Skip to main content

Black Trail Rides: TikTok Line Dance Culture---A TV Reality Show Docuseries Idea

Black Trail Rides Show Based on TikTok Trail Ride Stars-An Idea: A Black trail ride reality TV series inspired by African-American trail ride line dance culture could be the next big hit show on television, whether it's a reality series or docuseries. 

Black Trail Rides Reality Show Inspired by TikTok Line Dance Community

The cast for Season 1 should be a mix of TikTok and social media’s popular Black trail ride dancers, including some of the lesser-known trail riders who came across my timeline and helped get me out of bed and break an almost four-year cycle of inactivity and heartbreak after I lost my 24-year-old daughter, Ivy Brook Walker, to fentanyl poisoning in 2021.


I know this is different from what I normally talk about. Normally, I talk about true crime, movies, and TV shows. Well, this is a potential TV show. I'm teasing it as a potential TV show because trail riding and line dancing are exploding everywhere. I think people want to see a television show based on Black trail ride culture.


Up until now, I have not seen any trail ride line dancing shows on TV—especially Black trail riders. If I’m wrong about that and somehow missed it… well, let me know.


trailride black country soul tv idea
Series Concept: A trail ride TV show based on black trail ride field party culture (credit: Traciy Curry-Reyes)

This isn’t a true pitch, but more like a thank you to the trail ride community. It’s me putting the spotlight on them, because I’d love to see a show featuring these trail riders.


Many will think I’m crazy or having a midlife crisis. They’ll say I just wish I was young again… well, yes, that’s partially true. I definitely wish I was a young woman again… lol. 


But you know, trail ride line dancing isn’t about me trying to find my youth again or me trying to compete with the younger girls. It’s me admiring them. It’s me saying, “Hey, I miss my daughter, and I miss dancing and laughing with her.”


We danced a lot together when my daughter Ivy was little. She remembers me dancing around the kitchen when it was just the two of us. And well, at some point, life got serious… and I sank into a life of true crime stories, which gave me a pretty grim outlook on the world.


I did this story to say, “Ivy, I’m dancing again.”


Watch


Trail Ride Culture Goes Viral



Black trail riding and Southern Soul music are taking America by storm.


The trail riders are stepping to some of the hottest Southern soul, Black country, and Cajun-Creole Zydeco tracks out there, with a little blues and Southern hip-hop on the side.


There are songs like “Boots on the Ground: Where Dem Fans At” by 803 Fresh, “Keep On Steppin’” by Mike Clark Jr., “Country Girl” by Tonio Armani, and “Cowgirl Trailride” by S Dott featuring Tonio Armani—along with many other Southern soul singers and Black trail ride content creators.


It’s a brilliant fusion of genres where Black meets country. 


Trail ride culture has increased in visibility over the last several years, but something about this year feels different—there’s been an explosion of interest on social media. 2025 has been a huge year for Southern soul singers and Black trail ride creators. 803Fresh attended the BET Awards for the first time and brought some of TikTok's most popular trail riders.


Trail riding and traditional country line dance have always been around. And we appreciate the contribution. But now, everybody is learning Black country line dance. Let’s take a look. People of all races, colors, and shades—people of different sizes, different ages... even people like me--people on the larger size who are over 50.


Celebrities are also dancing to these trail ride line dance songs—Phaedra Parks, Khia, Jennifer Hudson, and Niecy Nash as well as some big-name politicians like Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris.

It's a movement now.







traciy-curry-reyes-black-country
Taking in the country scene (credit: Traciy Curry-Reyes



Trail ride Southern Soul music gives me that backyard, backwoods feel. And I love that. I am unable to articulate what I am hearing in this music, but I am hearing an instrument or a sound that is familiar to me. It's giving me 1970s soul music. It's giving me "being in my grandmother's candle-lit living room on a Saturday night as we dance to soul music, like Al Green and The Isley Brothers."



For myself and many others, the attraction is the Southern feel it has to it—a lot of down-home soul. And when I say Southern, I’m talking Deep South... all day long...The Deep South.


I know we have Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Texas, and the Black rodeo—and I know Texas is Southern too—but I’m intentionally distinguishing the Deep South.


If there is a trail ride reality show, I’d love for its first season to feature trail riders from the Deep South. I’m talking….

  • South Carolina

  • Louisiana

  • Georgia

  • Alabama

  • Mississippi

South Carolina is my first choice because they are the first trailriders TikTok's algorithm brought to me. The show could also feature some prominent dancers in other states as well.


A trail ride reality show would be good because I'm not going to go to any "trail rides." You've got people like me who aren't going anywhere. I want to see it on TV. I want to view it from my living room. That's right! TikTok's most popular dancers.


black country-hood country
credit: Traciy Curry-Reyes

Why a Trail Riding TV Show?

Black Country


Let me be honest. It was the dancing that first drew me in. Then came the fascination with seeing black people riding horses and owning ranches. At that point, I was invested. I'd like to know about Black ranch life. I was raised in the suburbs in Alabama, and I have lived in the rural part of town for close to 20 years, so I see horses and cows every day, but I don't see African American people riding horses or tending to the ranch. Just recently, I found out that Alabama has a large trail ride community.

That's so interesting to me.

This new trailride reality show can show us "Black country." Because from what I am hearing from the real trail riders---there is more to trail ride life than "field parties." I, like many others, had labeled all of it trailriding.

Here's the imagery I want to see: I want to see cowboys and cowgirls "putting the horses in the stable." I want them to show us "how to ride, ride, ride, ride." I want snakeskin belts, ladies in their daisy dukes, and guys in cowboy hats. (credit: lyrics---Cowgirl Trailride: Tonio Armani)

I am not a trail rider. I am a writer, a storyteller, a curator of information—a documentarian. I’ve been documenting people’s lives since 2000.

African American trail ride social media culture is a hidden and unique subculture, and I believe audiences are ready to see it. The trail riders are documenting it themselves, but I think a TV show featuring Black trail ride Southern soul line dancers would allow that story arc to play out much more smoothly.

When Cowgirls Trail Ride

While traditional documentaries have beautifully showcased black cowboy culture and the history behind it, what's really taking over on social media is a different energy. I'm documenting the frenzy surrounding it. 

In the concept video on YouTube, I explained that the excitement around this culture happens when everybody is seeing and learning the dances at the same time.

A trail ride dance trend usually starts when a hit song drops. One of the line dance creators, usually in the trail ride community, comes up with some fresh steps that match the vibe of that song.

Once that dance hits social media or the trail ride scene, everybody starts learning it at once—and all that shared energy, that laughter, that joy, creates a moment. And sometimes, that moment goes viral.


*

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering The Woman Who Sued Her Husband's Mistress: 'The Price of a Broken Heart' (The Hutelmyer Case)

  The Price of a Broken Heart, based on Dot Hutelmyer, is true movie nostalgia. I remember this movie and the real case. The true story made headlines in the 1990s when jilted North Carolina wife, Dorothy Hutelmyer, sued her husband's mistress.   Today, they call mistresses side-pieces… The Price of a Broken Heart is also known as Alienation of Affection. The 1999 legal courtroom drama has some heartbreaking moments. We see a devoted wife and mother who encourages her husband every step of the way. But the more his business flourished, the more his eyes wandered. What a shame… It was a long marriage, and Dorothy felt the difference after 18 years. Joe had lost it for her. They were no longer sleeping together, and well, he seemed to have no interest in her. Then, he left. Whoa.. He broke her heart. But he didn’t get away. Dot Hutelmyer was not going to let this woman take her man without compensation.  And Joe? Well, he wouldn't get an ounce of peace until they paid...

The Legend of Dead Darrius: The True Story of Birmingham Alabama's Urban Legend--Mummified Stuffed Boy

Dead Darrius  was said to be a  stuffed boy whose mummified body   sat on a porch in Birmingham, Alabama , between the 1950s and 1960s. Since I was a child, I have always loved a good story—not storybook stories—but real stories, the kind you hear from listening to grown folks talk on the front porch. When someone tells a good one, I immediately know if it's something I want to sink my teeth into. The Legend of Dead Darrius was that kind of story. The boy who sat on the front porch known as Dead Darrius (Credit: File Photo Traciy Curry-Reyes) Ivy Brook Walker  It was around midnight on January 8, 2019, when my daughter, Ivy Brook Walker, entered my room to show me a tweet and a creepy photo of a boy they called Dead Darrius. The tweet urged Birminghamians to ask their parents about the story. Ivy asked me if I'd heard of it.  I hadn't. But the photo intrigued me. I got right up and scoured the Internet for hours trying to find information about this boy th...

Who Killed Dr. Michele St. Romain? Remembering the 1991 Alabama Murder Case

Dr. Michele St. Romain (Doctor Michele Saint Romain) Credit Police File Photo On a warm summer night in June 1991, Dr. Michele St Romain disappeared without a trace. It’s a case you’ve probably never heard. But here in Birmingham, Alabama , it was quite a mystery. Everyone in Birmingham was talking about the missing Children's Hospital doctor. I was 20 years old when a picture of the missing Children’s Hospital doctor flashed all across the local nightly news. The case would take investigators years to solve. Three Alabama cases first sparked my interest in true crime and mysteries . The case of missing doctor Michele St. Romain is one of them.  **In this story, the name of Dr. Michele St. Romain's boyfriend was changed. This is a transcript of the video on YouTube. The Disappearance  Sometime after 6:30 p.m. on the evening of June 11, 1991, Dr. Michele St. Romain finishes dinner with her then-boyfriend, Dr. Stanley McRie, a handsome doctor who works at another Birmingham hosp...