Slippery City Shoes


There will be a time when I get it all down, she being bound to go, and all, but, 'til then, it's worth putting down a few Tyson memories in short form.

-- Dancing with Shelagh at the Howlin' Wolf. The band played Gallo, and we polka'd. Tyson signed my Martin guitar strap, and Shelagh's shirt.

-- My mom loved the line about the big stands of timber wait there just for fallin' in Summer Wages.

-- The high soaring hawk/The dark awkward crow was one of the only ways Michael, down the hall this moment crashing out a song from his electric guitar, would get to sleep as a baby.

-- Steady told the story about singing Tyson at a wedding in Florida with family from Newfoundland.

-- One summer we drove the long way home from Kananaskis so we could go through Longview. We went to the Navajo Mug.

-- I had great conversations about Tyson with Peter North when I worked at The Journal.

-- The autograph on the guitar strap faded, and Danny Baldassarre from ACCESS got it signed again.

-- Shelagh loves the line about weather's good there in the fall.

-- I love how Tyson captures how quickly time passes in M.C. Horses, and how art battles that waste of time in The Gift.

-- Sweet America comin' off the rails/That's what lies and money do


-- I spent some time feeling pretty alone, away from home, my first job. And I asked myself, what would Ian Tyson do? And you know, it was the damndest thing, but it kinda got me through.

-- We took the boys to see Tyson in Spruce Grove, and got an autographed CD after the show. The boys were the youngest ones there. This outfit's history.

-- I met him one day at CTV and told him which songs mean the most to me. He said: "You really know my stuff." He sat at my desk to do a phone interview. That makes that office a provincial historic resource.

-- We talked to Dave for an extra hour after shopping at Eddie's, after figuring out he was a cowboy, and Tyson, for him, is it.

-- We four sang Four Strong Winds at the end of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, candles ablaze.

-- He could paint the light/On horsehide shinin'
Great passin' herds of the buffalo/
And a cow cold on a rainy morning/
And the twistin' wrist of the houlihan throw.


A cow camp cold. Perfect.

-- Goodnight Loving Trail's northern lights, hawk on the wing, spring, great divide, Camp Cookie.

-- Mikey read The Old Man And The Sea on his flight to Cuba, and Irving Berlin on the way home. "It's a good song."

-- Home

-- Voice

-- Sky

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