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 Ian Tyson's new album Songs From The Gravel Road is the first in six years. |
Ian Tyson was born in Victoria and spent a lot of time singing in the coffee houses of Toronto as half of the legendary folk duo Ian & Sylvia. But ironically, it was only after he gave up folk music for cattle ranching in Alberta that he really found his niche -- as Canada's official cowboy poet troubadour. For the past couple of decades, Tyson has been balancing music with horses and cattle, writing songs inspired by the West in an old house on his ranch and travelling around the country to play them. It's a tough schedule, especially for a 71-year-old, which is perhaps why Songs From The Gravel Road is Tyson's first album of new songs in six years.
"I'm holding up better than I thought I would," he laughs. "I'm going through a difficult divorce right now, and I've found that Hank Williams was right -- heartache doesn't hurt your songwriting. It's been a complicated year, but the songs just keep coming."
The new album is named after the path to Tyson's "music place," where he comes up with his ideas.
"I've always written while walking, I don't know why," he says. "It's about three-quarters of a mile, and there are deer and hawks and owls. The house is made of fieldstone from the prairie, and we do all our rehearsing and demos there. We never put anything away, and I vacuum it out at least twice a year, whether it needs it or not! The furnace is in the bathroom, and when it kicks in you can't record anything -- it sounds as though the Marines have landed. But it's a soulful old house."
Tyson wasn't interested in a traditional country sound for these songs; instead, he recorded them in Toronto with his regular band of Gord Mathews and Gord Maxwell plus Cindy Church, Kevin Breit, Guido Basso, George Koller, Phil Dwyer and other musicians usually known more for jazz than C&W.
"I wanted the best players, so they could take the songs to another level," he explains. "I told them, 'Don't worry about the western thing, I'll bring that. You guys just play big.' And they did."
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The result is a uniquely Tyson hybrid, with his mellow voice singing about working on the rodeo and the oil rig, losing love and not making it home for Christmas -- in Silver Bell, about his Texas-based, rodeo-riding daughter -- accompanied by not just pedal steel and fiddle, but trumpets and soprano sax.
"It's not a country record," he says. "There's a couple of country-ish songs, and one old folk song, but otherwise it's kind of Ian Tyson music, I think. It's a cowboy singing sophisticated songs that hopefully will speak to both urban and rural people."
Tyson plays rare club shows at Hugh's Room tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. In May he'll play for the queen in Edmonton, but that doesn't faze him.
"I haven't thought about that much," he says. "I'll make sure I shine my boots, I guess."
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IAN TYSON
- Wednesday, Thyrsday and Friday - Hugh's Room, 2261 Dundas St. W.
416-531-6604