)

LJD: They’re so iconic. I’m telling you, on that flat space that I told you about earlier, that long stretch of straight road that’s by where I live, if you would ever see the tour buses, you wouldn’t believe it. When the horses are down on that stretch, there’s a big flat area that overlooks all of Reno, it’s quite a large area and it’s full of wild horses and they’ll go there to graze. When the horses are there, the tour buses will screech to a halt and people jump out of the tour buses. You’ll see 40 or 50 people out there taking pictures of the horses and it happens all the time. So I see it every day, I see that these horses are fascinating to people taking tours. Even though 88% of the voters in this country believe in the protection of our wild horses, and 88% of us don’t agree on anything besides breathing, most of us can agree on protecting these horses. It’s a very popular and passionate thing for a lot of people. I’ve decided that the only thing I could do is some sort of petition and I hope that 88% will sign the petition. 

CSM: I would think that they would.

LJD: I think they will. We’re working on the best way to do a petition, and how to get it out over the internet and out to every state and every person that we think will sign it. So then maybe the next time that I go and write a letter to President Trump, the BLM or to the states surrounding, we’ll get a little more traction than we have before. Like I said, we almost got it done about 20 years ago.

CSM: Where are the horses now? Are they putting them somewhere to protect them? 

LJD: Well, they’re rounding thousands and thousands of horses up and I haven’t been able to substantiate this through Snopes, but my friend who is a big Trump supporter, got a letter about a week or two ago saying that President Trump was going to assign 15,000 federally protected horses to slaughter. I haven’t been able to substantiate that through Snopes. What happens is the BLM is permitted to sell horses to private people, and the private people have to sign something that says they are not going to send the horses to slaughter. Well, after a year or so they sell these horses to someone else and thousands of horses end up slaughtered. 

CSM: I can’t believe anyone would support that if it’s true.

LJD: Well, I hope it isn’t true, but the horses need to be remembered. I tell a story. I live up by the old mining town of Virginia City and back when the gold rush was happening, they were digging for gold up here and they were getting huge deposits of gold, but they had the most awful nuisance. They were digging out this disgusting gray mud and there were piles of it. Virginia City was quite a big city then and they had huge piles of this slagging gray mess, which they didn’t really know what to do with. There were piles of it all over Virginia City, and then one day someone discovered that it was silver ore. It was the biggest silver strike in the history of this country and I believe the world. So the bottom line is, that ugly gray mud was considered a problem, a challenge, but when it became an asset, it really became an asset. I think these horses are like that silver sludge, I think they are an asset to tourism for people all over the world and I think they’re beautiful. 

CSM: I think the selling point for your petition and anything else going forward is to make sure that story gets told. The analogy is there and it makes so much sense.

LJD: I think this is a very sensible plan. The one thing that it will help with is in the areas where the cattlemen and the developers in coal, gas, rare minerals and other minerals, do not want the horses in the way when they’re doing their discovery, when they’re trying to find what they’re looking for, because if the horses are in the way and they get hurt, people go nuts. It becomes a big problem, so they just want out of it. The cattlemen, who have bought the grass, and I really have some feelings about this, I understand why they feel the way they do. They’ve paid for this grass to the Bureau of Land Management and 200 horses have come through before you can get your cows out there to eat, and the grass is all gone. You bring your cattle out and there’s nothing.

CSM: It would be a win for everyone. To get the horses on their own big parcel of land where they can do horse things like they’re used to, the cattle people are happy and the mining people or geologists or whatever, they’re happy. Plus, as you said, the tourists would be very, very happy. I’d love to see them, I’ve never seen a wild horse in my life.

LJD: I’ll tell you what, if you ever do, you won’t forget it.

CSM: I know I won’t. I would love to go to a sanctuary for horses. 

LJD: Imagine you could take a trail ride, a nature walk or a jeep safari, or you could go to the wild horse museum and you could go into the wild horse interpretive center.

CSM: It would be a bucket list item for me to go visit there and I’m across the country, but like you said, people across the world would come to see that.

LJD: We know that they would, they already come. You can’t go to Yellowstone Park in the summer anymore because there are so many tourists, a lot of them from Asia. The tourists are five and six people across on these walkways and stairs made of wood where you can access some of the features of the park, but you don’t wanna get too close, and you can’t get too close because it’s dangerous. There are times in the summer when the traffic on the roads in the park is going 15 to 20 miles an hour. Between the tourists looking at the animals or trying to find their way to the next place, and buffalo are on the road and will walk in front of you at buffalo speed, the park in the summer is pretty darned crowded. I think the park could use some relief with a sanctuary and interpretive center for wild horses and burros and maybe even some buffalo. You know, a buffalo commons in that area might be really wonderful. We’re going to have to use birth control and people will always say, “That’ll upset the natural order,” and I say, “If we wanna have any left, we better do something.” Birth control is now reversible. They have a thing called PZP (Porcine Zona Pellucida) which you can use for five years or so, then not use it and that mare can then have a baby. So you can control the size of the herd because horses are just like rabbits, the way they reproduce, it’s unbelievable every year. We need to do something and the advocates always complain to me. They say, “What you're promoting is a terrible thing,” and I say, “I didn’t like it very much when I had to use birth control, but I would have 13 kids by now!” Sometimes you just have to find that common ground, which leads me to my latest song which is called “Common Ground.” I’m just finishing up a song that’s about this incredible civil war that we’re having in this country right now; a clash between the red and the blue.

CSM: It’s so crazy.

LJD: It’s so deep.

CSM: It’s deep and it’s getting old for a lot of people. Can we please just stop? 

LJD: Right, and it’s people on both sides. We’re all sick of this and the bottom line is we need to remember how to talk to each other and listen to each other respectfully. There are things that we will never, ever agree on, that goes without saying. Because of our spiritual beliefs quite often, we can’t agree on certain things and we never will, and it’s okay.

CSM: There’s a lot that we do have in common though.

LJD: There’s more, we have more in common. The music that I’m writing now, one of the main themes of it is “divided we fall.” While we are fighting with each other, the very wealthiest of the wealthy are controlling the media to keep all of that fighting happening. Why? So the biggest grift known to the world can happen. This is so dangerous it’s not even surprising. I always say that I love people. I love almost everyone and there are very few people I dislike, and I feel like this is a human family. Everyone should be given the room to do whatever they want to do if it isn’t hurting anyone else. In all my songs now, the message is “divided we fall.” We’ve gotta come together and that’s what my newest song is about. “Common Ground” is about coming together and hearing each other. We don’t all have to agree. My sister and I are about as far apart politically as two people can ever be, and we were talking one day and she said, “Maybe we shouldn’t even talk about things like this,” and I said, “Oh no, we need to hear each other, even though there are things we’ll never agree on. We don’t have to agree on everything, we just have to love each other.”

CSM: Exactly.

LJD: People need to have Thanksgiving with their families. Just because Uncle Bud believes this and Grandpa Roy believes that and nobody wants it at the dinner table, then don’t talk about it at the dinner table. Have dinner together and remember how much you love each other and how much you always have. A lot of this is promoted by the very wealthiest of the wealthy who are controlling the media, and you know you can’t believe a thing you see on either side of the news. There really is an inordinate amount of fake news.

CSM: I hate to say it because you wanna be informed, but I think the best thing we can do sometimes is just tune it out and get on with whatever it is we have going on in our own lives. If you get too involved in whatever the news is trying to throw at you, you’ll start to lose your way. I think that’s where the division really starts. I like that you’ve made a song about this.

LJD: I have about four. I’m just about to finish a song called “We’ve Got to Build Bridges Not Walls.” I wrote a song called “The Devil By a Different Name” talking about the fact that we all try to make people of other faiths or other nationalities the enemy. That’s just wrong. That’s so against the teachings of our greatest teachers. For instance, love God, love yourself, love your neighbor, how much simpler can you get than that?

CSM: Not much. In the human condition, when you break it all down, we’re all born the same way, we’ll all go out the same way and end up wherever you believe, but we have a lot more similarities than we do differences.

LJD: I think everybody knows that and that’s people on both sides. There are some people so filled with hate that they just shrivel into themselves, but what can you do?

CSM: I think we’re hopeless with them.

LJD: But most people don’t feel that way, we don’t wanna not have Uncle Bud at Thanksgiving dinner, we don’t wanna exclude him. We may not wanna talk about politics while we’re having our turkey, but we still want him there.

CSM: Maybe Uncle Bud likes football. Turn football on and maybe we can talk to him about that.

LJD: You know, I think that if you talked to 90% of the people, they’d wish that this chasm between red and blue would go away. I think that a lot of us, even if we’re not Christians, I think the advice to love God with all your heart, mind and spirit, love yourself, love your neighbor as yourself, that’s the whole of the law and all the other laws of life are based upon it. You can’t get much simpler than that. It’s not easy, it’s not easy at all. I wrote a song recently called “Everybody Loves to Hate,” and I even fight it myself. I'll be getting all worked up about something and then I think, “You know, this is a waste of time.” I never forget a line from a Bob Dylan song (“The Gates of Eden”) that really touched me, it said, “The kingdoms of experience, in the precious winds they rot, while paupers change possessions, each one wishing for what the other has got, and the princess and the prince discuss what’s real and what is not.” I think about those “kingdoms of experience” a lot. On the “precious winds” we can see beautiful wild horses walking. We can see our dogs playing with each other. Or Kris Kristofferson, “Lord help me, Jesus, I’ve wasted it, so help me Jesus, I know what I am,” from his song “Why Me.,” what a sentiment. “Lord help me, Jesus, I’ve wasted it,” and we do. What great words.

CSM: We all do and we should not. I’m so glad I talked with you because I feel like everybody knows who Lacy J. Dalton is, everybody knows her music and we all want to celebrate that you’re going to be 80, which I’m still not really sure I believe you, but okay, you’re 80, but today I learned so much more about you. As for me, mentally, I still feel like I’m eight, so I’m not even sure I’m really the age I am.

LJD: Isn’t it weird?

CSM: It is weird. I’m still that little kid that wants to be curious and ask questions and maybe trips over things and breaks them when I shouldn’t. I feel like that’s where I am, but they can give me a number if they want to, even though mentally, I’m still eight.

LJD: I think the spirit inside all of us is what animates everything in an eternal sphere. No matter how old we are, we’re all part of that all the time. I think it’s how we can go through life knowing that we’re gonna die and not just lose our minds about it.

CSM: Right, because if we just sat there and thought about that all day long, nothing’s gonna get done. Those horses will be getting hit by trucks and everything forever if we do that, so definitely don’t think about it too much. We’ve gotta save those horses.

LJD: We can think about how to fix things. You know, ask any little kid ever what they wanna do when they grow up, some will say, “I wanna be a cowboy, I wanna lead a parade, I wanna whatever,” but most of them will say, “I wanna help people.” 

CSM: Hopefully as they grow older they will help people. They can even help people when they’re little. Little kids love to help. Even if all they do is set up a lemonade stand and somebody that’s been walking in the heat is able to get a quick drink from their stand, they’ve done something good.

LJD: Little kids wanna help and I think big kids wanna help too. If they don’t, they need to just go over some edge and become bitter, and hate is such an addictive thing. If you start hatin’ things, boy, you can run with that for a long time, but what happens to you? Who do you become?

CSM: You become cynical and lonely.

LJD: And who wants to hang with someone that’s just talkin’ hate?

CSM: Definitely not me. If I want that I know where to find it, usually just by watching TV, but I don’t want to hang out with someone that’s constantly complaining and hating everything. I wanna have a little bit of peace and fun in my life.

LJD: I think people just want to be peaceful enough to enjoy their families, the things that they have and the things that they wanna do. You know, I’m not right or left. I always say, “Your political party is not your football team, so don’t think of it that way. A lot of the politicians are the most crooked people in the world and you can’t believe what they’re saying a lot of the time. My song “Common Ground” says, “Go fire your politicians boys and find some common ground.”

CSM: I love that.

LJD: I’ll be singing that probably for the second or third time in front of a live audience at 3rd & Lindsley on October 15th. The birthday party will benefit the Let ‘em Run Foundation which is  dedicated to the preservation, recovery and sanctuary of America’s wild horses.

CSM: Yes it will, and I love your “Not Dead Yet” birthday party slogan. That’s so much fun.

LJD: Come and get your “Not Dead Yet” t-shirt. We’re gonna have such a good time. Terri Gibbs will be there, Makenzie Phipps, Michelle Wright, Dave Frizzell who I always call my cousin, Jimmy Fortune and so many others. There’s supposed to be some mystery guests and I don’t know who they will be. It’s really very affordable and all of the VIP tables are sold, but there are still some seats available, and it won’t cost you an arm, a leg and a foot to get in. Everybody loves that venue.

CSM: But will there be cake?

LJD: According to my publicist, there will be cake. Cake is in the mix. If you hate country music and you hate horses and you hate 3rd & Lindsley, come anyway, we have cake!

CSM: I don’t know too many people that don’t like cake, so there’s the “Common Ground” right there, it’s the cake.

LJD: I haven’t had cake in a while.

CSM: I haven’t either, but I’m always willing to if it’s available.

TO PURCHASE TICKETS FOR LACY J. DALTON’S “NOT DEAD YET” 80TH BIRTHDAY SHOW, CLICK HERE.

LJD: I am too. What a nice interview Patti. I really appreciate it. Is there anything we didn’t cover?

CSM: I think you covered more than I could have ever dreamed. People know your music and we covered the new stuff and I think it’s so important that we spent so much time on the wild horses. I feel like the foundation is super important, and now I feel like I know so much about it that I can talk about it with some sense of intelligence. I want to tell everybody because I think it’s one of the most crucial things I’ve ever heard.

LJD: There are some very big organizations doing some very important work, but I don’t think anybody’s doing just this.

CSM: No, this is so unique.

LJD: As I’ve said, we started it about 20 or 25 years ago and we almost got it done in Nevada. We got shot down a couple of times, but we’re just starting to put it together again. We’re putting together the petition. My manager died and she was taking care of the Let ‘em Run website. Nobody’s taking care of that right now because we couldn’t get into her computer, so the website isn’t the greatest place to go at the moment. We are rebuilding it, but we’re gonna start out with this petition and I think once we’ve got the petition and we learn the best way to get it spread out to the most people possible, that’ll be a good start.

CSM: When that all gets started, make sure you get a press release out about it. Then we can all jump in and help spread the word.

LJD: I really appreciate that Patti. I’ll be relying on my publicist a lot to get the word out and also the country music artists who will sign the petition. I know Jimmy Fortune will sign it, I’m sure Terri Gibbs will, Makenzie Phipps loves animals and Dave Frizzell has been out here doing stuff for the wild horses for a while, so has Jimmy Fortune. I’d bet Michelle Wright will sign it and there are so many folks I’ve worked with through the years that I think will. The people who were on top in the 80s are people I get along with really well, so I’m hopeful.

CSM: Well thank you, it’s been such a joy speaking with you today and happy birthday!

LJD: It’s been wonderful. Thank you so much. 

If you made it through to the end, you’re a rock star and I can’t thank you enough. Look for updates on Lacy J. Dalton’s new music and the Let ‘em Run Foundation on her website and social media sites. Give her a holler and let her know Center Stage Magazine sent you!