I had a singular encounter with the band of brothers known as Horse-Eyed Men at the Brooklyn Folk Festival, and since then I’ve had them on my WPKN-FM radio show.

Dylan and Noah Harley are the Horse-Eyed Men.

They have the energy of the Avett Brothers, but with songs that are far more slyly subversive. A case in point is this one, “Come on Cowboy,” which isn’t about the usual macho man bar encounter.

The Horse-Eyed Men – Come on Cowboy from Horatio Baltz on Vimeo.

The Horse-Eyed Men are Dylan and Noah Harley, originally from Providence, Rhode Island. Dylan wrote “Come on Cowboy,” and here describes how he conjured it into being:

I wrote Cowboy on my birthday, July 5 in the summer of ’13. It might have been that fresh mountain air, the burly road crews of Vermont or the pop country radio pumping the airwaves full of hetero-normative schlock, but somewhere between Rutland and Brattleboro, the atmosphere thickened into a song.

Most of the words were written in my shorts by the pool, picturing my Caballero: one part mystery, two parts musk, a deep voice and thick eyebrows. Who doesn’t want to be swept off their feet by a supreme gentleman crooner? What’s more macho than two men in love? What percentage of Brad Paisley’s fan base isn’t “just a guy”? Come on Nashville. Come on America. Come on Cowboy.

The Horse-Eyed Men at the Brooklyn Folk Festival recently. (Jim Motavalli photo)