The Palo Duro Canyon runs through the Texas Panhandle for more than 100 miles. It's an explosion of color in an otherwise lonely place, interrupting the area's wide, windswept flatlands with steep canyon walls and vibrant rock formations. There, in a small house filled with musical instruments, the members of Shotgun Rider wrote their first songs together. Bandmates Logan Samford and Anthony Enriquez had grown up nearby, in the farming communities of Castro County. They'd both been raised on the sounds of the south -- the country hits that came across the FM radio; the gospel songs that Logan sang in the church choir; the George Strait albums that every Texan seemed to own -- but loved the sweeping, hard-hitting anthems of bands like Kings of Leon, too. Drawing on those influences, they carved out their own sound: a mix of country twang and guitar-fueled rock & roll stomp, as epic and darkly cinematic as the Texas landscape that inspired it.