IN CONCERT
What: Ian Tyson and Corb Lund: Cowboy Songs and Stories
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Tuesday, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $43-$58 in person at the Royal McPherson box office, online at rmts.bc.ca, or by phone at 250-386-6121
Corb Lund has adopted an open-ended approach to his collaboration with Ian Tyson. When he’s presented with the opportunity to tour with his good friend, he takes it. Simple as that. “The ball is really in his court,” Lund said Tuesday from his family’s ranch in southern Alberta, near Cardston, where he spent the Christmas holidays. “I’m willing to play with him any time, but that depends on what he’s up to.”
Though the end date of their time together is undetermined, the cowboys will continue as a duo for at least the next week, beginning with a performance in Victoria on Tuesday. The mini tour also includes stops in Vancouver on Jan. 11 and Edmonton on Jan. 13.
“The physical demands of performing … the tale will tell itself,” Tyson said Wednesday from his horse ranch in Longview, Alta. “This run is three dates. We’ll know by the end of it.”
Theirs is an unlikely partnership built on a foundation of similar backgrounds: Lund, a 46-year-old hard rocker turned countrified singer-songwriter, and Tyson, the 84-year-old who wrote the folk standard Four Strong Winds, were both groomed to be Alberta rodeo stars — Lund in his mid-teens and Tyson in his early twenties.
The two, at separate stages in their lives, eventually found greater success through music, Tyson with his then-wife, Sylvia Fricker, in the 1960s folk duo Ian & Sylvia, and Lund during the late 1990s and early 2000s with Edmonton rock favourites The Smalls.
While their paths as solo artists have taken them on wildly separate journeys, their concerts together expand the middle ground between the two, delivering a powerful night of music. “I’d heard of Corb long before I actually met him,” Tyson said. “But once we got together, we realized we had a lot in common. We could really bounce things off each other. And it was pretty entertaining, too.”
They first met a decade ago, after Lund recorded a Tyson song for The Gift, a 2007 tribute album of Tyson songs. Meeting his idol was a dream come true, Lund said. “If you’re a cowboy kid from Alberta, Ian is over-arching. You grew up with him — he’s the guy. I guess it was inevitable we were going to meet eventually, because we’re both from that part of the world. And we’ve been hanging out ever since.”
Lund and Tyson, who will be joined during two 45-minute sets at the Royal Theatre by guitarist Russell Broom and upright bassist Kurt Ciesla, will tell stories as well, a good number of which involve a side of Canada that is slowly disappearing. They adopted that approach during their first run of shows together in 2012, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede. “We did five shows at a little theatre in Calgary,” Lund said. “It was a lot of fun. We did a lot of western songs and cowboy stuff about the history of cattle culture in this part of the country. We know each other well enough that we can chit chat about that stuff. I feel like I can get good stories out of him sometimes, and he does the same thing to me.”
The Lethbridge-based Lund, who is originally from tiny Taber, Alta., comes from a family with a rich rodeo and ranching history. His grandfather was a Calgary Stampede rodeo champion in 1939, and his mother was a barrel-racing champ. Lund competed in Stampede rodeo events in 1981, and was expected to become a staple of the North American circuit before he switched to music full-time.
Tyson offers another perspective on cowboy culture. The Foothills area of Calgary, where Tyson has lived for the past 35 years, was once a cluster of sprawling properties. Today, most have been cut down to 10-acre parcels, Tyson said. The singer’s ranch, one of the biggest in the area at more than 320 acres, now stands as one of the last of its kind. “It used to be a big place. But it has gone away because of all the divorces,” Tyson said with a laugh.
His world is changing, without a doubt. Tyson isn’t so sure it’s for the better, either. “The cowboy world is going. I won’t say it’s gone. But boy, it’s impacted. The livestock industry, in general, is in a state of flux.”
He is one of the last remaining singing cowboys, a genre that was once a thriving subset of traditional country music. “People have been saying this for the last 140 years, but this really is the last of it. I’m very grateful that I got to ride with those [cowboys]. I rode in the deserts of Nevada, and in the mountains of Eastern Oregon. I was cowboy enough that I could do that.”
As for Lund, he’s happy to be along for the ride. “I talk to him like he’s any one of my musician friends,” he said, when asked how he stays on Tyson’s good side. “He’s quite hip. It’s not like hanging out with an older person. I’ll be super casual with him, and then I’ll look over and see [his Order of Canada certificate] on the wall, or a note from Neil Young, and think: ‘Holy shit.’ ”
