Ol' Willie's red-necked fans must have turned redder when he sang "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other" on Howard Stern's satellite radio show last month -- a somewhat satirical suggestion that cowboys were paying attention to more than their horses out there riding the range.

But did you know that the song was written nearly 25 years ago in Portales, N.M.?

Thanks to a story in today's Portales News-Tribune, we now know that the song was written by singer-songwriter Ned Sublette while he spent time in his parents' Portales home in the summer of 1981.

Sublette, 54, was born in Lubbock and grew up in Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico, and began his musical career, according to the News-Tribune, playing in bars in Clovis.

He spent his teenage years in Portales, where his father taught science at Eastern New Mexico University, and after a year at ENMU, Sublette went on to graduate from the University of New Mexico with degrees in classical guitar and musical composition.

Sublette told the News-Tribune he wrote the song with Willie Nelson -- famous for "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" and "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" -- in mind.

"It fits him like an old shoe, and he sings it like he's comfortable with it," Sublette said of Nelson, who recorded the song after the release of the movie "Brokeback Mountain," the story of star-crossed gay sheepherders.

"Although ("Cowboys") is a funny song, with a lot of tenderness, it is not about being sure or unsure of one's masculinity," Sublette told the News-Tribune in an interview. "At some point, everybody feels there is something about them that is a little different."

We learn about cowboys from the movies, Sublette told the paper.

"The cowboy has become kind of American ideal of fantasy masculinity," said Sublette, who said that image is pushed on males at a steep cost.

"The point of the song is (that) love is better than hating, and everybody has the right to love, however it comes to them," said Sublette.

Nelson got a copy of the song passed to him in the late 1980s but didn't record it until last year at his Pedernales studio in Texas, a spokesman for Nelson's Lost Highway record label said in a story last month by The Associated Press.

The song was recorded in 1995 by a band called Pansy Division, the AP reported.

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