Ian Tyson
Where: McPherson Playhouse
When: Today, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $59.50; 250-386 6121
His voice is now fixed. And he’s even contemplating a new album.
At the ripe old age of 80, Ian Tyson is back in the saddle.
“Now that I’ve got my voice back, it’s terrific,” said the cowboy singer-songwriter who tonight joins his band (featuring Nanaimo guitarist Lee Warden) at McPherson Playhouse.
Tyson first developed throat problems around 2006. He sang too hard at an Ontario festival. (“Basically, he had a rock ’n’ roll sound guy who didn’t know what the f--k he was doing,” said Tyson’s publicist, Richard Flohil.) This, combined with catching a virus around the same time, left him with a permanently husky timbre.
Tyson said sometimes he couldn’t sing at all. He had to alter his delivery; keys had to be changed. He could still perform, but it seemed like the old voice was gone for good.
Then, in 2012, a Calgary doctor performed surgery to remove polyps. Voice therapy followed. Flohil said Tyson now sounds just like he used to.
That may be true. But the singer says — once again — he was compelled to change his vocal technique following the surgery.
“I sing differently now. I approach it differently. I’ve done a lot of [voice] therapy,” he said.
In Canadian music, Victoria-born Tyson is a legend. As half of Ian and Sylvia, he has hits with Four Strong Winds and Someday Soon. After that, Tyson and his former wife Sylvia Fricker formed a country rock outfit, Great Speckled Bird, before he became an acclaimed solo artist. He made a comeback in the 1980s with a series of cowboy-culture albums. In 1986, his recording Cowboyography sold more than 100,000 copies.
As well as singing, Tyson maintains a horse and cattle ranch south of Calgary, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. If you ask him how many acres it is, he’ll gently admonish: “You don’t ask a rancher about his acreage — that’s just not done.” But it is a lot of work.
Now in his ninth decade, the only concession Tyson has made in his advancing years is to stop riding young, spirited horses. A few years back he was bucked off and injured.
“I kind of had to choose,” he said. “So I chose the music. But I was cowboying yesterday and it feels great, like old times.”
Tyson said he still loves performing, although he dislikes the tedium of airplane travel. Meanwhile, a new album is on the horizon. Tyson, who admits songwriting gets no easier with age, said he’ll collaborate on some of the songs.
“You’ve already used up a tremendous amount of material. You’re reinventing the wheel, which is OK. But you’ve got to find a fresh slant on things.”
Songwriting, he added, is “still fun if you get something, if you get a fish on the line. But a lot of days you don’t. You don’t get a bite, let alone a fish on the line.”
Tyson lived in Victoria until he was 15 and spent summers at his grandmother’s farm near Cadboro Bay (his sister still lives here). As a kid he read cowboy stories and dreamed of becoming one himself.
Unlike some singers who merely wear the cowboy hat, Tyson is a bona fide cowboy. He’s a championship cutting-horse rider. When a reporter asked him to compare his two lifelong loves — ranching and music — he hesitated.
“They’re both never-ending journeys,” Tyson finally said. “And the journey ends when you tip over. It doesn’t end until you die.”
