BIO
Chris Sand is a songwriter, poet, and performer from western Montana whose work has spent more than three decades crossing the boundaries between folk, Americana, hip-hop, punk, and spoken word. Drawn to both the absurd and the sacred, his songs wrestle with political division, spiritual longing, love, loss, and the stubborn possibility of hope—always with an ear for humor and an eye toward our shared humanity.
Over the years, Sand has quietly built a body of work that spans 20 official releases, a feature-length documentary, and thousands of performances in theaters, festivals, schools, bars, barns, house concerts, and community spaces across North America. Earlier in his career, he toured extensively as Sandman the Rappin' Cowboy, a moniker that reflected his unlikely fusion of cowboy culture and hip-hop and earned him a devoted grassroots following.
A native of western Montana, Sand was the subject of the 2010 documentary Roll Out, Cowboy, which followed his life as a musician, activist, trucker, and poet. His recent releases include MAGIC BEANS, a collection of original children's songs, and NON-JUDGMENT DAY, an Americana album that invites listeners to look directly at what hurts while imagining a world beyond blame. In 2003, Punk Planet called Sand "our Troubadour for the 21st Century," while No Depression observed that his songs arise from "the same dusty world Woody Guthrie wrote about without being mired in the dust of Guthrie's tradition."
Chris Sand's songs are rooted in the belief that people are more complicated than the stories we tell about one another. Whether writing about small-town America, personal transformation, or the end of the world as we know it, he continues to search for moments of humor, grace, and connection where others might only see division.
