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Tag: Judy Collins

  • Concert Watch 10/15: Bun B, Ice Cube and More – Houston Press Concerts in Houston This Week

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    As I write this, it is October 14, a significant date for me as it marks the anniversary of my first Grateful Dead show, in 1977 at Hofheinz Pavilion.  It was also the occasion on which I learned that the Dead could be a rather polarizing band.  Jerry Garcia once said that the Dead were a lot like licorice, in that most people don’t like it, but that those who do “really, really like licorice.”

    I did not yet have a driver’s license, so I had to persuade a friend who was just a bit older than me to transport us to the show.  While this did get me from the suburbs to the University of Houston campus, it also meant that I had to listen to my friend bitch about the Dead between just about every song while I was grooving hard.  It was maybe the first time that I had someone ask me, “Do you really like this shit?”

    In the years since then, I have periodically received some good-natured ribbing about my fondness for a band that some find intolerable.  I receive memes along the lines of “What does a Deadhead say when he runs out of drugs? ‘This band sucks!’” and “The Grateful Dead: Country music for people who like to take LSD.”  But that’s OK.  I just smile and cue up my favorite version of “Dark Star.”

    Ticket Alert

    Blues-rocker Kenny Wayne Shepherd will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of his debut album Ledbetter Heights with a show at the House of Blues on Saturday, February 21.  The record was an immediate hit, establishing Shepherd – who was only 18 at the time – as a guitar wunderkind.  Tickets are on sale now and going fast.

    Known for her knee-length hair (the longest in the music business?), Crystal Gayle has also distinguished herself by notching 22 number-one country records and becoming the first female country artist with an album that was awarded a platinum certification.  Gayle will perform two nights, Friday, February 20, and Saturday, February 21, at Main Street Crossing in Tomball.

    Another female vocalist of note who is coming to Main Street Crossing is Judy Collins, who has a two-night engagement at the venue on Thursday, February 26, and Friday, February 27.  Still on the road at 86, Collins is equally at home with folk songs like “Both Sides Now” and show tunes like “Send in the Clowns.”  And did you know that she served as the inspiration for Stephen Stills’ song “Suite: Judy Blues Eyes?”

    Concerts This Week

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    If you’re looking for music that’s just a bit off the beaten trail, consider checking out Petunia and the Vipers tonight at Under the Volcano.  How to describe them?  Well, the band’s website says that P and the V’s are “Hank Williams on acid… Tom Waits meets Elvis at Woody Guthrie’s hobo junction… Avant-country night club scene music…”  Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

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    In country music, the Bakersfield sound is about as far as you can get from the Nashville (“Countrypolitan”) sound, so fans of hardcore, twangy honky-tonk music were understandably relieved when Dwight Yoakam’s debut album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. appeared in 1986, reviving a tradition begun by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.  A Dwight Yoakam concert is always a treat, but his show on Thursday at the Smart Financial Centre will be extra-special, with blues phenom Marcus King and Texican rockers Los Lonely Boys opening.

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    Early on, Robin Trower was dismissed in some circles as a “Hendrix wannabe,” but these critics really missed the mark.  Sure, he was inspired by Jimi Hendrix (who wasn’t?), but Trower always displayed a sound that was unique and personal, as displayed on classic albums like Bridge of Sighs and For Earth Below.  Catch him on Thursday at the House of Blues.

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    These days, Ice Cube is, in some circles, better known as an actor than a musician, after appearing in films like Friday, Boyz n the Hood and Barbershop.  But it should be noted that Cube broke into the music business as a member of the OG rap group N.W.A. and has released 12 solo albums, including this year’s Man Up.  His “Truth to Power – Four Decades of Attitude” tour makes a stop at Toyota Center on Friday.

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    Bun B’s first solo album, Trill, was released in 2005 after he had established himself as a leading figure in the southern rap scene as part of the duo UGK with Pimp C.  The record went to number one on the Billboard R&B / Hip-Hop chart and reached number six on the Billboard 200 chart.  To celebrate Trill’s 20th anniversary, Bun B will present an “unplugged” version of the album at the House of Blues on Saturday, which means that live instruments will be featured, along with some stories about Trill’s creation.

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    It will be all-Jonas all the time when the Jonas Brothers play Toyota Center on Sunday.  The evening will include a full-band performance, along with solo sets from Nick and Joe, plus material from Nick Jonas and the Administration and Joe’s band DNCE.  Whew, that’s a bunch of Jonas!

    This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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    Tom Richards

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  • Ian Tyson, half of Ian & Sylvia folk duo, dies at age 89

    Ian Tyson, half of Ian & Sylvia folk duo, dies at age 89

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    TORONTO — Ian Tyson, the Canadian folk singer who wrote the modern standard “Four Strong Winds” as one half of Ian & Sylvia and helped influence such future superstars as Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, died Thursday at age 89.

    The native of Victoria, British Columbia, died at his ranch in southern Alberta following a series of health complications, his manager, Paul Mascioli, said.

    Tyson was a part of the influential folk movement in Toronto with his first wife, Sylvia Tyson. But he was also seen as a throwback to more rustic times and devoted much of his life to living on his ranch and pursuing songs about the cowboy life.

    “He put a lot of time and energy into his songwriting and felt his material very strongly, especially the whole cowboy lifestyle,″ Sylvia Tyson said of her former husband.

    He was best known for the troubadour’s lament “Four Strong Winds” and its classic refrain about the life of a wanderer: “If the good times are all gone/Then I’m bound for movin’ on/I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way.”

    Bob Dylan, Waylon Jennings and Judy Collins were among the many performers who covered the song. Young included “Four Strong Winds” on his acclaimed “Comes a Time” album, released in 1978, and two years earlier performed the song at “The Last Waltz” concert staged by the Band to mark its farewell to live shows.

    Tyson was born Sept. 25, 1933, to parents who emigrated from England. He attended private school and learned to play polo, then he discovered the rodeo.

    After graduating from the Vancouver School of Art in 1958, he hitchhiked to Toronto. He was swept up in the city’s burgeoning folk movement, where Canadians including Young, Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot played in hippie coffee houses in the bohemian Yorkville neighborhood.

    Tyson soon met Sylvia Fricker and they began a relationship — onstage and off, moving to New York. Their debut album, “Ian & Sylvia,” in 1962 was a collection of mostly traditional songs. Their second album, 1964′s “Four Strong Winds,″ was the duo’s breakthrough, thanks in large part to its title track, one of the record’s only original compositions.

    Married in 1964, the pair continued releasing new records with regularity. But as the popularity of folk waned, they moved to Nashville and began integrating country and rock into their music. In 1969, the Tysons formed the country-rock band Great Speckled Bird, which appeared with Janis Joplin, the Band and the Grateful Dead among others on the “Festival Express” tour across Canada in 1970, later the basis for a documentary released in 2004.

    They had a child, Clay, in 1968 but the couple grew apart as their career began to stall in the ’70s. They divorced in 1975.

    Tyson moved back to western Canada and returned to ranch life, training horses and cowboying in Pincher Creek, Alberta, 135 miles south of Calgary. These experiences increasingly filtered through his songwriting, particularly on 1983′s “Old Corrals and Sagebrush.″

    In 1987, Tyson won a Juno Award for country male vocalist of the year and five years later he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame alongside Sylvia Tyson. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.

    Despite damage to his voice resulting from a heart attack and surgery in 2015, Tyson continued to perform live concerts. But the heart problems returned and forced Tyson to cancel appearances in 2018.

    He continued to play his guitar at home, though. “I think that’s the key to my hanging in there because you’ve gotta use it or lose it,″ he said in 2019.

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