Country singer/songwriter Lacy J. Dalton combines roots music with contemporary sounds.

Western music has always encompassed story songs about gunfights, roundups and serious saddle time sung by real working cowboys and cowgirls. And country singer/songwriter Lacy J. Dalton says she has always loved the unique Western folk music genre, but that she hopes to expand its range. “There were a couple of real cowboy songs that were done by the Grateful Dead,” she says referring to “Friend of the Devil” and “Me and My Uncle.”

It’s not surprising that the Grammy-nominated Dalton, who performs Saturday night at the Monterey Cowboy Poetry & Music Festival, is seeking to blur the barbed wire boundaries of Western music. From her beginnings as a protest folk singer in Santa Cruz, Dalton has always sought to tear down the fences between genres. Following a stint in the San Francisco psychedelic rock act Office, the singer/songwriter discovered greener pastures when she wrote a batch of country songs in the late ’70s and recorded them in a Santa Cruz garage.

Those songs secured Dalton a record deal with Columbia Records and a hit single with her song “Crazy Blue Eyes.” It also led to her being named the Country Music Association’s Best New Artist in 1979.

The early ‘80s found Dalton with a string of hits including “Takin’ It Easy,” “Hard Times” and “Everybody Makes Mistakes.” She also recorded Tom Schuyler’s “16th Avenue,” a terrific old-school country number about aspiring songwriters coming to Nashville and hoping to make it big in the music scene.

Voted one of country music’s Top 100 Songs by Billboard Magazine, “16th Avenue” resonated with singer/songwriter Dalton when she first heard it. “It appealed to me immediately, because it was all of our stories,” she says.

In the late ’80s, Dalton’s hit singles began to taper off. Yet she seems to be truly energized by refocusing herself on Western music. She cites how contemporary artists like Tom Russell and Ian Tyson are doing great work in the genre. “I think Western music is coming of age,” she says.

Dalton – who has started a non-profit to preserve the wild horses of the West, called the Let ‘Em Ride Foundation – says she has a simple reason why Western music has always appealed to her: “My heroes have always been cowboys.”

But, as a child of the ’60s, Dalton hopes to open up Western music so that it includes material from that decade’s acts. Currently, she is working on a CD titled Songs of the New West, which will find her covering Western classics like “El Paso” along with the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil,” the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” and New Riders of the Purple Sage’s “Last Lonely Eagle.” “I try to stay respectful to the roots,” she says, “and spread my branches a little bit.”

LACY J. DALTON plays the Monterey Cowboy Poetry & Music Festival’s Evolution program with J. Parson and Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum 7pm Saturday, Dec. 12, at the Monterey Conference Center, 1 Portola Plaza, Monterey. $35. 1-800-722-9652.