About a dozen years before Westerns turned dark and cynical in the late 1960s, the airwaves were full of cheery, garishly dressed cowpokes who always triumphed over the bad guys yet never compromised their values.

Plus, they sang a lot.

In the ’70s, there were still a lot of guys around who remembered watching those shows as kids. But the memories were fading.

Riders in the Sky started as three folk musicians who wanted to preserve that tradition of clean-cut buckaroos and their sweet songs.

“That beautiful style was dying on the vine,” says Doug Green, aka Ranger Doug. “It was being forgotten or relegated to nostalgia, and we wanted it to live.”

So Riders in the Sky was born.

Green says the band had no idea at the time how successful they would be at that endeavor.

“To describe what we thought we were doing as a ‘concept’ would be to use too grand a word,” he says.

Riders in the Sky, a foursome since the mid-’90s, will perform with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic at 8 p.m. today and Saturday.

At first, Green says, the band played just in bars for like-minded people.

“We figured there was an audience out there of people our age who loved that tradition of music and would appreciate hearing it played with any sort of panache,” he says.

These days, Riders in the Sky is hugely popular with kids and other fans of children’s music.

This despite the fact that most kids who come to their shows have no idea who Gene Autry or Roy Rogers were. Neither do their parents in most cases, Green says.

Green says kids like the music because it’s easy to understand, unlike some contemporary country.

“We’re not singing about stuff like unfaithfulness and alcoholism,” Green says. “We’re singing about buddies riding the range. We’re singing about campfires. We’re singing about horses. Kids can certainly understand that.”

There is a fair bit of sly but gentle comedy in a Riders in the Sky show and, often, some improvisation.

“Ninety percent of it is me being the straight guy,” Green says. “I set ’em up and (bassist Too Slim) hits ’em out the park.”

The concerts that the band does in collaboration with orchestras are a little more rigidly constructed, Green says, but the trade-off is lushness.

“Those incredible Western melodies seem built for orchestral treatment,” he says.

Riders in the Sky has won two Grammys, contributed the song “Woody’s Roundup” to “Toy Story 2” and played the Hollywood Bowl.

These accomplishments never fail to seem somewhat improbable to Green.

“Every day I get to do what I love to do,” he says. “And I get paid.”

Bands with fewer years under their collective belts have self-destructed because of egos and infighting.

Green says the Riders learned long ago the secret of staying friendly.

“Separate hotel rooms are the answer,” he says. “You don’t want a roommate on the road.”

spen@jg.net