Country music legend Ian Tyson passes away at 89

A Foothills country music legend has passed.

On Dec. 29, Canadian country musician Ian Tyson passed away at the age of 89 at his ranch near Longview following ongoing health complications.

Born to British immigrants in Victoria, Tyson grew up in Duncan, B.C., becoming a rough stock rider in his teens and twenties. It was while recovering from a rodeo injury that he picked up the guitar.

Hitchhiking from Vancouver Island to Toronto, he met small-town Ontario singer Sylvia Fricker. As a duo the two were swept up by the ‘60s folk boom, marrying in 1964.

They created nearly a dozen albums and songs like Ian’s Four Strong Winds and Someday Soon, and Sylvia’s You Were on My Mind, covered by the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Judy Collins.

The couple mentored another up-and-coming singer of the day, Gordon Lightfoot.

They formed the band Great Speckled Bird in 1969, putting out a handful of albums and singles through to 1974.

Tyson hosted a national Canadian television show from 1970-75, and when his marriage and creative partnership with Fricker ended, he headed west and spent time training horses in southern Alberta.

Three years later though, he stepped back up to the mic and recorded the cowboy album Old Corrals & Sagebrush.

“It was a kind of a musical Christmas card for my friends,” recalled Tyson, as cited in an Eric Alper press release. “We weren’t looking for a ‘hit’ or radio play or anything like that.”    

He was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1987 and in 2005, Four Strong Winds was named as the greatest Canadian Song of all time by CBC Radio One listeners on the series 50 Tracks: The Canadian Version.

There have been some bumps on the trail though, and in 2006 after a performance at an outdoor country music festival, Tyson seriously damaged his voice.

“I fought the sound system and I lost,” he said afterwards.

Following a months-long battle with a virus soon after, and the resultant loss of his smooth voice, Tyson began to work with his new, rougher voice to the delight of his dedicated fans.

His most recent single You Should Have Known was released in 2017 on Stony Plain Records, a homage to the hard-living, hard-drinking, and hard-loving cowboy life celebrated throughout his body of work.

Tyson is remembered fondly by fellow musicians, friends, and neighbours.  

Guitarist and former bandmate Amos Garrett spoke fondly of his friend and the respect that forged that friendship.

“He was a great guy – he didn’t get along with a lot of people, he’s always been a feisty kind of guy,” Garrett said in a phone interview. “Even when he was young – it’s not that he got old and crotchety, he was young and crotchety.”

The two bonded not only through music and the parties surrounding the scene of their day, but through their love of the outdoors, with Tyson training horses and Garrett hunting and fishing.

“He and I always got along great, and I think one of the reasons is I’m an outdoorsman,” Garrett said, adding while the two enjoyed different pursuits, they shared that connection.

"We were always really good friends, a lot of it is he respected my love of the outdoors, as I did his, it was mutual.

“I’m a fisher and a hunter and an outdoor kind of guy, and I think he respected that I was connected to the outdoors and saw the spiritual side of it.”

Garrett drew a hard line, however, when it came to sharing Tyson’s love of horses.

“I’m not a horse man – horses hate me, and Ian tried getting me to ride,” Garrett said. “I’d get on a horse, and it was only a couple of minutes before it was rodeo time.”

The friendship went back to the Toronto folk days.

“I remember when he and Sylvia first started singing and playing together, in little coffee houses around the Toronto folk scene,” Garrett said. “It was great – I was very flattered and almost shocked when my phone rang, and it was Ian.

“It was fabulous, the guy was totally professional, and when he decided to form a full band with bass and drums and a full rhythm section, he called me first and asked me to help him find musicians.”

The group saw great success in their time, Garrett said, giving a major boost to his career.  

They played to venues with crowds in the thousands but kept their love of playing smaller intimate venues.

“We only played a couple of clubs a year, just because we like playing clubs,” Garrett said.

“There was one club in particular in Washington, DC called the Cellar Door, it was a tiny little club but they just owned that place.

“We wouldn’t make as much as doing big soft seaters, but it was really fun.”Somehow years later the two wound up only a half hour apart in the Foothills, with Garrett residing in High River and Tyson on his Longview-area ranch.

“I moved from California to Southern Alberta, which amazed a lot of people,” Garrett said.

“I moved to Turner Valley first and it was late November so there was snow.”

In that time he recalled Tyson giving back by playing at the Diamond Valley Christmas concerts, held at the Oilfields High School as a fundraiser for the Oilfields Food Bank.

“It’s one of the best shows; Ian played it every year I was there, and I was just amazed,” Garrett said. “Even one where he broke his leg, I remember him coming out with his daughter, carrying his stool out on stage and bringing him his crutches so he could just sit on his stool and sing.”

Frequenting Longview to pick up his mail, Tyson would on occasion pay a visit to Chris Goss, owner of the Twin Cities Saloon.“He always had some really good stories and never held anything back,” Goss said. 

“He was a brilliant songwriter, his songs told a story, and it did a lot for the heritage of Western Canada.” 

The country music icon was no stranger to the Twin Cities stage either, Goss added, performing there a number of times over the years, and also joined fellow country/western singer Corb Lund in a video for his cover of AC/DC song Ride On. "Ian insisted if he was going to be a part of the video that they shot it at the Twin Cities Hotel,” Goss said. Lund made a Dec. 29 Facebook post, speaking fondly of his friend and collaborator."Canada and the world has lost a legendary songwriter, performer and lifelong advocate for the romance and reality of the West,” Lund said in his post. “His music and presence will be missed by myself and by many others. 

“But I’ll miss his friendship the most.” 

The family will hold a closed service and have requested privacy at this time.

Donations in Ian’s memory can be made to The Ian Tyson Legacy Fund - https://www.westernfolklife.org/donate