His voice has inspired a following, drawn journalists from around the world and built the large indoor arena behind him, but the horses aren't swayed today by Dusty's most famous resident.
Dusty, Wash., population 11, including dogs, is home to the leader of the high-energy country band Wylie and the Wild West. He is a regular at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, has sung at the Lincoln and Kennedy centers, and is heard by more than 2 million listeners nationwide on XM Satellite Radio Channel 13, Willie's Place. In Seattle, hipsters pack the city's Tractor Tavern when his band comes to town.

"It dumbfounds me to be able to go to downtown Seattle and fill up a club," Gustafson, 45, says of his appeal to the "non-cowboy hat audience." "We're just different enough. There's something about our music that takes them out of the city for awhile."

Out of the city is where he prefers to be, with his wife, Kimberley, running Cross Three Ranch, where the couple train quarter horses, 19 miles west of Colfax. That Gustafson is a true cowboy adds to his mystique with fans and journalists who have come from as far as China. He's a cutting enthusiast who was Western National Finals Champion for the 2005 National Cutting Horse Association. The big belt buckles he wears on stage were earned, not bought.

"I hate leaving this life," he says about the 80-days-a-year tours. "I live to ride horses now. I would feel I was missing something if I couldn't sing too. There's really nothing like putting a smile on someone's face .... taking them to a place they haven't been before with your music."

Gustafson sloshes through the mud into the indoor riding arena he dubs the "Yahoo Dome."

When Yahoo.com went public in 1996, it paid Gustafson about $600 to create its distinctive "Ya-hoo-ooo!" yodel for a regional advertising campaign. He was watching the Super Bowl in 1998 when he heard his yodel in a national advertisement. Because the company did not pay for national use of his work he hired a lawyer and filed a $5 million lawsuit. In 2002 the groups settled over an undisclosed figure.

"That's what built us this big sandbox," he says, saddling one of the ranch's 20 cow horses in training.

It also bought "a few nice horses and hay to feed them," he adds. "We share it with the community. It's a little blessing we try to share with everybody."

Gustafson was born in Conrad, Mont., the youngest of five children. He learned to yodel from his father, he says, who learned to yodel from Austrians on the ski team at what is now Montana State University.

"Dad would yodel whenever he was happy and I guess it was contagious."

He started recording his music in high school on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. After two years of college he quit to tour full time. He was playing in a rock band at a Spokane bar when he met his wife in the 1980s.

"I'm not embarrassed to say I was in a rock band," he says. "I grew up with rock 'n' roll. It's part of our music now, at least the spirit. ... That was the music my wife was going to listen to. She wasn't going to listen to a yodeler."

His love for things outside the mainstream led him back to roots music and yodeling.

"He sings what he is. He's a Montana boy and he sings that country music good," says Tommy Tucker, a disc jockey at KRLC-AM 1350 in Lewiston. Tucker started playing Gustafson's music about five years ago on his Friday morning Western Heritage music show.

"He's probably one of the top groups in the country and it's starting to show. They're starting to get a lot of awards."

In 2006 the band won Best Western Swing Album for "Live! at the Tractor" from the Western Music Association. In 2005 the Academy of Western Artists named them Group of the Year.

The band's sound has been described as edgy country and western swing. Their newest and 12th album, "Bucking Horse Moon," was produced by John Carter Cash. Songs include "Sierry Peaks," one of the first songs Gustafson learned from his father, about two drunk cowboys who tie up the devil. His father learned it as a teen hired hand from a record on a wind-up gramophone.

"I'm trying to preserve something in a sense, traditional music and a traditional way of life," he says.

Gustafson and his wife lived in Los Angeles for eight years while he built his music career. They moved to Dusty, where his wife was raised, in 1995. He says when it came to choosing between a load of money and living where you are inspired, he chose to be inspired.

When asked if he would ever leave ranching, he responds with a flat, "No."

His wife maintains his Web site, www.wylieww.com, where they sell autographed albums, T-shirts and magnets. An agency places the band's music in commercials, cable TV and films like "Transamerica." He says he gets about 10 music-related e-mails from fans a day.

"I try to answer all of them. I don't know how much longer I can do that."

The Internet has made it easier to survive as a musician who plays and lives outside the mainstream, he says.

After his October performance on "A Prairie Home Companion" broadcast nationally from Pullman, he says they got 500 orders for his music. Exposure on XM radio has led to numerous orders from the East Coast.

"Music has never gotten me rich," says Gustafson, "but I've done enough with it to enjoy life, and to do it professionally, and record, and continue a career where it's really easy to be ignored. I chose early on to play music I love, versus what other people would love. That made a difference."

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Bauer may be contacted at jkbauer@lmtribune.com or (208) 743-9600, ext. 263