Ian Tyson

[charlene]

I gave a listen to the song mentioned below (link) Tyson's voice is not anything like it was even just a few years ago but as the review at the link farther down says it works for the songs..but my goodness it was hard to listen to at first..You can also listen to cuts from previous albums..
he also has arthritis in his hands/thumb, his marriage fell apart a few years ago..omigoodness..he's the epitome of a sad country song..

OL’EON AT 75

If craggy American character actor Harry Dean Stanton warbled professionally he’d probably sound like Canadian folk patriarch Ian Tyson on his new album "Yellowhead to Yellowstone and other Love Stories" released by Stony Plain on Nov. 11, 2008.

At age 75, Tyson didn't reckon on his rich, recognizable voice betraying him, the victim of strain and a virus that has left him with just a croak. Nor did he expect his 20-year second marriage to come to an end. Nor did he expect he’d record what may be the most reflective album of his career. And he doesn’t look 75 in the album’s cover art.

Still a cowboy pinup.

One of the album’s best songs wasn’t penned by Tyson, best-known for “Four Strong Winds” and “Someday Soon.”

"My Cherry Coloured Rose" was written by little-known Canadian singer/songwriter Jay Aymar.

Aymar explains how the song about legendary Canadian hockey broadcaster Don Cherry and his late wife Rose came about.

“Five years ago, I was with my girlfriend (who lives in Charlotte, NC) watching a CBC feed of ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ in a sports bar. Imagine trying to explain to NASCAR fans who Don Cherry is.

“As I explained to my girlfriend and others Don’s story, it occurred to me how much Rose was an integral part of the story. The next morning the song came easily to me. I wrote it in about an hour….I felt that it was much too personal to record. My girlfriend suggested that I send it to Don as a nice sentiment for him. I sent him a scratch mix and he gave me permission to record it. I recorded it, put in on a new CD (“Memories”) and sent it to CBC Sports. Don called me back a few weeks later saying he and the family really loved the song. That was about three years ago. Never did much with it other than sell my CD off stage.

“In March of 2008, I read an article on Ian Tyson in the Toronto Globe & Mail entitled ‘Tyson Comes Clean.” It was a very moving piece about Ian and his trials and tribulations over the years. For some unknown reason I sent him a very short note of encouragement and mailed the CD to his coffee shop in Longview, Alberta. I didn’t expect anything to come of it. He called me about two weeks later saying he enjoyed my music and thought I was a worthy songwriter. I was truly amazed and honoured. Then he mentioned how he loved ‘My Cherry Coloured Rose’ and would like to record it.

“Mr. Tyson performed the song wonderfully and I am very proud of his version of it.”

Tyson first made his mark on the music scene in the '60s as half of the folk/country duo Ian & Sylvia, who were inducted into Canada's Juno Hall of Fame in 1991. Married in 1964, Ian and Sylvia Tyson were at the forefront of the North American folk movement. They recorded 13 albums before they split in 1975 as both an act and a couple.

One of the songs Tyson penned in the '60s was "Four Strong Winds," with the lines "Think I'll go out to Alberta/Weather's good there in the fall." Twenty years later, he did go out to Alberta and began living the Western cowboy life.

In 1983, Tyson recorded "Old Corrals and Sagebrush," an album of cowboy songs he intended as a Christmas present for friends. However, after his performance that year at the inaugural National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev., Columbia Records picked up the album for release in Canada. Tyson has since released eight Western-themed albums, seven via Stony Plain and Vanguard.

For a free Ian Tyson download of "My Cherry Coloured Rose" go to:

http://www.stonyplainrecords.com/iantyson
Click on "My Cherry Coloured Rose.”

You’ll be moved. Even if you are not a hockey fan.

DON CHERRY SURE KNOWS HOW TO WRITE A TRIBUTE

Below is a fine tribute by Don Cherry to his wife for the Rose Cherry’s Home for Kids. It chokes me up every time I read it.

“Rose Cherry was born Rosemarie Madelyn Martini in Hershey, Pa, 1935. At seventeen, met Donald S. Cherry in his rookie year playing for the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League with a big future for the N.H.L. They were married; Cindy was born (while I was away in the playoffs); unfortunately for Rose, Don was injured and the big future didn’t materialize and Don and Rose spent the next 20 years in Siberia; Don riding the buses and Rose packing to move and moving from place to place; if you believe it, Rose packed and moved 53 times.

“The minor career is a tough life for families; one bedroom; Cindy slept on a mattress on the floor, and bathed in the kitchen sink; toilets were in the cellar with cold air blowing through holes in the walls; so cold you had to have blankets around you when you had to go; it was not pretty.

“Rose, 8 months pregnant flying from Spokane, Washington, takes shoes off and feet swell; can’t get shoes back on and has to be carried from the plane in the snow to the airport; then walking through airport in bare feet with 6 year old Cindy; only to catch a smaller plane; carried again; on the way to Harrisburg, Pa and picked up by father (I often wonder what he thought).

“My father dies, her father killed in car accident on the way back from the funeral (still she hangs tough); sent to places like Three Rivers, Quebec; Christmas Eve, must travel all night to play an afternoon game; all the while Cindy in the back seat. In Springfield, come back to our apartment after game on the road, Rose curled up in bed, the place alive with mice and rats.

“The point I’m trying to make is Rose Cherry’s Home for Kids is named after a person who never quit; 16 years in the minors making $4500; 53 moves; having babies alone; traveling pregnant; living in God forsaken places (I am ashamed) and as God is my judge never complained once. I know at times she must have been unhappy, especially at the end of my career, no job, no trade, no education, could not get a job sweeping floors. Sixteen years of this and still she "Hung Tough" as we say in hockey.”

recent reviews of Tyson concerts : http://www.iantyson.com/pages/reviews.asp

[lighthead2toe]

I don't think I've ever seen a package of joy and sorrow all together as one like this Char.

It's very overwhelming. I recently saw Ian being interviewed on CBC and he talked about what happened with his voice, even did a vocal exercise to describe it in the raw. He bared his soul pretty much.

The high end of his register is still there in it's true "Four Strong Wind" clarity but the lower end has gone all raspy and he did say it's was due to a virus. Very sad indeed.

His mark is engraved deep in the culture of great Canadian singer songwriters and he's a living legend among us still so at least we can be thankful for that.
Saddle on there Ian.
RJ.

[charlene]

I felt so sad when I heard the cut from the new CD...
but it's encouraging to know that he's dealing with it and for the most part the new sound fits the songs in so many ways..much as Gord's voice gives new emotion and meaning to the old tunes and is perfect for the newer ones..
two legends still gettin' it done..

[charlene]

photo and article @
http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/11/24/the-end-of-love-and-a-famous-voice/

Arts & Culture - Written by Brian D. Johnson on Monday, November 24, 2008 9:00 - 2
The end of love and a famous voice
With his heart and his vocal chords shredded, Ian Tyson bares his soul on a brave new CD

Tags: Four Strong Winds, Ian & Sylvia, Ian Tyson, Neil Young, Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Songs

Ian Tyson is on the phone, and his voice sounds as ragged as a tumbleweed rattling over a dusty plain. It’s 8 a.m. in High River, Alta., and a fierce gale is whipping across Tyson’s ranch. “The wind is blowing like there’s no tomorrow,” he says. “It’s going to be a hundred clicks today. You gotta tie things down. When I first came here they had these asphalt shingles on the barns, and when a storm took them off you’d see what looked like a huge, immeasurable flock of vultures in the sky.” Tyson, the cowboy poet reaching for an early morning metaphor, knows a thing or two about wind. His classic ballad, Four Strong Winds—recorded with Ian & Sylvia and adopted by Neil Young—was voted the best Canadian song of all time by CBC Radio three years ago.

But one of the most beautiful voices ever to sing of women and horses and heartbreak is now broken. Its smooth, clear depths are drained and its timbre is cracked like a dry riverbed. The damage was done two years ago at the Havelock Jamboree, a country music festival in Ontario. “The sound was set up for Nashville rock ’n’ roll, all heavy bass,” Tyson explains. “I stupidly tried to outmuscle the sound with my voice, which I’d gotten away with all those years. When I got offstage, I knew I’d done something strange and terrible. Then it was too late.” His voice partially recovered, but last year he caught a nasty virus on a flight from Denver and it hasn’t been the same since. “There’s a lot of scarring down there,” he says.

That, however, didn’t stop Tyson from recording a new album with what was left of his vocal cords. Last week, the singer-songwriter, who turned 75 this year, released Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Songs, his 14th album. Most of the songs are sad ballads—made even sadder by a voice that’s painfully torn and frayed. The difference in Tyson’s singing is so radical that it amounts to a whole new style: and his Edmonton-based label, Stony Plains Records, is promoting his “dramatically ‘new’ voice” as a selling point. It’s a half-talking delivery that sounds not unlike Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. “I didn’t realize I was doing it,” says Tyson, “but when I listened to the album, I heard a lot of Knopfler. And he’s a huge influence, especially on the songwriting.”

Though the bass has dropped out of Tyson’s voice, he has discovered some strange new frontiers in the upper shallows that give it a sense of fragility. “The bottom end is gone completely,” he says, “but the top end seems to be lengthening. There’s all sorts of funny avenues you can take in the upper register. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Tyson says he was reluctant to record at first. But Alberta country singer Corb Lund, a close friend, urged him to forge ahead, saying, “I like your voice better the way it is now.” Lund connected him with his Nashville producer, Harry Stinson, who has worked with everyone from George Jones to Steve Earle. Tyson laid down most of the album’s tracks in Nashville in just four days, for a fraction of what he’d spent in Toronto on his previous record, Songs From the Gravel Road, which bombed. This album is attracting a lot of curiosity and some favourable reviews.

Most of the songs are tender laments for a lost love or a vanished frontier. Some verge on the maudlin, but Tyson is not content to sit back in the saddle of country and western cliché—who else would rhyme “some damn bureaucrat” with “abrogate a cowboy hat”? The title tune, Yellowhead to Yellowstone, is sung from the viewpoint of a pack of wolves transplanted from the Canadian Rockies to Wyoming—the kind of epic narrative Gordon Lightfoot used to write. And My Cherry Coloured Rose, about Don Cherry mourning his wife, was sent to him on a homemade CD by Toronto songwriter Jay Aymar.

The breakup ballads on the new album were inspired by “a deep, serious love affair that went south,” says Tyson. “It’s been a tough couple of years.” But he’s not referring to his divorce from his second wife, which finally came through last spring. “The divorce songs were on the previous album.”

Living alone on his ranch, Tyson still works on a horse most days. And next month he’s off to Oklahoma to ride in a major cutting horse championship. He will continue to tour with the “new” voice, and inevitably there are requests for Four Strong Winds. “I don’t like doing it all the time,” he says. “I wrote that thing in 20 minutes and I was just a kid. It’s like someone else wrote it.” Now it will sound like someone else is singing it.

[charlene]

photo and article @
http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/11/24/the-end-of-love-and-a-famous-voice/

Arts & Culture - Written by Brian D. Johnson on Monday, November 24, 2008 9:00 - 2
The end of love and a famous voice
With his heart and his vocal chords shredded, Ian Tyson bares his soul on a brave new CD

Tags: Four Strong Winds, Ian & Sylvia, Ian Tyson, Neil Young, Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Songs

Ian Tyson is on the phone, and his voice sounds as ragged as a tumbleweed rattling over a dusty plain. It’s 8 a.m. in High River, Alta., and a fierce gale is whipping across Tyson’s ranch. “The wind is blowing like there’s no tomorrow,” he says. “It’s going to be a hundred clicks today. You gotta tie things down. When I first came here they had these asphalt shingles on the barns, and when a storm took them off you’d see what looked like a huge, immeasurable flock of vultures in the sky.” Tyson, the cowboy poet reaching for an early morning metaphor, knows a thing or two about wind. His classic ballad, Four Strong Winds—recorded with Ian & Sylvia and adopted by Neil Young—was voted the best Canadian song of all time by CBC Radio three years ago.

But one of the most beautiful voices ever to sing of women and horses and heartbreak is now broken. Its smooth, clear depths are drained and its timbre is cracked like a dry riverbed. The damage was done two years ago at the Havelock Jamboree, a country music festival in Ontario. “The sound was set up for Nashville rock ’n’ roll, all heavy bass,” Tyson explains. “I stupidly tried to outmuscle the sound with my voice, which I’d gotten away with all those years. When I got offstage, I knew I’d done something strange and terrible. Then it was too late.” His voice partially recovered, but last year he caught a nasty virus on a flight from Denver and it hasn’t been the same since. “There’s a lot of scarring down there,” he says.

That, however, didn’t stop Tyson from recording a new album with what was left of his vocal cords. Last week, the singer-songwriter, who turned 75 this year, released Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Songs, his 14th album. Most of the songs are sad ballads—made even sadder by a voice that’s painfully torn and frayed. The difference in Tyson’s singing is so radical that it amounts to a whole new style: and his Edmonton-based label, Stony Plains Records, is promoting his “dramatically ‘new’ voice” as a selling point. It’s a half-talking delivery that sounds not unlike Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. “I didn’t realize I was doing it,” says Tyson, “but when I listened to the album, I heard a lot of Knopfler. And he’s a huge influence, especially on the songwriting.”

Though the bass has dropped out of Tyson’s voice, he has discovered some strange new frontiers in the upper shallows that give it a sense of fragility. “The bottom end is gone completely,” he says, “but the top end seems to be lengthening. There’s all sorts of funny avenues you can take in the upper register. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Tyson says he was reluctant to record at first. But Alberta country singer Corb Lund, a close friend, urged him to forge ahead, saying, “I like your voice better the way it is now.” Lund connected him with his Nashville producer, Harry Stinson, who has worked with everyone from George Jones to Steve Earle. Tyson laid down most of the album’s tracks in Nashville in just four days, for a fraction of what he’d spent in Toronto on his previous record, Songs From the Gravel Road, which bombed. This album is attracting a lot of curiosity and some favourable reviews.

Most of the songs are tender laments for a lost love or a vanished frontier. Some verge on the maudlin, but Tyson is not content to sit back in the saddle of country and western cliché—who else would rhyme “some damn bureaucrat” with “abrogate a cowboy hat”? The title tune, Yellowhead to Yellowstone, is sung from the viewpoint of a pack of wolves transplanted from the Canadian Rockies to Wyoming—the kind of epic narrative Gordon Lightfoot used to write. And My Cherry Coloured Rose, about Don Cherry mourning his wife, was sent to him on a homemade CD by Toronto songwriter Jay Aymar.

The breakup ballads on the new album were inspired by “a deep, serious love affair that went south,” says Tyson. “It’s been a tough couple of years.” But he’s not referring to his divorce from his second wife, which finally came through last spring. “The divorce songs were on the previous album.”

Living alone on his ranch, Tyson still works on a horse most days. And next month he’s off to Oklahoma to ride in a major cutting horse championship. He will continue to tour with the “new” voice, and inevitably there are requests for Four Strong Winds. “I don’t like doing it all the time,” he says. “I wrote that thing in 20 minutes and I was just a kid. It’s like someone else wrote it.” Now it will sound like someone else is singing it.

[Jesse Joe]

Down here they have a saying that when you reach 50, there's no more warranty... lol !

But I guess after 70, it's the voice that the warranty expires.

[jj]

two legends still gettin' it done..

video lag problem here but i do particularly love those first 5 secs
YouTube - Ian Tyson - If you Could Read My Mind