Ned LeDoux Crosses Over From Country Music Stage To Western Movie Stardom

On stage with Garth Brooks in 2021, it was a high-pressure moment for Wyoming country music star Ned LeDoux. The Kaycee resident was there to sing a duet in honor of his father Chris, who’d sung the same song with Brooks 25 years ago. 

That left the cowboy standing between two larger than life figures.

But no one could tell there was any pressure when LeDoux walked out on the stage in front of 25,000 people. He just proceeded to do what came naturally. He leaned back and smiled, and his audience cheered and smiled right back.

Unbeknownst to LeDoux and all his fans, that audience of cheering fans included one Raen LeVell, a new Wyoming filmmaker from the Cody area, who decided right then and there he was going to cast the charming cowboy in any Western film he got to do.

LeVell is about to premiere one of two films he cast with LeDoux in it. It’s a movie called “Outriding the Devil,” which will be coming out Tuesday at the Virgin Hotel in Vegas during the National Finals Rodeo.

The movie will retell the remarkable comeback story of world champion barrel racer and Texas Hall of Famer Angela Ganter, while weaving in rodeo history and other legends, told by figures like “Yellowstone” star Mo Brings Plenty as well as contemporary rodeo celebrities like eight-time PRCA world champion Stetson Wright and Meeteetse bullfighter Dusty Tuckness.

Diagnosed with cancer just after her husband died, Ganter was told in 2010, she had little to no chance to live.

But Ganter refused to take that diagnosis to heart. And she not only fought her way back from death’s door, but the barrel racer also fought her way back to the winner’s circle in Calgary, Canada. 

She went on to win many more barrel races since then. Her participation has also included Cheyenne Frontier Days.

LeDoux plays a young Ganter’s uncle in the movie opposite Lily Wright, who is Stetson Wright’s sister.

Chancey Williams is also in the cast, playing an 1800s sheriff. Other Wyoming figures who will appear in the docudrama include former Gov. Matt Mead and a bareback rider from Buffalo named Cole Reiner.

“Yellowstone” star Forrie Smith will narrate the film.

Smith told Cowboy State Daily he “dropped a zero” off his usual rates, so the production could afford him, because he felt the project was right up his alley, and something he really wanted to be part of.

“I liked the grit and the heart of it,” he said. “Just not falling into the rot society has made with cancer and other things."

Lucky Strike From Heaven

LeVell’s docudrama almost didn’t happen at all. The director was passing through Pecos, Texas on his way to Fort Worth to work with the cast of a different movie project that includes “Yellowstone” star Eric Nelson.

In Pecos, he decided he’d driven as much as he could for one day, so he decided to spend the night there. 

“The Texas Rodeo Hall of Fame is there,” he said. “So, I was like, OK, I have to visit that the next day before I leave.”

But the next morning, things had come up with his project, things that made him feel he needed to leave right away, without delay. 

“But, as I was driving out of town, I saw it again, and I was like, OK, well, I’m going to stop anyway.”

He figured he could just poke his head in the door for five to 10 minutes and get a little sense of the museum and what was there. But once in, the exhibits were all in a horseshoe-like design that didn’t allow an easy exit.

“I had to go the whole way in,” he said. “Otherwise, it would have looked extremely rude.”

That turned out to be a good thing though.

“The very last inductee to the Texas Rodeo Hall of Fame at the time was Angela Ganter,” he said. “And so, I read her story.”

The story detailed how she’d trained her daughter to be a champion barrel racer, even as she fought off stage four breast cancer, and then fought her own way to a world championship, riding alongside her daughter.

Ganter did that by simply refusing to believe that cancer was going to win. 

“I never looked in the mirror for eight years,” she said in the “Outriding the Devil” trailer. “I was never going to see sickness. I was never going to see death. I was never going to let myself think that i wasn’t going to live.”

Her story was beyond remarkable, LeVell thought. And it was one he had not seen anyone else tell on a movie screen. 

When he started talking to potential actors about this new idea for a film, it practically sold itself. He didn’t have to talk anyone into being part of it. They all wanted to see it happen just as much as he did.

LeDoux Had Never Thought About Movies

LeDoux started his music career as the drummer for his dad’s band and never considered himself a singer at all. Until one day, a friend at a jam session shoved his guitar into LeDoux’s hands and said, “I’m taking a break. Why don’t you sing a few?”

Even then, LeDoux didn’t warm to the idea right away. His dad was the singer. The role didn’t feel right to him.

But eventually, he did give it a try, albeit sometimes in the dark with no one else listening at all. Eventually, he started singing on a stage and now he’s on his fourth album. His fans, thousands of whom showed up for the final run of Chris LeDoux Days in Kaycee, will tell you there’s no question LeDoux is a natural born singer-songwriter.

LeVell believes LeDoux will do just as well in the movies.

“I remember thinking that I didn’t envy LeDoux up there on that Cheyenne Frontier Days stage,” LeVell said. “That had to be one of the toughest gigs that anybody could play. Because No. 1, Ned’s dad is a legend, and No. 2, Garth Brooks is a legend.

“But he just walked out onto the stage, and there’s 25,000 people there, and he leans back and does that Ned thing, where this smile just comes across his face,” LeVell said. “And that smile just illuminated all of the big screens.”

That told LeVell the only thing he needed to know about casting LeDoux in his movies. He was a natural. But it took some talking to get LeDoux to give the movies a try.

“He wasn’t overly enthusiastic about doing it at first,” LeVell said. “But then we talked for a while and we got on really well, and he was like, ‘Yeah, I’m excited to do it.’ So that’s how it came about.”

What a Wyoming Cowboy Knows

LeDoux told Cowboy State Daily he is glad he decided to try the movies, come what may.

Particularly since he got to spend a day on the Mescal movie set in Arizona, where portions of the movies “Tombstone” and “Outlaw Josey Wales” were filmed. 

Getting to walk in the footsteps of actors from those movies felt like a dream coming true.

“The set looks like something you’d see in an old Clint Eastwood movie,” LeDoux said. “And I made it a point to just kind of walk through the whole set and think, ‘Well hey, Josey Wales stood right here, and Val Kilmer sat in this chair, and Harrison Ford was over here doing his thing. It was just neat, knowing that all those legendary films were shot in the same spot.”

Getting to pal around with Stetson Wright’s sister, riding around in an old beat-up pickup was also cool. 

Being in a movie himself also gave him a whole new respect for movies and television shows. 

“I mean, if you’re watching a movie and there’s this, I don’t know, this part that’s maybe two minutes long, well it probably took them five hours to film those two minutes,” LeDoux said. 

That’s because that two minutes has to be shot from multiple angles, and each time it’s shot, the actor has to repeat what he did before as exactly as humanly possible.

“They’ll do like four or five different angles,” LeDoux said. “So yeah, I watch movies in a whole new way now, after seeing all the cameramen and sound guys and all that stuff, how they've got to tear it down and set it all up again.”

Plus, there are the elements to handle and animals as well. The latter can be quite the curve ball.

“In one of the movies, I had to lead this pack mule through a crowd of ladies in long gowns, the prairie dresses and the bonnets,” LeDoux said. “And the guys, they’re all kind of running toward me and the mule and the horse.”

The horse and the mule weren’t taking too well to that.

“The ladies were wearing kind of bright-colored prairie dresses, and they’re all whooping and hollering,” LeDoux said. “So I told the director, let me just try to get this horse and mule used to these folks for a second.”

It was LeDoux’s Wyoming cowboy knowledge that ultimately helped smooth the way for that scene. 

“The second take was much better, so I guess the director learned something from that as well,” LeDoux said.

There Is Another

LeDoux’s not sure if he’ll be in any more movies, noting that acting school’s not something he’s ever done.

“I mean I do enjoy it,” he said. “So, if the opportunity comes up again, I’ll definitely take a look at the script. I do prefer westerns.”

Even if LeDoux is never in another movie at all, walking in the footsteps of celebrities at Mescal will always be something to remember.

But LeDoux will definitely be appearing in a second movie soon to be released, in about a month. That movie is a Western feature called, “Buffalo Daze.” It’s actually the first movie LeDoux was cast in, though its official release is coming after “Outriding the Devil.”

“Buffalo Daze” was filmed outside of Cody and tells the untold story of a cowboy named Jimmy Grinder. 

“That one’s supposed to have taken place in the late 1800s, early 1900s, about a guy who could ride anything with hair on it,” LeDoux said. “I guess he even saddled up a buffalo and rode it. And it’s all real stuff, stuff that really happened.

"That’s the cool thing about this director. He’ll go way back in the family tree of these characters and find out the facts. So, everything that you see in these films are things that actually happened.”

Grinder was a First Nations cowboy, LeVell said, and became a famous figure of rodeo’s earliest days. 

“He was the first guy to ride a buffalo in a rodeo,” he said. “And he was known as the world champion buffalo rider.”

He was also something of a Robin Hood figure to those living on the Flathead Indian Reservation.

“He had a fair few scrapes with the law,” LeVell said. “But he was a hero amongst his people, and, at that time, when native people were under so much pressure, losing so much, not just the land but the whole system. He was perceived as a figure of resistance, and he just had this indomitable spirit and will.”

LeDoux will play the sheriff in “Buffalo Daze,” who is Grinder’s nemesis. The cast will be joined by “Yellowstone” stars Mo Brings Plenty and Eric Nelson, along with Glen Gould, who starred opposite Sylvester Stallone in Taylor Sheridan’s crime drama series on Paramount+, “Tulsa King.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.