The biography explains the rest. Ranck was raised in Utah but spent his summers and weekends beside his father on a cattle ranch in Wyoming's Bridger Valley, and that apprenticeship comes through in every bar. It teaches patience, economy and a healthy suspicion of anything shiny. A man who has mended fence in the cold learns not to waste words, and Ranck wastes almost none. His songs arrive plainly dressed, say what they mean and leave before the sentiment curdles.

The sound is Bakersfield country with a touch of Laurel Canyon dust. The guitars have the bright, biting twang of Telecasters played by people who distrust Nashville polish, and the rhythm section shuffles with the unhurried gait of men who know the bar stays open till late. Ranck's voice sits somewhere between a weathered baritone and a wry confession. It has none of the rhinestone gloss of modern country radio and all of the gravel, and it never strains for authority because it already owns it. Folk and roots colours seep in at the edges, along with the restless, searching air of the 1960s and '70s, when country music kept slipping out the back door to hang around with the hippies and the heartbroken.

Then comes the single, "Can You Feel the Buffalo". On the page the title is borderline preposterous, the sort of thing that invites a raised eyebrow and a snigger. In the ear it is a small triumph. Ranck sings it with a straight face and an open heart, and the song transforms the absurd into the elemental. The buffalo becomes less an animal than a presence, a rumble underfoot and a memory of the land as it was before anyone drew lines on it. It is the EP's calling card and its thesis, and it earns its place at the front of the queue.

What impresses most is the restraint. Debut records from young songwriters tend to be overstuffed, crammed with every idea, influence and harmony the artist has ever hoarded. Ranck, to his enormous credit, leaves room. Silences are allowed to settle, and a steel guitar can sigh without a drum fill stepping on its toes. The honky-tonk shuffle never becomes pastiche because the feeling underneath is real, and the Wyoming of these songs reads as a place he has actually stood in, with mud on his boots, rather than a backdrop borrowed from a Western.

Ranck is also, by all accounts, a formidable live performer. The EP's release is being celebrated with dates at regional Utah venues, O'Shucks Bar & Grill and Park City Brewing among them. That seems exactly right, because these songs belong to sticky floors, pints sweating on the bar and a room full of strangers singing the chorus by the second verse. Whatever else this music is, it was built to be heard in a crowd.

Johnny Ranck has delivered something rare in contemporary country-folk, a record that sounds lived-in rather than manufactured. The buffalo, one suspects, would approve.