please celebrate Ian & Sylvia

Er, A Mighty Wind to thread?

i remember watching a cowboy twostep with a girl around an empty oval dance floor, in a country bar, while navaho rug played, alone, on the weekend my grandma died...

we sing four strong winds at the edmonton folk fest every year, at the end of the festival. its august, long summers, just before fall, and three days of thousands of people, this kind hippie community of good music, and good booze, and the odd joint, and then all of us on this long hill, looking over the river valley, to the other side, adn the words just well up...its a really strong moment, makes me almost patrotic

other things

the last album, has a song about alberta, that i find really moving, and some of his other work about living here comes the closest to why i still live here, the awe and wonder of the landscape, the sky and the colours and jsut the landscape

mixtape of alberta songs by tyson
The North Saskatchewan (on ol eon)
Alberta's Child (old corrals and sagebrush)
Old Alberta Moon (")
Rockies Turn Rose (cowboyography)
Four Strong Winds (i outgrew the wagon)
Springtime In Alberta (and there i stand amazed)
Eighteen Inches Of Rain
Range Delivery
Always Saying Goodbye

also, his cover of somewhere over the rainbow is one of my favourites

i think tyson is one of the great cowboy singers, and his voice in many way reminds me of lyle lovetts--not the content, he is too meloncholic, earnest, and almost anti ironic, he doesnt have the personae building of lovett, but hsi voice, his bass, shivers me

i know nothing of ian and slyvia or slyvia

i dont think there is a dud album by ian tyson, and his lack of love really makes me wonder

ian was actually working as a cowboy in the 50s, apparently, when he suffered an injury and began to work more at his music stuff. at least that's the official story.

i gotta check out those solo lps.

Excellent, that has made my day.

and of course it reminds me of baez and dylan, but the weird thing is that the power from dylan, etc comes from the rough/smooth, the juxtoposition...ian tyson has a gorgeous, rich baritone, and slyvia is an alto, so it isnt even the hi/lo thing--there voics flow into each other, interlock, in a really well suited way, and its kind of boring

(sometimes its gorgeous...either in its isolation or its union, but that union seems a little devoid of sexuality)

examples where none of the above are true:
where they trade verses in summer wages (which has got a much better whore line than the boxer, and has got some of the best written details, about vancouver, and also being working poor, and being a city boy--i fucking love this song)

lovin sound, which has this great harmonic counterpoint, and its almost bacharachesque

(truckers cafe is well written, but it needs to be more ragged--sammi smith or jesse colter or jeanne c riley or even loretta could have made a minor msterpeice of it)

there are other examples, i will report back

Summer Wages
(Ian Tyson)

Never hit 17 when you play against the dealer
For you know that the odds won't ride with you
And never leave your woman alone when your friends are out to steal her
Years are gambled and lost like summer wages.

And we'll keep rollin on'til we get to Vancouver
And the woman that I love who's living there
It's been 6 long months and more since I've seen her
She may be gambled and gone like summer wages.

And all the beer parlors all down along Main Street
The dreams of the seasons are all spilled down on the floor
All the big stands of timber just waiting for falling
And the hustlers sitting watchfully as they wait there by the door.

So I'll work on the towboats In my slippery city shoes
Which I swore I would never do again
Through the worst fogbound straits where the cedars stand watching
I'll be far off and gone like summer wages.

Ah, she's a woman so fine I may never try to find her
For good memories of what we had before
They should never be changed for they're all that I'll take with me
Now I've gambled and lost my summer wages.

Years are gambled and lost like summer wages.

Summer Wages really is incredible.

(even my canadian friends have no idea who they were when i mention them!).

i dont know about eastern canada but here in the west, theyre important and wellknown. anthony e talked about singing 'four strong winds' at the edmonton folk festival. ian tyson is the model for lots of conspicuously cowboy realschool country music from alberta and even my boys that are into eric church country would be able to tell you something about ian.

i know the ian tyson material better. the ian and tyson folky stuff, great speckled bird pedal steel slick country rock, was never really into that.

amateurist, do you know corb lund?

I really like "You Were On My Mind," particularly the verse that got changed in We Five's hit version:

So I went to the corner
just to ease my pain
it was just to ease my pain
I got drunk
and I got sick
and I came home again

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ian-tyson-dead-at-89-1.6699778

I've always thought "Four Strong Winds" was just okay, but I love this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-g203otiYU

I tried listening to some of their albums once, but the stereo mix with Ian in one ear and Sylvia in the other was too distracting.
I remember my parents attended a taping of their variety show in the early 70s which was apparently Bruce Cockburn's TV debut.