As mainstream country music continues to drift further toward pop, Tris Munsick and the Innocents continue to buck the trend.

As Munsick sees it, the industry has moved away from a lot of the values, traditions and the sound that has resonated with so many of its listeners. Pop may command a broader audience, Munsick concedes, but “I think there’s a lot of folks out there who really want to hear real instruments, and want to hear bands up there and people make mistakes, and … put the humanity back in that music.”

He and his bandmates will bring that kind of performance to the Park County Fair’s grandstands Thursday night, playing country music that’s geared toward Western audiences.

“That’s the kind of life that we live and that we understand,” Munsick said, “so that’s what we sing about.”

Fairs and rodeos, “that’s our kind of crowd, for sure,” he said. 

While the band plays across the Rocky Mountain region, Powell is pretty close to home: Munsick grew up on the eastern slope of the Bighorn Mountains, on a cow/calf ranch south of Sheridan. His country roots can be traced back to his father Dave, a fiddler, singer, songwriter and rancher who instilled a love of music in all three of his boys.

“We grew up just kind of doing it as a family,” Munsick said. “When we were kids, we’d play around the fire or play at brandings, or just in the living room, and that kind of grew into us.”

The four family members have spent years performing together as The Munsick Boys and on their own.

“It was pretty amazing, really — all three of us [siblings] really took to it,” Munsick said. They’ve each “taken different paths in music,” he said, “but kind of the same general direction.”

Munsick’s own band brings a blend of traditional country and what he calls “kind of a red dirt, more rocked-out vibe.” Cathy Holman — better known as Prairie Wife on My Country 95.5 of Casper — has described their music as “that awesome kind of old school, a little bit of outlaw country.”

Tris Munsick and the Innocents have shared the stage with artists like Big and Rich and performed at venues around the region, including the National Finals Rodeo’s opening ceremonies in Las Vegas. They also helped kick off the Cody Nite Rodeo’s 2021 season with a concert at the Stampede Grounds.

The band stays plenty busy, traveling to venues in Colorado, the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho and Nevada alongside frequent appearances in Wyoming. The day after they headline the Park County Fair, they’ll head to Sundance to perform for Crook County fairgoers.

Managing the travel — and making sure things are taken care of back home — can become a job in itself, Munsick said. Part of that, he added, is “making sure you’re giving people their money’s worth, no matter what town you’re at, or how tired you are.”

“... we have a lot of fun,” Munsick said. “We definitely have a great group of guys in the band, and everybody really puts the music first. And I think it shows.”

He and the Innocents have put out three albums to date — the most recent being 2020’s “Washakie Wind” — and they plan to head to the studio this fall to record a fourth.

Among their supporters is Wyoming country favorite Chancey Williams, who headlined last year’s Park County Fair. He calls Munsick “the real deal.”

“He can write about and represent cowboy culture, because he was born in it and lives it,” Williams has said.

One of Munsick’s 2020 tracks, “Sand and Sage,” is about “big country” and the people who live in it. But a listener could also interpret it as a defense of Western tradition. 

The song opens with a suggestion that “the sun is setting on the cowboy way,” before Munsick offers a quick rebuttal.

“Buddy, I hear you talking, but you’re wrong,” he sings. “There’s still a few out there who hear the lonesome coyote’s song.”

They are, he continues, “born to ride this land, children of the sand, and the sage.”

When Munsick and his band hit the stage, they’re not just playing for the audience, he said, but also for themselves.

“We’re all Wyoming boys,” Munsick said, and “no matter if we’re playing in the state of Wyoming or out on the road, we just are pretty honest about what our music is trying to say. And … we definitely are trying to shoot for our own brand of country and western music — and kind of putting the Western back in country music.”

The gates to the Park County Fair’s grandstands will open at 6 p.m. Thursday. Justin Baxter will kick off the concert at 7 p.m., followed by Tris Munsick and the Innocents. Tickets are $10 for general admission or $15 for box seats and spots on the arena floor.

“We’re looking forward to seeing everybody out there,” Munsick said. “It’ll be a good night, for sure.”