BACK IN THE SADDLE WITH RIDERS IN THE SKY

Ranger Doug heard his first cowboy music the way most people of his generation did -- on television.

Sheriff John was his favorite singing TV cowboy, and he loved the Wagonmasters, a group that sang around a campfire at the Southern California theme park Knott's Berry Farm. But Ranger Doug didn't play western music when he grew up, putting his guitar to use instead "in the big folk scare of the '60s."

Hearing the Sons of the Pioneers perform their traditional western music in 1974 changed the course of his life. "It was like a light came on in my head," he said, "and I never looked back."

Riders in the Sky, the cowboy nostalgia band with just a touch of camp, was born three years later.

Riders in the Sky will perform at Tuesday at the Show Me Center in a concert benefiting the Missouri State Troopers Association. Also on the bill is Johnny Counterfit, who does impersonations of country music performers, and Jet Williams & Drifting Cowboy. The concert begins at 7 p.m.

For information about the concert, phone 1- (800) 678-4740.

From the duded-up cowboy clothes to their fondness for the offbeat and arcane, Riders in the Sky isn't the typical country and western band out of Nashville.

"One reason we were invited to join the Grand Ole Opry is we're not like anybody else," Ranger Doug says.

Ranger Doug, a master yodeler, also has a graduate degree in literature. Fiddler Woody Paul has a Ph.D. in plasma physics from M.I.T. And Too Slim, who plays a fat bass fiddle, majored in wildlife management at the University of Michigan.

Ranger Doug simply was a college student who liked to read. Woody Paul was drawn to the theoretical qualities of physics.

"He can't hardly tie his own shoes but he can tell you how a star works," Ranger Doug said by phone from Nashville.

Ranger Doug can tell you how a yodel works. "It's an innate ability to snap your glottis back and forth," he says. "Anybody who can make a Tarzan yell and sing reasonably in tune can yodel."

The members of Riders in the Sky love cowboy music but their act also is a deft put-on of the cowboy image created by Hollywood. Thus the title of their 1995 album, "Always Drink Upstream from the Herd."

"We have fun with the genre," Ranger Doug said. "The old westerns were so corny there's a lot there to have fun with. But we don't make fun of it. It's very meaningful to us and to our fans."

The Riders' latest album is "Public Cowboy #1: The Music of Gene Autry," a CD which starts off with the cowboy music standard "Back in the Saddle Again." The band got the opportunity to play some of the songs for the original movie cowboy in person.

"He sent us two letters saying how much he liked the album," Ranger Doug said.

Autry, now perhaps best known as the owner of the California Angels baseball team, epitomizes the singing cowboy created by Hollywood.

"Cowboys probably sang no more or less than anybody who had a solitary occupation," Ranger Doug said. "It was romanticized by Hollywood to a degree that doesn't reflect reality. But it obviously struck a chord in the American psyche."

Americans love cowboys because they love the outdoors, living free and breathing fresh air, Ranger Doug said.

"Singing with your buddies around the campfire is kind of a nice fantasy, really."

So long, Ranger Doug.

"See ya down the trail," he said.