Cabella And Schmitt

'Featured Artist...02/January/2026...Cabela and Schmitt'

Cabela & Schmitt are: Rich Cabela (guitar, keyboards), Wayne Schmitt (guitar, keyboards), and Tom Schmitt (bass guitar, keyboards).

We are all given a voice, in some way or another, to communicate how we see and experience the world. We have chosen to expose our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings in the best way we can….through a song.

Our music is really a snapshot of our life. The birth of a song happens with just accumulating random thoughts on how life comes and how you react to it. So, the thoughts are there, scattered, no rhymes, no order, just like anybody can have. We always have music in our hearts/heads, and all we do is learn what we hear. The melodies start playing, and suddenly those random thoughts and phrases begin to fall into place, like they belong. Most people call that songwriting, but we don't take that credit for ourselves.

We started like almost everybody else playing and singing in high school. We played piano, guitars, sang in school chorus and we just fell in love with music. Mostly it was never anything too serious but we all just kept doing it and improving our skills until sometimes things started to sound kind of good. As most young 'wannabe' musicians, we learned as many songs from the popular groups as we could and played wherever someone would let us. Soon we had a short list of originals, that just kept growing and growing…and growing. We didn't have time to learn other group's songs any longer. Eventually we got interested in recording, and the rest of the proof is in the tapes and discs we have. I don't know if we'll ever know how many songs we have created. The most important thing is that we have all stayed compatible friends as we have developed our own styles over the years, and continue to do so today.

Rich and I live in Sidney Nebraska. Tom lives in Colorado. Besides spending time creating and recording music, we mostly live normal lives. We have wives, children and grandchildren we love to spend time with. Living in Nebraska is great as we can fish, hunt, and camp in all the open spaces. We all love to travel as much as life allows.

We don't ever want our fans to get bored with our music. We also don't want to sound like anybody else. We want to sound appealing and original, without being too far out there for people to relate to. We've been at this for over 40 years now, so we know we'll be doing this as long as our bodies and minds let us.