 Ian Tyson We’re careening through the deep green Galway countryside, the year is 1989, it’s raining, we’ve just had another gut-twisting Irish breakfast, and with three moldy kids yammering in the back of the van I’m tempted to swerve to the right side of the skinny road and let a milk truck take us out. My oldest daughter slips a tape in the deck, cranks up the volume, and, to a loping beat, Ian Tyson is singing:
home fries on the side,
Wash it down with road house coffee,
burns up your insides.
Just a canyon Colorado diner,
and a waitress I did love,
I sat in the back ‘neath an old stuffed bear,
and a worn out Navajo rug.”
On comes the chorus, windows open, and we’re all belting it out, turning the heads of black Angus and black Irish alike: “Aye, yi, yi, Katie,
shades of red and blue,
Aye, yi, yi, Katie,
whatever became of the Navajo rug and you.”
I was reminded of that ecstatic moment by the news that Tyson, now 75, is touring Wyoming and the western provinces this month. He’s an old Canadian folkie (greybeards will remember “Ian & Sylvia”) who moved back to the ranch in Alberta and was re-born as an avatar of ‘cowboy song’ – a narrow-gauge genre that takes some critical lumps outside of Galway, especially when it gets lumped with ‘country’ or ‘cowboy poetry.’ And I sometimes agree, frankly, when its adherents put more maudlin excreta in their songs than they could possibly collect on their boots (listen, if you dare, to “Great American Cowboy” by the popular Sons of the San Joaquin). But when you hear the real thing, it’s a rendering of loneliness and hard work and landscape and (sometimes) joy about as authentic as you could ask for. John Prine in the sagebrush. For 25 years now, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody has gathered cowboy song performers annually for a weekend of music, education and song-swapping (April 10-13 this year). It’s not a much-heralded event, perhaps because, if you’ve endured the cowboy poetry craze emanating from Elko, Nevada, you may join me in cringing at the thought of “Cremation of Sam McGee” set to music. Forgive me, all you dogie doggerel aficionados, but this is much better. First of all, it’s roots music: connections across the Atlantic far pre-date my family van. Cowboy music grew out of the Scots-Irish tunes that immigrants brought to Appalachia and eventually out on the American plains. At the Cody gathering last year, Brit Connie Dover sang with cowboy Skip Gorman; she would do a few verses of “The Unfortunate Rake,” and then Gorman would take over with “The Streets of Laredo.” The musical lineage was unmistakable. And today’s cowboy music is not just old stuff – real cowboys, what few there are left, write real songs, like Paul Zarzyski’s eloquent “Buckin’ Horse Moon” or Michael Hurwitz’s “When the Work's All Done.” Last year I videotaped Hurwitz – a man with some saddle years showing on him – leaning against a fence on the EJ Ranch along the Shoshone River, singing and strumming his laconic guitar with numb fingers in a chill wind. “Gathered cows all morning,
shipping time today
When the trucks rode off in cloud of dust,
had to turn away
Leaning on the chutes,
feeling cold and low
‘nother year gone past,
nothing much to show.”
Artfully simple. Later, we synched the ranch tape up with a studio recording his band made of the same tune, and, astonishingly, it was right on tempo and right on pitch. Skillfully artful. If you get a chance, go and hear Hurwitz yourself (www.mikehurwitz.com). Or catch Tyson on this tour ( www.iantyson.com).
I can’t exactly tell you what makes a cowboy song a cowboy song – as folklorist Tex Garry says, appreciatively, it’s a living, changing thing. Maybe it’s just what fits – what plays in your head when you’re riding in a smelly, crowded van and you remember walking alone along the rim of the Sweetwater Canyon with a sea of desert behind you, your collar high against the chilling wind, and suddenly on the bank opposite there are wild horses galloping along.
“Aye, yi, yi, Katie,
shades of red and blue,
Aye, yi, yi, Katie,
whatever became of the Navajo rug and you.”
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