The Coulee City Rodeo Queen

a teaser about my next single!

Hi friends!

I’ve been moving houses and travelling in Australia (unrelated. I have not moved to Australia) this last month so have been super busy, but NOT BUSY ENOUGH to forget that I have a new single coming out in less than a month!

‘Coulee City Rodeo Queen’ is the title of the next single, you heard it here first!

When I started this newsletter I shared demos of the songs which would end up on my geology album, and I would write a lot about what the songs were about and the geological things which inspired them. I wanted to share my original writings/ramblings on Coulee here for you. Only the diehard fans (see: original 30 subscribers to this newsletter) will remember this 😤. I was going through a phase where I didn’t use capital letters in my newsletters which I thought was very casual and cool but was also a nightmare with Apple autocorrect.

Anyway.

Here’s a recap on the Missoula Floods and Coulee City…

you’re probably thinking ‘what is this song even about? a cowgirl? a flood? a rodeo?’ — and you would be right. i’m gonna let you in on how i came up with the premise for this song.

but first… what are the missoula floods?

during the last ice age, a big ice sheet covered all of canada and grabbed hold of the northern states of america with icy fingers. ‘lobes’ of the ice sheet jutted out, and as the ice melted during warmer times, they acted like dams. these dams stopped the meltwater running down into rivers, instead creating great lakes in mountain valleys. glacial lake missoula was one of these, and it was massive.

here’s a video of a visualisation of what glacial lake missoula probably looked like (made by… a wine company?). as more and more water melted, the strength of it put pressure against the ice dam. at one point there was enough water to fill both lake eerie and lake ontario together, and it reached depths of 4520 feet.

to give you an idea of scale, here’s a very cool piece of evidence for the lake — giant ripple marks. rivers normally create ripples on their beds as they travel. well, here were the size of lake missoula’s ripple marks as it emptied:

LOOK AT HOW BIG THOSE RIPPLES ARE! i’m salivating. anyway, at some point, the ice dam failed. crack, crack, boom. the water started to ferociously flow out west, scouring the land it travelled over. it took a few days for all the water to reach the pacific, its waves moving at around 50mph, with the power of 60 amazonian rivers combined. it was a flood on a biblical scale, and there’s even oral histories which suggest humans witnessed this flood.

it’s been suggested that several floods happened over a period of time, and these carved out places such as the ‘channeled scablands,’ a sheer valley which looks very barren and cool:

the word ‘coulee’ means deep ravine which has been formed by running water, and in the scablands there’s a town called ‘coulee city.’ that’s where i started my research for this missoula floods song.

apparently, there’s not much going on in coulee city, but this caught my eye:

looks like coulee city has a little rodeo community and a paddock to barrel race on. as i dug deeper, i came across a young woman who was dubbed this year’s ‘coulee city rodeo queen.’ and i thought, that’s a song title if i ever heard one.

but how does a rodeo queen and a gigantic ice age flood work together in a song? with most of my songs, i just start writing stuff down and seeing what happens.

soon there emerged a weird, almost myth-like story. a cowgirl stands on a hill, looking eastwards as the sun rises. the morning rays splinter and glisten over a glacier nestled between mountain peaks. soon, she hears a rumble, and sees the glacier sink — it’s time, she thinks, readying herself.

this cowgirl doesn’t ride horses, she rides waves, and big ones at that. her reins can wrestle the largest bodies of water, and she can ride them off into the western sunset as they head to the ocean.

slowly it seems, water starts to pool around distant mountains, creeping over the landscape. it’s an illusion though — the flood is a wild beast racing towards her, turning black with mud, plucking boulders from the bedrock like they’re pieces of candy to chew on. every minute that passes, the mass gets closer, until the rumble is raw in her ears. and then it hits.

she runs up the mountainside so that she’s at a higher elevation, then jumps down as the water booms. she sits on top of the wave, kicking her spurs into foam and tightening her reins round the ripples. the sun passes overhead and she settles in to the jolt of a ride, rolling over plains and carving plungepools into the ground. she rides until the sky goes dark and the inky blue of the pacific meets them.

i guess this song ended up being about using the ‘whatthefuckness’ of life to your advantage. it’s about rolling with it, instead of rolling under it. not that i’m very good at taking my own advice, but it’s about embracing the chaos and using its power to propel yourself ahead. it’s about being the mythical coulee city rodeo queen.

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Pre-save Coulee City Rodeo Queen on Spotify:

Check out some ways you can support me & my music:

• buying a ‘Gneiss Guy’ tote bag on my Bandcamp

• listening to my music on Spotify and adding it to your playlists

• forwarding this newsletter to a friend!

Til next time! Be good,

Olivia 🌈✨🏔🎶