Wyoming Teenagers Write Song That Is Climbing The Charts

Each year I have the privilege to host Wyoming's Chugwater Chili Cook-off. Just a few years ago I introduced a trio of young ladies from Buffalo Wyoming who called themselves Prairie Wildfire.

They were just teenagers at the time. Young high school girls. But wow, could they sing. Their charming stage presents brought loud applause and cheers from the audience and calls for more when they had finished their last song. They were so good I bought their CD and they have been invited back to Chugwater every year since.

The girls have just begun college. But they are still singing, and one of their first songs is climbing the charts.

Prairie Wildfire’s latest single — the tune that debuted at No. 12 and jumped to No. 8 on the internet radio station Bluegrass Jamboree — was written by a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old inside a basement blanket fort. (Buffalo Bulletin).

You can hear their song at the bottom of this story.

Their local paper in Buffalo, Wyoming, explains that Sage Palser and Tessa Taylor, wrote “West Virginia Train” out of boredom. They were just hanging out and decided to write a song.

“Sage looked at me and said, ‘Well, it’s a bluegrass song, so it’s gotta be depressing, and it’s got to be about somebody leaving somebody else,’” Taylor said, with a laugh. “From there, I think we just started playing chords, and all of a sudden, there was a song there.” (Buffalo Bulletin).

The trio has just finished recording a new CD in Nashville, Tennessee’s Slawdawg Studios, and signed a one-single contract with the label Copper Mountain Records. That's when “West Virginia Train” was played on David Pugh’s Mountain Bluegrass show on Bluegrass Jamboree as well as other bluegrass shows on the radio.

“It’s so crazy now to hear this cut version of it getting played all across the country on Bluegrass Jamboree when I still remember the day we wrote it, when we were little kids,” Taylor said. 

You can read more about their journey in a story filed by their local newspaper, The Buffalo Bulletin.