Watch: Luke Bell perform a song in this Wyoming bar

Luke Bell was a Wyoming honky-tonk singer who grew up in the state and whose music was inseparable from the landscape, the bars, and the working-ranch culture of the American West. Cody, the small city in the Big Horn Basin named for Buffalo Bill Cody, was part of his home territory, and the bars along Sheridan Avenue -- Cody's main street, lined with Western saloons, restaurants, and rodeo memorabilia -- were the kinds of rooms where Bell performed throughout his life. The Silver Dollar Bar in particular has been a local institution for decades.

Bell released his self-titled debut album in 2017 to considerable acclaim from the Americana and country music community, and his follow-up Don't Mind If I Do (2021) deepened his reputation as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary honky-tonk. His baritone was genuinely exceptional -- dark and warm, capable of conveying both humour and loss in the same breath. His performances in Wyoming bars, captured on video by fans and circulated online, showed him at his most natural: sitting across from a small crowd, playing without amplification, looking like he'd been doing it since before he could vote.

Cody's Sheridan Avenue is still lined with the Western bars and saloons that make the town feel like the last genuinely cowboy city in the continental United States. Bell died in Tucson, Arizona, in August 2022, aged 32. The Wyoming bars he played in remain, and for his fans, the footage of him performing in them is among the most moving records of what American country music can be at its most unadorned.