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Peter Frick-Wright (Host): This is the �����ԹϺ��� Podcast

Take a minute—maybe even a deep breath—and think about your first encounter with a force of nature. Something that redefined your mental map of physical power. Of what’s possible. Of how strong something can be. Maybe it’s swimming in the ocean, underestimating the power of a wave and getting flattened. Maybe you’ve seen an avalanche from far away and heard the sound of a mountain crashing into another mountain. Maybe it’s just wrestling with your uncle or an older sibling, thinking you can stand up for yourself and then finding out there is literally nothing you can do.

My first encounter with a force of nature was getting caught in a stampede. Back sometime in the late 80s, early 90s, my family was visiting some friends who own a cattle ranch and me and my sisters were out in the field—except it’s all just kind of dirt—and we were walking around looking at the cows, when one of the bulls just decided he didn’t like the look of us. I was four years old, maybe five, so I can’t remember exactly what happened or why he didn’t like us—but a group of them came together and told us to git.

The memory is as much an emotion as it is a progression of events, but I remember the sound. The ground-shaking power of 10 or 12 head all moving in the same direction, right at us. I also remember running away and that I wasn’t fast enough—they were getting closer more quickly than we were moving. It was a race, and a barbed wire fence was the finish line, but instead of breaking through the tape, I had to crawl through an opening down near the ground.

I remember my oldest sister climbed over the fence—she was probably 10 or 11—and my other sister stretched the hole in the fence bigger with her foot, for me to get through as quick as I could.

And I remember I was scared, but I also remember looking around at everyone else to see how scared I should have been. When you’re that young, you have no frame of reference for danger. You take your cues from everyone else. And what I gathered was: I was really glad to be on the other side of that fence.

If you’ve ever been around a bull—or even if you just remember that scene in The Lion King where Mufasa dies—then bulls and cattle probably seem like a force of nature to you, too.

And cowboys—the people who control and wrangle this force—seem sort of magical. Like they could rope the ocean, or harness an avalanche. That’s how it is for me, at least.

Which brings us to the rodeo, where this magic gets concentrated down into a show, and distributed to the audience in tiny bursts of skill. If you have any connection to cattle, it’s incredible. If you don’t get it, or don’t see the appeal, find a way to spend some time with some cattle. I bet you’ll figure it out.

Anyway, about a year ago, one of our favorite contributors to the podcast, Alex Ward, went to a rodeo and did indeed find himself fascinated. But what captured him was an entirely different part of the show.

Here’s Alex.

JJ Harrison: You been around a bull up close?

Alex Ward (interview): Uh…

JJ: Like a bucking bull?

Alex (Interview): No, not a bucking bull this close.

Alex: The livestock corral behind the Clackamas County Fair in Canby, OR feels like a locker room before a game. The promise of energy, the chance of violence sometime soon. There’s about a dozen massive bulls hanging out in the stalls, all waiting for the upcoming show. It’s day one of a five day rodeo, and they look ready to rumble.

If I don’t sound particularly comfortable in this kind of scene, it’s because I’m not. Just something about how many bulls there are. And how big they are up close. And how small and flimsy it makes the railings look.

Thankfully I’ve got someone very comfortable in this kind of scene alongside me, a decorated rodeo clown and barrelman named JJ Harrison.

JJ: Right now. They're excited. They're, they just got off the semi, they're, they know they're at a rodeo. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And they're gonna get to, they're gonna get to play. This is what they do.

Alex: JJ might know more about how bulls behave than anyone else at a rodeo. He’s been staring them in the face as a professional clown for sixteen years, but was a cowboy for long before that. All in all, about three decades in the business.

JJ: I take massive hits from them and, and though I love them, It's a love hate relationship. And the element of danger, it's, it's the cowboy thing that I do.

Alex: I admit I came to the rodeo with some judgment and a few misconceptions. For one, I’d heard that something is tied around a bulls nuts and that’s what makes them buck. Not exactly true, it turns out.

JJ: There is absolutely nothing attached to their testicles. Nothing. (laughs) You can see 'em in big old boys that hang down there. The rope goes in front of that goes between their dink and their nuts.

Alex: The rope goes around their midsection, which loosens the more they buck. That’s how it works. Also, I thought rodeo was a really niche thing. Small town entertainment, mostly. But it’s not really. It’s currently a top 8 American sport in terms of viewership, on par with golf and tennis. It’s close enough to mainstream that every now and then something pops up in the news. Or…leaps up.

News: Three people are recovering tonight after an unusual and scary event at a rodeo in Oregon.

Alex: For instance, this past June, JJ was working a rodeo in the small central Oregon town of Sisters. The show’s moniker is ‘The Biggest Little Show in the World.’

The evening was just about finished, with only one bull left to buck.

JJ: So we were doing a big sing along with flashlights. And, and I had the moment kind of contained and then they spilled a bull for whatever reason.

Alex: A bull named Party Bus broke free from his chute.

JJ: He was juiced up and he didn't have a flank on him, so he didn't know his normal routine. He just came out as a meat missile looking, looking to get out.

Alex: Party Bus ran around the rodeo while spectators continued a sing-a-long, waiting for the bull to be corralled. But instead, Party Bus leapt over the six foot enclosure fence.

JJ: I was behind the bull running, and I saw the bull go into the beer garden, and I'm trying to yell to people just to get up, get outta the way. And I saw he whipped a body up, and then I saw another set of legs, and then I saw another body go up. And I thought, he's in there just wrecking people out

Alex: It was a real life bull-in-a-china-shop scenario, or rather a bull-in-a-beer-garden. In another video of the incident, a woman in that beer garden, wearing red, is flipped into the air twice like a ragdoll. After 30 chaotic seconds, a couple cowboys finally roped in Party Bus and took him back to the bullpen.

JJ: The bull was trying to get back to the other bulls. That’s where he was headed. And so they got him caught and got him right back into the bullpen and there he was happy as a lark. And so we all got back into the arena, got the barrel reset, got everybody reset, and we bucked the last bull. Wow. And that's kind of what ended the rodeo.

Alex: All in all, three people were directly injured by the bull. There was a broken arm and a broken nose, plus a couple more people hurt in the fracas of the Party Bus pursuit.

If you go back and look at the video, though, a couple seconds after Party Bus jumps the fence, JJ appears, sprinting after him. It’s the alarmed run of a man whose job is - on some level - to keep the bulls in the arena and the riders safe.

In the 84 years this rodeo has been around, a bull had never gotten out like this.

News: We’ve got some breaking news here at 4 the bull that jumped over a fence at the Sister’s Rodeo injuring 3 people, will no longer be allowed to compete. That is the announcement just in from the Sisters Rodeo.

Alex: Watching the videos was a bit of a shock for me, and not just because of the incident itself. The town of Sisters is something of a sanctuary for my family. We’ve been going there for years, to be together and recharge in the quiet mountains and juniper trees.

Other than the rodeo, the town is known for a Folk Music Festival and the world’s largest outdoor quilt show. It’s not literally the Old West, but it feels older and more western than most places.

Last year my family finally went to the Sisters Rodeo we’d always heard about, and man, what a show.

Steer wrestling. Barrel racing. Bronco buckin’. NFL hall of fame r Dan Fouts just hanging out in the crowd.

In the middle of it all was JJ, running around for several hours in 95 degree heat in loose dirt, doing comedy bits and crowd work, and then getting in a barrel to be smashed up by a bull after they buck their rider off. And all this just for the afternoon performance, with another one that night. For four days in a row.

As I watched him dance across the venue between acts—very well, I might add—it struck me that JJ is kind of an endurance athlete in clown makeup. I couldn’t think of any other circumstance where these two things overlap. I was riveted. And the more I saw, the more impressive it became.

He had the crowd in the palm of his hand. And he was keeping 2,000 lb bulls in line with the other one. You ever see someone who has complete mastery of a very obscure set of skills and you just want to know how did THEY get good at THAT? How does dodging bulls become someone’s job? That’s how I felt about JJ. A mix of fascination, admiration, and a little bit of fear for his safety.

So when I saw the Party Bus news a year later, I immediately thought about JJ. I’d talked to him just before the incident but had yet to meet him.

I’ve seen shows and institutions close up shop over incidents like this—when it’s easier to walk away and call it quits then grind it out in court for five years. What would happen to JJ? Was this the end of the Biggest Little Show in the World?

JJ: Alex, how are you man?

Alex (Interview): Good.

Alex: JJ was tough to track down, which he says is by design. His schedule is rigorous enough already, so his team chooses to do one media request a year. It took me a couple months to get through, but he finally agreed to meet me when he had a show in my neck of the woods. The rodeo in Canby, Oregon.

JJ is easy to spot once you’re on the rodeo grounds. He moves from town to town in a pickup truck with a massive trailer attached, adorned with a large “JJ Harrison - Rodeo Clown” decal amidst all his sponsor logos. He’s endorsed by companies that make stuff like tires, cowboy hats, ropes, and belt buckles.

JJ: You can see on the trailer eight one one, uh, call before you dig the locate service. That's my longest running partner. Uh, them

Alex: Yes. I see them on your jersey.

JJ: Yep. Yep. 811–no matter how far back you go you’ll find 811 in my deal. 811 and Ranching Home are the two.

Alex: JJ is about as approachable as a person can be. Without his rodeo outfit and face paint on, he just looks like a charming cowboy. If you know the actor Tim Blake Nelson, from O Brother Where Art Thou or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, JJ looks like he could be his way-more-handsome younger brother.

I met up with him in the early afternoon, hours before the rodeo began. And one thing that became immediately apparent is how many people want to come up and say hi to him. He seems to know every single person here. We’re essentially backstage at the rodeo, so there’s riders, ropers, racers, and wrestlers all over the place.

JJ: Hey, what's up Bear Cat? Big stud. How'd it go?

Rodeo rider: Three nine.

JJ: Good. right. See tonight then? Right on.

Alex: These kinds of greetings will happen dozens of times while talking to JJ. For how much he moves from place to place, he seems totally plugged in here.

Alex (Interview): When you roll into a town, I mean, I'm getting the sense that then you got relationships, friendships, with fair directors, the announcers…

JJ: Everybody, everyone, everybody. Yeah. It's, it's a homecoming. And, uh, one thing about me, a lot of, a lot of clowns rotate rodeos every year. They don't like to do the same rodeo twice in a row. I'm the exact opposite. I'd rather be here 10 years in a row, 15 years in a row. Sisters Oregon. I've done 16 times. I enjoy building that rapport with not just the contract personnel I work with, but with the crowd as well. Right. And that I think is, is big

JJ: Yeah. Wayne Brooks?

Wayne Brooks: Yes, sir. How are you?

JJ: This is Alex with �����ԹϺ��� Magazine…

Alex: JJ is one of the most in-demand clowns in the business. This year, he did 35 rodeos and hosted a handful of special events, almost every week from January through October, he’s working. The days he’s not at the rodeo he’s hauling his trailer to the next one, along with his wife Bailey and their 4-year-old-daughter Roxy, who have been on the road with him for the past few years.

Bailey Harrison: You know, it's true love if you don't get divorced after backing up a trailer together. most difficult thing. Not even kidding. Backing up.

Alex: That’s Bailey. She and JJ met when he was working a rodeo in her hometown in Idaho.

Bailey: I ran away with the circus. So my parents are so proud (laughs).

Alex: JJ and Bailey had each been married before, they already had 4 kids between the two of them, so they knew that the only way to make it work would be to go all in - together. Bailey left her job at a dental office and basically became JJ’s Chief Operating Officer, running his social accounts, managing their sponsor contracts, and being his physical therapist on top of everything else.

Bailey: So that was one of our deals and I was game for that. I like to travel and it is a lot of work. It is. We are tired. You don't get to sleep in the same place. Normally more than five or six days. But I, uh, we make time for traveling and family time. It's our most important thing. So we work really well together in that way until we're backing up a trailer.

JJ: Come on in, if you All right. This is a complete mess of a space…Hey Cowboy, how are you? How are you? Where do you think of that dump you're staying in? I like it. I like it. Yep. Yeah.

Alex: JJ’s trailer is his family’s home base on the fairgrounds. It has accumulated so much stuff over the years it kind of looks like a western-themed novelty shop. JJ’s friend Mike showed up at the trailer while we were talking.

Alex (Interview): What's your full name?

Mike Smith: Mike Smith. Real hard one. Yeah. (laughs)

Alex: They’ve known each other for a long time - both of them used to be teachers. Mike taught PE, and before becoming a full time clown, JJ was a middle school science teacher.

Mike Smith: I give him all credit for that. 'cause if he wasn't a teacher then I probably wouldn't have the same respect I do, you know, because it's, take someone special to be a teacher. It, it's a different type of job.

Alex: JJ’s specialty as a teacher was being able to handy the rowdy kids that had trouble paying attention in other classes. Which honestly seems like a great prerequisite for his current gig - keeping a bunch of bulls and cowboys in line while entertaining the crowd.

JJ’s actual rodeo skills trace back to high school, when he worked at a ranch and learned to ride horses. Then he got into rodeo in college and competed briefly, before finally returning to teaching, a profession going back generations in his family .

But he just couldn’t quit rodeo, and when he got an opportunity to start clowning in the summer between school years, he took it.

Then he got turned down for the teaching job he wanted.

JJ: If I'd had that job, I wouldn't be rodeoing. Yeah. I'm not even kidding you. I put in for a teaching job and didn’t get it. They gave it to a, an outside guy and I was a little bit like, oh, come on man. Like, I'm, I'm right here. I'm everybody's favorite. I'm working my butt off. And that's, and that's what his excuse was, was, well, yeah, but you, you know, you take so many of the kids that in science that, you know, the other teacher can't handle. And I was like, that's no excuse to not give me the job. And so I threw a little, uh, threw my sucker in the dirt and said, fine, I'm gonna go rodeo for a living then. And I guess, uh, I guess it worked out.

Mike Smith: One thing about being a teacher though is, and, and, and doing what you do is, you're the person that makes a difference in their life. And you know, even at the rodeo, I, there's so many kids that, like you said, you went to the Sister's rodeo and you remember JJ and you're like, oh my God, that guy was so awesome. You know, and, and a kid comes to the rodeo here and it's like, oh yeah, there's another event. But they get to know him. They feel like you know him, and they come the next year and he's here again. And they're excited to see him. And, and he makes a difference for a lot of people in all these towns. I guarantee you.

Alex (interview): Why does a rodeo need a clown?

JJ: So anytime you try to count on animals or small children that make a fool outta you, you gotta have somebody there to fill that lull, that little delay that may happen. Just interacting, pointing, dancing, excuse me, moving around, doing anything, right. That kind of stuff is, is just, I think, beneficial for the rodeo itself because there's always something happening so they can watch the action when the action is subsided. And the guy's moving on, oh, what's the clown doing? Sure. What's he doing over there? Right. So that I, I mean, it's, it's a court jester, right?

I'm out there the whole time. A lot of it's comedy, a lot of it's entertainment. Running around doing those types of things. Bull riding my job gets a lot more serious. But when you watch it tonight, you'll, you'll be like, holy shit, these guys are nuts.

Alex: The marquee event of a rodeo is the bull riding. This is where JJ’s job title changes from rodeo clown to barrelman. He is quite literally the man crouched inside a padded barrel that’s both a target for a bull and a safety net for a rider that just got bucked off.

JJ: So if a, a bull rider comes out and the bull goes around the left five times in a row pretty fast. He's pretty dizzy. The bull might be too, but the cowboy's dizzy and all of a sudden he gets thrown down, boom, lands on his back, he's flat back, he's got no air. And all of a sudden he's got a guy going right here, right here, right here. He's gonna go to that noise. And I try to give that spot. I try to be a place where they can get to me. And then if something's gonna get hit, we want it to be me instead of him. I'm the punching bag.

Alex: When he’s working the barrel, JJ’s head pops up out of the top like a gopher while his feet stick out of the bottom, allowing him to move the barrel around. Then when the bull charges, he quickly turtles up and braces for impact.

JJ: Yeah. Just lay down, put your hip down there and lay in a circle. Oh wow. Hiding down in there. Centrifugal pressure to kind of protect yourself. I don't like it when a bull rider gets hurt. You'll see that. And this has kind of been the last seven or eight years of my career. I've really pushed this, my barrel work, I think is, is at a point now where I'm competitive to be one of the best in the country.

Alex: Thing is - there is a drawback to becoming one of the best in the country at being hit by angry bulls. That’s after the break.

[Sponsor Break]

Alex: A half hour before the show started, I caught up with JJ at his trailer . He’d just finished putting on his clown makeup - a simple pattern with a white circle around his mouth and white teardrops under his eyes, all outlined in black.

And just like his love/hate relationship with the bulls - he has a love/hate relationship with makeup.

Alex (Interview): How'd you get your makeup pattern? I mean, you must have tweaked it over the years.

JJ: I did. It's called how do I wear the least amount of makeup and still be considered a clown? I hate it. I hate makeup. I don't wanna wear it. I still don't wanna wear it. It's been 20 fricking years. But there's so much historical significance with the clown and rodeo. And so by putting the makeup on, I think that, I think honestly, historically, that makes me an easier target. You'll see, I'll get picked on tonight. The announcer will pick on me. He'll make little derogatory comments that are funny. So my place is to play this role of be the little buffoon every now and then.

Alex: It doesn’t matter if it’s a rodeo or a circus or a kid’s birthday party, it’s a clown’s job to bring some levity and laughs to the show. But that’s not easy work.

Between running around as the entertainer during a show, the hits JJ takes in the barrel, and daily wear and tear of living on the road, this job takes quite a toll, physically. JJ is nearly 50 years old, and though you wouldn't know that looking at him, the miles are catching up with his body.

His wife Bailey sees this better than anyone.

Bailey: I mean he’s running a marathon out there. We put a Fitbit on him one year and we'll say generalizing the rodeos, it was between 11 and 16 miles a performance he was running.

Alex (Interview): In basically sand

Bailey: And it's uneven ground. I mean he is tearing up his feet. When I met him, he had planter fascitis so bad, and I could not even believe it. His skin was actually pulling apart on, on the bottom of his feet. It was red tearing because it was so bad. He got a full hip replacement the year I, uh, we had Roxy. That was fun. I was eight months pregnant and he got his entire hip replaced. And I was like, this isn't gonna work. And uh, I'm not gonna be your nurse all the time. You gotta do some things to help yourself. Obviously your feet are falling apart. What do we do to fix it. There you can fix anything.

Alex: Over the years, there’s been a lot to fix in JJ’s body. Since he started clowning, he’s cracked his skull, broken his hip, he’s fractured vertebrae in his back twice, had three knee surgeries, dislocated his shoulder, and had countless sprained ankles. He gets six steroid injections in his spine every year, and oh, he needs his hip replaced. Again.

Given all that, I was curious to see how JJ gets ready before a show.

JJ: You're late. I'm not late. Alright. I'm late. No, that's no big deal. I got ready early, but the guys are in there. So Shane Jennings. Hey Alex

Alex (Interview): Nice to meet you Alex. Shane.

Alex: JJ was inside the trailer with a couple of bullfighters - those are the guys that run around in loud clothing, distracting the bulls toward JJ’s barrel. They’re a big mess of pads, ankle braces, and ointments - I’ve never seen so much athletic tape in my life.

Alex (Interview): Do you tape up your ankles? Do you wear any braces? Like what do you, what do you, what do you got going on there?

JJ: Yeah, so I've got two just copper fit, just kind of, uh, normal little knee braces from Walmart. Same deal on my ankles underneath my, my, uh, socks. I've got just little ankle braces that are just pretty standard. Um, I roll my ankle about 20 times a rodeo, . So my ankles are the, you know, the ligaments have already been stretched and wearing a knee brace. Yeah. I'm supposed to be wearing a knee brace, but I, uh, as you get older, you want, you don't want people seeing…Roxy come on, my daughter constantly making noise while we're talking…. It's, you don't really wanna show weakness. I don't, I don't want people thinking I even need a knee brace. I don't wanna think you need, I need a back brace. Like, I just, so I wear a back brace, it holds my mic. I see that. Okay. Yeah. It holds my mic. Of course it doubles. Has a back brace. 'cause I'm Holds your back. Yeah. Holds my back in too.

Alex (Interview): Anything special in the hat?

JJ: Nothing in it. I mean, I put a pill in there that I take that's a little morphine. Gotta take that. Um, but the hat itself is pretty standard. I mean, it's just a cowboy hat. I, uh, I, I, after I broke my back and cracked my skull, I do about four milligrams of hydromorphine, which is Dilaudid, which is a pretty good painkiller. Yeah. But I do that before, just before a rodeo for the simple fact that it takes the edge off the nerves. And I don't have back spasms. I don't have nerves causing me to spasm. So that's been kind of helpful.

Alex (Interview): That’s what you keep in your hat?

JJ: Yep.

Alex (Interview): And you pop that in?

JJ: About 30 minutes before the rodeo. And that kind of carries me through a rodeo. And you know, it's one of those things where you gotta be very careful not to get hooked on it. Oh my gosh.So anyway, that's, you know, that's kind of the, one of the hidden parts of my job that Yeah, sure. I'm not too public about it, but at the same time I use it.

Alex: I couldn’t help but wonder - what’s the payoff for putting yourself through all this? There’s the job security, sure, JJ makes well into six figures at this job. But surely it doesn't have to require pushing your body to the brink, right?

JJ: earning the respect and the, and, and buy the crowd, buy-in where they buy into you. And that's, that's important to me. You gotta, you gotta be sweaty. At the end of the day. If you're not sweating and tired and rolled your ankle 700 times and knees are aching, then you didn't work hard enough.

Announcer: You are feeling good tonight.

JJ: I’m feeling great! I’ll tell you why because it’s 73 degrees and my butt is not sweatin’.

Announcer: hahaha

Alex: I had my own infant daughter at home and I was late for my childcare shift, so I wasn’t able to stay for the whole show that night. But I planned to return for the performance in a couple days.

But when I showed back up on Saturday, a thunder and lightning storm rolled in, and the rodeo was postponed for a few hours. So as the rain poured down and everyone scampered to find shelter, JJ and I sat in his truck with nothing to do.

I knew it was as close as I’d get to sitting around a campfire with a cowboy telling stories.

JJ: Rodeo's funny 'cause it's everybody's biggest weekend of the year. They've been, you, you think about it, they've been waiting all year. All these campers even sitting right here that we're looking at have been waiting all year to camp at the Canby Fair and Rodeo. And they're here. And the committees worked all year. They've had meetings and discussions and processes and insurances and porta potty setups and everything for this weekend. And we show up and now we're here.

And holy crap, JJ Harrison's here. He's on the grounds, it's rodeo time. The event happens, it's a success. They sell out. And then Saturday night after the rodeo, I'm driving four hours to go home. I won't even be here Sunday morning when they wake up. And it's now time to clean up the trash, get the porta-potties that are full of outta here, pull everything down. It's breaking it down. It's not. And, and so that biggest weekend of the year is now over and it's down and oh man, it's, it's over. But not for me because I'm going to Kennewick. And guess what? They've been waiting all year. They're jacked up. The porta-potties are clean. They've been working all year for this one week and the best week of summer for the, you know, so for me, it's easy to stay up. Um,

Alex (Interview):Do you need that, do you think?

JJ: Oh yeah.

Alex (Interview): Like every week you need to be going into a place that's at the peak.

JJ: I feed off of energy. I feed off of it. I feed off of the crowd.

Alex: Part of my fascination with JJ comes from the fact that, in a lot of ways, he’s living out my dreams. Not literally getting in the ring with bulls—I can’t pull off cowboy boots—but I know what he’s saying about feeding off of a crowd. I did theater in high school, tried stand up comedy for a bit after college, and now I make podcasts. And the very best feeling is when you get that feedback and realize you’ve made some kind of connection with your audience—when they tell you that you’re good at what you do. It makes you want to do it even better.

JJ: I've been a rodeo clown that when I get to a rodeo, most of my rodeos, I've been at five years or more, uh, sisters year, 15 years, uh, right here in Canby, Oregon. This is my 13th year in a row straight. You know what I mean? So when I get here, they like me. They don't wanna let me go. And I'm different. Every rodeo, every single year I do something, I add something different or tweak it. Or because I'm off the cuff, it doesn't come off as a scripted act. So the crowd can't sit there and go, okay, now he's gonna say this. Now he's gonna do this.

Alex (Interview): Because people come back every year.

JJ: They do same crowd. People come back every performance. I mean, there's five performances in a row here in Canby, and I'll do something different each day. They, I never do the same act twice. Whereas, you know, you can open up a can of comedy. You can have a guy go out there and read a joke book. I promise you people will snicker, you will get some reaction with that. But will they fall in love with that guy? Will they be so ingrained that they want their kids to see that guy when they have children? No.

Alex: I think deep down, under the clown makeup, JJ is simply a competitive athlete. But what he wants to win is the crowd. That’s why he puts his body through the ringer to be the best.

And ‘best’ is not some vague ideal to JJ.

Every December, the National Finals Rodeo, NFR for short, happens in Las Vegas. It’s the Super Bowl of rodeo. Not only are the riders that qualify competing for the top spot, but so is the barrelman that’s voted in for the event. They get the title Barrelman of the Year.

JJ actually won this once, back in 2012.

JJ: It's a great laurel. It's a good feather in my cap. But I've been there and now I know how badly I want the job back. And, and I'm too competitive to be okay with being in the top five. I wanna win. And it's the way it is.

Alex (interview): I remember talking to you on the phone, you said it's pretty political. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um,

JJ: Yep. Geographical vote is big. Um, you know, we all have some jealousies. You know, I, there's no way I would ever admit, I'm not jealous of the guy that wins. He wins every year. It's the same guy. It's been the same guy over and over and over again. And his name is John Harrison. Are you kidding me?

Alex: Almost every year since he last won in 2012, JJ Harrison has lost the rodeo clown Super Bowl to a guy named John Harrison. How cruel.

JJ: But, you know, and I text him every year. I said, you know, you gotta, you got me again, you know, and congratulations, and I'm gonna keep chasing you. And you know,

Alex (Interview):Because you, I mean, you want that, right? Yeah.

JJ: I'm not gonna pretend I don't, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm not jealous of it. Um, I, because the minute you quit trying to make the Super Bowl is the minute you need to walk away from the National Football League. The minute I stop trying to be the guy at the NFR is the day I need to retire. I want that job.

Alex: A few weeks ago, the NFR announced the finalists for this year. There was JJ’s name as a finalist again, right next to John Harrison and a few others. I couldn't help but root for him. Would this be the year things changed?

As we were putting together this episode, I kept checking the NFR website to see if they’d announced the winners. And then one day it was there. I scrolled down to The Barrelman of the Year. John Harrison. Not JJ.

I called him up right away.

JJ (Phone): It's just, it's frustrating. There's obviously disappointment. There's obviously, it's like, gosh dang, when's it gonna change? You know, when's it gonna, when's it gonna, yeah, when's it gonna be my turn again? Um, or, you know, when's it gonna be just somebody different in any way?

Alex (Interview): Did you think you actually had a shot this year? Or where were you at?

JJ (Phone): I'm always hopeful, you know, and, and there's always people that, that I'm just a terrible politician and, and yeah. You know, that the just bone honesty of me is that I'm just never gonna be a good enough politician.

Alex: When I asked JJ what he meant by that, he said that John, the guy he keeps losing too, moves around a lot doing different rodeos every year, mostly in the south and midwest. It’s sort of like an actual politician on the campaign trail - you’re going to be more successful the more places you visit and talk to people and shake hands.

In JJ’s world, the voters are the card-carrying members of the pro-rodeo circuit, which includes bullfighters & announcers, on top of the riders themselves. So the more people you work with, the more likely they are to write your name come voting time.

JJ (Phone): He's able to showcase his talent in front of more people. And so I, I feel like my, you know, I don't work with a ton of bullfighters. I work with probably 12 bullfighters all year, you know, because a lot of my rodeos are the same ones and same, same guys. So I don't, I don't wanna try to make excuses why I didn't get it. Maybe he's just better. Maybe he's just better too. And I can accept that it doesn't change my schedule. It doesn't change how people react to me.

Of course, I want it, of course, I'm gonna try for it. Of course, I'm gonna do my very best to get it. But if the chips don't fall that way, that's, that's the way it goes. And I'm gonna surround myself with people who, who say, you know, Hey, you're fantastic. You're amazing. You, you keep going. You keep, keep trying. Don't give up. Don't, you know, you want to be around those people.

Alex: Maybe the reason JJ doesn’t get the NFR is the very reason he’s so beloved at his rodeos. He doesn’t cast as wide of a net because he’s more focused on the deep roots he’s cultivated on his own circuit.

Which brings us back to Party Bus.

Here’s what I thought might happen after the bull-in-the-beer garden. Party Bus would be put down. Several lawsuits would be filed against the Sisters Rodeo, the cost of which would threaten its very existence. The incident would then spark a wider debate about safety at the rodeo that would lead to…I don’t know…taller fences or something.

But then, miraculously, nothing happened. Nobody sued the Sisters Rodeo. Party Bus wasn’t put down like King Kong.. He just went back to live out his life on a farm, retired from rodeo and breeding more bulls.

And the woman in red that got thrown around like a ragdoll? She was spotted out having breakfast the next morning, and came back to the rodeo the next day.

News: Diners at the restaurant insisted to pay for the woman’s meal, and Brand 44 North added a pair of drinks, on the house.

Alex: I think on some level, that’s just the culture of rodeo and ranching. You take your hits and you don’t complain. Part of the game.

But it’s also JJ. Rodeo is a pretty brutal, dangerous sport if you think about it. The clown gives you permission not to think about it. They transform violence into comedy. They laugh in the face of danger. And that’s how groups form a bond.

It’s as if all those people stopping by to say hi to JJ, all the optional banquets he attends, all the kids that want him to sign their t-shirts - they can’t wait to see him every year because he’s not just performing in their town, he’s hosting their community get-together.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my attempts at connecting with audiences, it’s that you can’t chase this kind of relationship that JJ has. You can’t manufacture authenticity. People can tell. You just have to get in front of whatever crowd you can find and do the thing that you love to do. And then hope they love you back.

JJ: I am like salt. A little bit of me, I make it better. No matter what it is. I make it better, but too much of me, you gotta throw it out. So it's, I'm not the rodeo, I'm not the entire show. I'm just, I'm just the garnish that probably makes it tastes the best and shines the best.

Alex (Interview): People pay top dollar for good salt too.

JJ: That's right. That's right. I don't know if I'm that weird Ocean one Kel, I dunno if I'm Celtic Sea salt, but

Alex (Interview): Himalayan pink.

JJ: Yeah. I'm Himalayan . All of your weird ones. Yeah.

Alex (Interview): The Hawaiian volcanic salt. Yeah.

JJ: No

Alex: Well, you know what actually never got from you is just, uh, the name, what we call a name tag, where you say my name is and what you do.

JJ: You bet. My name is JJ Harrison. I am a rodeo entertainer.

Peter Frick-Wright (Host): Alex Ward is the co-host of the podcasts Captive Audience and The Michael Scott Podcast Company. This episode was written and produced by Alex, with editing by me, Peter Frick-Wright. Music and sound design by Robbie Carver.

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