Just worked up the beautiful Ian Tyson/Tom Russell song “When The Wolves No Longer Sing.”
Gretchen Peters sang this on Tom’s magnum opus, “Rose of Roscrae”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN45KfO3gco
Ian recorded it on his most recent CD and Tom Russell and Thad Beckman are out there on the road with it right now (videos below).
The balance of loss and hope is exquisite and the melody is lovely. A joy to play and sing.
Oh the raven flies o’er these valleys, but he don’t make a sound
O’er the deserts and the cities, he’s refusing to look down
And the old songs are forgotten, gone with the Raven on the wing
And love no longer matters, and the wolves no longer singNow the old man sold his horses, and his children sold the ranch
And there’s roads all through that valley, where his ponies used to dance
The dry wind sings a lonesome tune, a longing for the Spring
And love no longer matters, and the wolves no longer singThe Old Man sold his kingdom for a song
What’s happened to the music? Where have the wild ones gone?The rain will come again one day; the stars will keep on shinin’
And the poets will return again, magic melody and rhymin’
And if God is out there somewhere, looking down on everything
Then love will always matter, and the wolves will always singThen Love will always matter, and the wolves will always sing
Tom Russell:
Ian Tyson album cut:
Lane Batot says
Maybe the Gray/Timber wolves “no longer sing” in many lands where they used to(sigh), but by gawd the coyotes still do, and in places they never used to, no matter what the wasichu have done to try and exterminate them! That’s the trickster coyote for you! Even “invaded” the white-man cities! And here in the East, we are getting what are being called “Coy-wolves”–LARGE coyotes with some DNA proven wolf genes in their ancestry–a sort-of reinvention of the former “Red Wolves” of the Eastern seaboard that were here when the first Europeans invaded–like they said in “Jurassic Park” “Nature finds a way”! One reason I am an unapologetic(if vilified for it!) Coyote Lover!