Ian Munsick’s Concerts Surprise with Pop Girl Covers — but He Stays Focused on Reviving Western in Country (Exclusive)

Listen to Ian Munsick talk about his musical mission, and you know this is one serious dude: He’s absolutely single-minded in his pursuit to put “Western” back in a genre that once was commonly known as “country Western.”

“I always try to be as original as I can,” says the 32-year-old Wyoming native. “Especially in country music, we have a bad habit of trying to do what’s trending right now, and I’ve never really been interested in that.”

That originality also explains why, when you go see Munsick on tour now, you are going to get something besides his unique high-mountain sound. And absolutely nothing can prepare you for it.  

As improbable as it may seem, there he is — in an eight-minute virtuoso performance — impeccably staging his own sing-off: Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” versus Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” versus Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me,” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” versus Camila Cabello’s “Havana.” The dance moves alone are worth the price of admission.

Come on, a female pop superstar medley?

“We always like to keep ’em on their toes!” Munsick says with a hearty laugh.

So, yes, this is one serious dude. But just as much, he’s one seriously fun dude.

Now out with his third album, Eagle Feather, Munsick is riding high on the momentum he’s been growing from the grassroots. By the thousands now, his crowds are flocking night after night to one of the most entertaining live shows in country music today.

Munsick has a simple philosophy as a performer: “There’re times to be real. There’re times to hit your heart. But at the end of the day, we’re all here to have a good time for the next 90 minutes. Country music is supposed to be about having a good time.”

Pulling it off with the help of an all-girl pop medley can only happen thanks to something else about Munsick that’s unique: a tenor voice with a high-altitude range that allows him to hit, as he says, “those girl notes.” (It also makes notable appearances in his wildly Western coyote howls.)

“For better or worse,” he says, God didn’t give him a “tough” country male voice, but no matter: “I feel like it’s more important to just do what you do and to be unapologetically you.”

Of course, the originality also pervades his own self-written songs, a musical landscape as vast and untamed as his native state. Though his ear-catching melodies still speak the country language, they’re carrying along lyrics that sing about mountains and prairies, horses, ranches and rodeos, and the free spirit that roams the West.

“You can’t deny that it’s country,” Munsick says of his music, “but it has the Western influence.”

All of it, he insists, simply springs from what made him. Just like Gene Autry, Munsick really did grow up a singing cowboy. The youngest of three sons of a hard-working rancher and his wife, he was performing in his family’s Western band by the time he was 10 years old. He says that’s where he first learned the difference between singing and entertaining.

“My dad is a really good entertainer, and my two older brothers learned that from him,” Munsick explains. “And then me being the youngest, I had three people on stage that I watched. Man, I was just picking up those tricks.”

Music has remained an avocation for the rest of Munsick’s family, but at an early age, he realized he was made for performing, if only for one miraculous reason: The stutter that dogged him in his daily life simply disappeared onstage.

“It was the only time that I was fluent,” says Munsick, who still navigates the stutter in conversation. “I didn’t know if it was God or what, but it just felt like I’m supposed to be up here because I can communicate what I want to say. And just the older I’ve gotten, the more I realize that it is God, and that that is where he wants me to be.”

After studying music at Nashville’s Belmont University, Munsick made the city his permanent home, earning a living as a bass player and harmony singer for local bands while waiting for his own break. It arrived in 2017 with a phone call from a former Belmont classmate named Caroline Rudolph. Primed for a career in music management, she knew she heard something special in Munsick when she ran across a YouTube video he’d posted three years earlier and, he admits, “just kind of forgot about.”

The song, “Horses Are Faster,” brims with a Western vibe, and in hindsight it clearly foretells Munsick’s future. But when Rudolph pitched herself to manage his career — based on the promise of that song — both knew they were taking a wild leap of faith.

“Horses Are Faster,” Ian Munsick

“She’s a year younger than I am, so me going with a manager who didn’t really have any experience other than being very hungry and having a really good ear,” Munsick says, “that was a bold move for each of us. But she has no fear, and that’s exactly the kind of attitude you have to have in the music industry.”

As the two began to work together, Munsick discovered Rudolph seemed to have more faith in his gifts than even he did. “She’s the one,” he says, “who really gave me the confidence to pursue my own artistry.”

Over the coming months, their relationship turned romantic, though the couple kept it a secret for fear neither would be taken seriously as professionals. In late 2019, they finally went public when it became impossible to hide: Caroline was several months’ pregnant. Their son, Crawford, was born in February 2020, and they married that same year.

Munsick says now that hiding “was probably a stupid idea,” especially considering the flurry of career advances — including record and publishing deals — that occurred soon after their coming-out.

“All these good things happened just like that,” he marvels. “I can truly believe that it’s a God thing.”

Now they’re awaiting the birth of their second child, a girl, due in early October.

“We had been trying, and it just wasn’t happening,” he confides. “And then right when we were about to give up, that’s when it happened, which is usually how it happens. I’m just so happy to be able to experience both halves of being a dad, because I know that being girl dad is gonna be much different than being a boy dad.”

Already, he says, parenting his son has had a profound impact on his career.

“Music had always been the most important thing in my life,” he says, “but when we had Crawford, he was now the most important. I just feel very, very blessed that I get to provide for my loved ones through music. But I never want my music to run my life. I want it to fuel my life.”

Family, in turn, has been fueling his music. Caroline, who remains his manager, and Crawford each have a prominently presence on two of the 20 tracks of Eagle Feather that Munsick considers among his favorites. “Caroline” is a tender ballad of gratitude to God for the gift of his wife: “He made the sun in one day / All the stars in just one night / But God took his time on Caroline.”

The song touches Munsick so deeply, he finds it hard enough to listen to, let alone to sing: “I always get emotional. It’s just a beautiful song, and the album would have a big hole without it.”

“The Gate,” another ballad, holds down the final spot on the album, and it’s a tribute to his father’s ranching wisdom and the legacy that Munsick is passing on to his son. The track features the speaking voices of both his dad and Crawford, now 5.

“That’s the one that I think, 20 years from now, I’ll look back on and be even more proud of it,” Munsick says.

Other standout tracks include the Latin-infused “God Bless the West,” featuring Cleto Cardero, lead singer of Flatland Cavalry, which has been supporting Munsick’s tour; “Firewater,” a classic-country story song; and “Feather in My Hat,” a bluesy ballad that features another hat aficionado, Lainey Wilson. (She and Munsick have been friends since both were Nashville unknowns, and he toured with her last year.)

“Feather in My Hat,” Ian Munsick and Lainey Wilson

The feather theme continues in the title track, a powerful expression of love that relies on natural metaphors and a mystical melody. It was inspired by the golden eagle feather presented to the artist last year when he was inducted into the Crow nation during his sold-out show at Colorado’s famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Munsick grew up near the Crow reservation and maintains a strong friendship with many of its members through their shared love of ranching. His ties run so deep that he appeared in and co-produced (with Caroline) a 2024 documentary, White Buffalo; Voices of the West, that celebrates native Americans’ cowboy culture.

Munsick now proudly claims enormous appeal in Western states. This July, for the first time, he’s headlining before the tens of thousands who gather for Wyoming’s Cheyenne Frontier Days — the first native of the state to take the top spot. His regional popularity has earned him a place in the 10-day rodeo and festival among such superstar acts as Luke Bryan, Brooks & Dunn and Cody Johnson.

What those artists have that Munsick still can’t claim is radio play, and he doesn’t hide his disappointment about it.

“That was always the expectation, to have a hit on the radio,” he says. Yet he remains patient and self-assured: “We’ve always known that it’s more important to be original, which doesn’t always go hand in hand with radio. It’s more important to have people that know who I am than, oh, he’s that guy that has that one song.”

Munsick takes considerable inspiration from Johnson, who methodically built his immense CoJo nation for a decade before he finally broke through on the airwaves. The two have become fast friends; the Texan has invited Munsick out on tour over the past couple of years, and he’ll share the bill with Johnson again on dates later this year. They also duetted on “Long Live Cowgirls,” a crowd favorite that appears on Munsick’s last album, White Buffalo, and Johnson talked Munsick out of a song he wrote about his brother, “Leather,” which became the title track of Johnson’s CMA album of the year.

Even without radio, Munsick has achieved a level of success that allows him to enjoy the fruits. He and his wife have a Tennessee country home in the woods that lets them escape Nashville’s hustle and bustle, and they recently purchased a 160-acre ranch near where he grew up in Wyoming.

“It’s prairie grass — very, very low maintenance,” he explains. “So we can just lock it and leave it and not really have to worry about it, which is exactly what we wanted.”

He regrets they don’t visit there as often as they’d like; he admits he often finds himself pining for those wide-open spaces. But Wyoming is a hard place to get to, and his priorities lie elsewhere. While he’s reliably filling arenas in the Rocky Mountain region, the dream is bigger: He wants to pack the big houses coast to coast.

“I know there’s a lot of artists out there that would love to be where I’m at,” says Munsick, “so I always try to stay grateful. But I’m never satisfied with where I’m at. I’m hungry. I’m an ambitious guy, and I love to work on what my dream is.”

For this singing cowboy, there’s just one trail to get there. No shortcuts. And certainly no changing horses. It’s his brand of music — or nothing.

“If you told me, hey, you can headline arenas tomorrow, coast to coast, but you’re gonna have to be playing music that you might not feel is you, I would say no,” he admits. “I would just keep on doing it the hard way.”