May you stay where the river runs through
The range and the sky, buckskin and blue
May you ride to the end on the wings of the wind
Til you’re home and your circle is through.
It’s not unexpected, but I nonetheless feel a deep pang of loss at the news that Ian Tyson has gone up the trail. From CBC:
Canadian folk music icon Ian Tyson died Thursday morning, his ex-wife confirmed to CBC News.
His former wife and musical partner, Sylvia Tyson, said the 89-year-old’s impact on Canadian culture is hard to overstate.
“I sat in with a young band at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto and they wanted me to do Four Strong Winds with them. It was quite a young audience and I didn’t really expect that kind of response but everybody in the crowd sang Four Strong Winds,” she told CBC News in a phone interview Thursday.
“It’s kind of like a Canadian national anthem.”
We had Ian here at the Sisters Folk Festival twice. His music has been intertwined in my life in Oregon since we moved here in 1993, embodied in his song MC Horses (hat tip to Craig Rullman, who rode a horse from the MC cavvy back in his buckaroo days).
Ian Tyson was a historian as well as a poet of the West. His catalogue of outstanding songs is long, starting with the iconic Four Strong Winds.
Ian seemed to be acutely aware of the transience of good things — from the West itself to our wild, free, and romantic youth. I have long loved (and performed) the wistful 50 Years Ago. And damned if I’m not sitting here welling up listening to it now. No matter how long you get, it’s too damned short.
Some of Tyson’s best songs were co-written with the great Tom Russell — most famously Navajo Rug. Ian once famously called Russell “the king of the knife-and-whore-songs.” He meant it in a good way.
A few years back, Tom wrote a song about Ian that hit some powerful truth. The old man was never going to leave his horses. And he didn’t.
One of my very favorite Tyson songs is a cinematic epic, a deep cut off of the first album of his that I purchased when we came to Oregon.
I could just keep posting song after great song, but I reckon you can go down that trail yourself if you’re so inclined. I’ll wrap this up with Ian’s own self-penned eulogy, because it can’t be said better.
Thom Eley says
Tears. He had much influence on my life. Rest in peace, Pard.
SQUIRE RUSTICUS says
Sad New….
I became a fan when Cowboyography came out due to an article in Western Horseman. Back then Ian’s music wasn’t to be found in local music stores, BUT it changed everything for me. It WAS real Cowboy and real West Ranch music, Not Country Pop. I tried to introduce the music, to my cowboy friends like Id found treasure, because it spoke to my heart. Ian’s music introduced me to Tom Russell, Corb Lund, a whole new World, like finding a library full classics you didn’t know existed.
I found each new album a treasure, even after Ian had strained his voice, and changed his rich sound, to something far different, but still wonderful, because it became that of an elder. (Wise mystic sharing his wisdom of his life’s experiences)
In the late 80’s after college, I stopped cowboying, didn’t get the jobs I trained for, made some awlful career choices, and went to work for a factory. My supervisor was a sick degenerate, whom made everyone’s life miserable. Anyway when I got to missing spring branding, pulling calves (my father and I still had cattle 175 miles from where I lived, but due to his losses in the oil business our herd shrank considerably, and we bickered a lot), I could put on Ian’s music and make through the day. To be a ranch cowboy, and go to working in a factory, was definitely spirit crushing, although it meant more money. My parents also owned a manufacturing plant until I was mid way through High School, so I knew what to expect, but it is the lack of nature, moving to the city, working with a reprobate, well it was a low point in life choices. But it brought me to where I am now.
Sadly my only chance at seeing Ian, was stopped by a freak snow blizzard many years ago. Couldn’t get to the show as they shut the highways down.
A decade later in Pendleton there was rumors, stories, of Ian from persons whom knew something of him after his 2nd divorce. While there I got to see Dave Stamey at Hamley’s in concert (it was wonderful), wish I could of caught one of Mr. Tyson’s shows too…
Maybe the West ain’t never going to die, but it will never be exactly as it once was with one of it’s greatest story telling trubadors now gone.
JimC says
This is wonderful. Thank you.