At 75, Ian Tyson still has great stories to sing about

Iconic Canadian songwriter and singer Ian Tyson has had a tough two years since his last album, Songs from the Gravel Road . Among his woes: a difficult divorce followed by another broken love affair, and more recent a 75th birthday which he faced with a mixture of satisfaction and regret.

Now, with release of a new album – Yellowhead to Yellowstone and other Love Stories on Nov. 10 – long-time fans will discover something else: Ian Tyson has a new voice. Grainy, gravelly, and deeply emotional today, one of the smoothest voices in Canadian music is now dramatically different.

What happened? “Well, a couple of years ago,” says Tyson in a matter-of-fact tone, “I played the Havelock Jamboree, a big outdoor show in Ontario. I fought the sound system — and I lost.

“I knew I’d hurt my voice, and it was recovering slowly when I was hit with a bad virus, which seemed to last forever. My old voice isn’t coming back, the doctors told me, so I’ve had to get used to this new one.”

That has been a challenge, Tyson says, but he says audiences have warmed to it. “They seem to pay more attention, now, to the lyrics and the stories in the songs. And while I’ve lost some of the bottom end of my voice, the top range, oddly enough, is still there.”

The title song of the CD was co-written by Tyson with Stewart MacDougall, and tells the story of a pack of wolves transported from the Yellowhead Pass to Yellowstone Park, where the species had become extinct — told in the voice of one of the wolves who made the journey.

Another remarkable song, contributed by Toronto songwriter Jay Aymar, is about hockey commentator Don Cherry and the death of his beloved wife, Rose. The eight new songs by Tyson cover a range of emotions and stories relating to Alberta’s cultural landscape and the disappearing cowboy, as well as his personal life. The writer rarely tells exactly what they’re about,  but expects his listeners to understand where the songs are coming from.

It’s Tyson’s 14th album for the Edmonton-based roots music label Stony Plain, and was produced by Nashville’s Harry Stinson, who did three CDs for the label with Corb Lund, and who’s worked  in recent times with George Jones, Mary Stuart, Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle.