song: Mustang 
(© 2024 Gudrich/Gudrich)

It all started when we saw a bunch of photographs that Nikki Sixx had taken at a local rodeo. We love that guy but we're not ones to not criticize their heroes and we were pissed off - a dude who values freedom so much buying into the cowboy romance of the rodeo industry which mistreats animals with no regard for their welfare for the sake of entertainment. We wanted to write a song that would help men like Nikki forge an emotional bond to wild horses and understand their need for freedom. That's why we wrote "Mustang" in first person, straight from the horse's mouth. We reached out to some Mustang sanctuaries and found Wild Heart Sanctuary and their lead stallion Kokopelli (pictured below) - we couldn't believe it: Kokopelli's story was exactly the story we had written!! So he became our narrator and Durango the Untamable, another stallion at Wild Heart, became our cover boy. We are honored to be collaborating with such an amazing place of activism and healing! We are also honored to have the permission of the Cheyenne (through Chief Dull Knife College, Montana) to use the Cheyenne language recording of Sweet Medicine's prophecy of the coming of the horse. Both America's wild horses and her indigenous people have suffered greatly and have been cheated out of their land and their freedom. We want to inspire people to question the romanticising narrative of the the Wild West cowboy driving huge herds of cattle as the epitome of the American Dream when in fact they are crowding out the rightful heirs of "the land  of the free"...