We are in a brightly lit school gymnasium, it's the middle of the afternoon and outside the wind is howling across Elko, Nevada. The odds against us being offered a transcendent musical experience seem long, and grow longer when the bass player mounts the stage. He's wearing a beret and toting a five-string bass, thereby igniting two of my most deeply held – though doubtless irrational – prejudices. But fleeing whatever is about to happen would also mean leaving this warm room and the roof over it.

My grudging decision to stay is richly rewarded. The bass player is followed by the rest of French Rockin' Boogie, the backing band of Louisiana zydeco (American roots music) singer Geno Delafose. And, in fact, they're astonishing: a glorious, joyful racket, led by largely the only person I've ever seen look supremely cool slinging a piano-accordion (and the bass player is, of course, brilliant).

I've been at Elko's annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, also a music festival, for a few days now, but it's not until Delafose's set that I realise what is unusual about this week. Unlike most cultural festivals, this isn't a tourist attraction: my foreign accent has been a source of continuous excited curiosity. This is a festival actually for the people it's meant to be for, a point Delafose makes much better from the stage.

"I guess," he says, "that like us, you might not make a lot of money. But it's a way of life, and we wouldn't have it any other way."

They saunter off to a standing ovation accompanied by much appreciative hat waving.

You really have to want to come to Elko. It's a long way from anywhere, and feels even more so in winter, whether you drive here across a landscape which reminds me of the forbidding, glorious interior of Afghanistan – although, granted, with more casinos – or you fly from Salt Lake City in twin-propellor aircraft with the sort of pilots who, as I've learned, will take two swipes at landing their contraption at night in a blizzard if they have to.

The Cowboy Poetry Gathering has been wrangled in Elko since 1984 by the Western Folklife Center, an organisation dedicated to the cultural heritage of the American west. The Gathering has a broad programme – there are also exhibitions, workshops and seminars covering subjects from cookery to rawhide braiding. I'm attending at the suggestion of one of the Gathering's artists, Canadian country star Corb Lund, whom I met a few years ago in London when my own modest country combination, The Blazing Zoos, opened for him. (We bonded over a shared nerdish interest in history – Corb's last album but one, Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, was a concept record celebrating cavalrymen through the ages.)

Corb and his band, the Hurtin' Albertans, have played Elko before, and seem to be regarded as part of the family. The audiences here appreciate that Corb, despite being from another country, is one of them: he grew up on a ranch, rode horses and herded steer before he picked up a guitar, and his experiences inform his songs, as should always be the case with country songwriters. (Titles from his current album, Losin' Lately Gambler, include Steer Rider's Blues, This Is My Prairie, and Long Gone To Saskatchewan.) And Corb enjoys playing to crowds which, while smaller than the ones he can draw in Canadian cities, know the life he's singing about.

Corb suggests that I arrive a couple of days early so he can teach me how to play cards. At the end of this process, I will be forced to conclude that either Corb is a lousy teacher or I'm a terrible student. The expense is nevertheless worthwhile for the baleful banter of the dealers.

"Man," says one, named Eddie, as he doles doom across the blackjack table at Stockmen's Casino. "I've never seen anyone pull 11 losing hands in a row before."

I try to match this with an observation to the effect that I'm only staying inside so I don't get struck by lightning.

"Why," he asks, not missing a beat, "do you think I'm standing this far away from you?"

Didn't come all this way to be mocked, I tell him. Get enough of that at home, and so on.

"Lemme help you out," he offers. "Load up the rest of your chips, and this time you can see my cards."

How kind. An eight and a seven for Eddie. Yes, I'm sticking with my 19. With an inevitability that I can just about find amusing, Eddie draws a six.

There is, mercifully, greater – if annoyingly non-convertible – profit to be had from the Gathering's other attractions. We plan our consumption of these over dinner at Biltoki (405 Silver Street), one of Elko's excellent, if intimidating, Basque restaurants (I'd be unsurprised to learn that "bil" is Basque for "blocked", and "toki" Basque for "artery"). Young men from the Basque Country arrived in Elko in the 1870s to work as ranch hands, and now dedicate themselves to serving food whose quality is matched only by its quantity. On our first night we make the amateur's mistake of ordering a meal each, only to be defeated by a perfect filet mignon the size of a baseball mitt, incredible lamb steaks larger than most sheep, and side dishes which might elsewhere be mistaken for swimming pools. (On the last night, we arrive with a party of seven, order three meals and still plead for mercy before the waitresses, clearly doubting our masculine credentials by this point, can bring dessert.)

Corb especially recommends two of the Gathering's elder statesmen, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Ian Tyson. Elliott, a contemporary of Woody Guthrie, was revered by Johnny Cash and singled out as "king of the folk singers" in Bob Dylan's memoir, Chronicles. Tyson made his name and fortune by writing the folk classic Four Strong Winds, which has since been covered by pretty much everybody. The two men are both in their 70s and genuine legendary figures. Other than that, though, their performances could scarcely be more different.

Ramblin' Jack, Corb has explained, did not acquire his nickname because of a penchant for long walks: in nearly an hour onstage, he gets around to three songs, including Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. The rest of the time is taken up with a tangent-riddled anecdote about teaching his dog to drive. It contains not a single punchline, and is one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

Tyson, by contrast, does not mess about. When he storms the stage of the Folklife Center's theatre a couple of nights later, he's a whirlwind of coiled fury in Hawaiian shirt and cowboy hat, and ignites genuine scandal by deploying the word "fuck" in his opening song. (People talk about this for days – cowboys, it turns out, are awfully polite.) Tyson knows, however, that he commands this place with total authority – not just because he looks, sounds and plays like Joe Strummer's grandfather, but because one of his best-known songs, MC Horses, mentions Stockmen's Casino: this elicits a mixture of whoops and knowing laughter.

The music at Cowboy Poetry would make Elko worth the trip even if the people one met there were objectionable and uninteresting. As it happens, they are all the precise opposite of those things, which is just as well, as Elko is a small town, and it quickly becomes impossible to walk the few blocks between Biltoki, Stockmen's, the Folklife Center, the spectacular cowboy-wear emporium of JM Capriola (where you can eavesdrop on the involved process that is buying a hat) and the rejuvenating oasis of Cowboy Joe's coffee shop, without someone hailing you by name. You can reasonably expect to encounter such characters as: Larry Bitterman, a former New York lawyer who reinvented himself as a designer of western-style outfits, which he's selling from his Old Frontier Clothing Company's travelling stall at the Red Lion Casino; a mysterious, nameless, splendidly bearded bushwacker, the image of Roy Rogers' sidekick Gabby Hayes, who politely turns down repeated offers of Hurtin' Albertans guitarist Grant Siemans to play poker for his magnificent hat; Cindy White, a performing poet, and her husband, landscaper Scott Imus, who tells me: "This way of life is about people who still ride alone on days as cold as these, with large animals that can kill them. That promotes a style of thinking – self-reliance, courtesy and knowing that when you shake a guy's hand he means it. And it isn't bullshit."

And one night at the Western Folklife Center's bar, I'm discussing this and that with a fellow called Ron, to whom I've been introduced by someone I was introduced to by someone else. Ron is an affable sort with a silver-flecked goatee beard, clad in the festival fatigues of western shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He has been explaining that, to him, Las Vegas was never the real Nevada, that the state is really about rural communities like Elko, and the egalitarian spirit of such places. After a couple of drinks, it occurs to me to ask Ron what line of work he's in.

"Well, Andrew," he says, in that punctiliously courteous way Americans have of employing your name as if it's an honorific, "right at the moment, I'm chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court."

It's not the answer I was expecting, and my surprise is probably discernible. Ron proffers his card by way of confirmation. If I ever do shoot the proverbial man in Reno just to watch him die, I guess I'll know who to call.

The final event of the festival is a midnight dance at the Folklife Center, headlined by the Hurtin' Albertans. It's the last of the four shows they've played this week, and they've stepped it up on the sartorial front, gracing the stage in embroidered tuxedos. The effort is reflected in the crowd too, and I need to remind myself that these people in hats, boots, pristine jeans and radiantly decorated shirts are not in fancy dress: these are their town clothes. And this is their music, straightforward and heartfelt, with fathoms of wisdom and humour likely to be lost on anyone who can't or won't see past the surface.

They mix it up tonight, leavening their own songs with a medley of Merle Haggard tunes, Waylon Jennings' Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way, Tyson's MC Horses, and their own signature drinking song, It's Time To Switch To Whiskey – played, tonight, well past the point at which everybody has – amalgamated with Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues. In the dressing room afterwards, Keri Lynn Zwicker, in Elko with country/folk crossover group Cowboy Celtic, performs an impromptu recital of 80s rock standards arranged for the harp: AC/DC and Bryan Adams have never sounded so stately.

It's past three in the morning when the venue empties, but the lights of Stockmen's are still ablaze across the snow-covered square.

"Come on," says Corb. "I feel like getting into trouble."
• Flights from London to Elko (via Salt Lake City plus one other city) booked through netflights.com (0844 493 4944) start from around £565 for January 2011. Netflights.com can also book hotels and car hire. The 2011 Cowboy Poetry Gathering runs from 24–29 January. Book accommodation well in advance; the festival website has a choice of options.