Sylvia Tyson | Interview

Sylvia Tyson started performing professionally in 1959 as one-half of the internationally acclaimed folk duo, Ian and Sylvia. She wrote her first song, ‘You Were On My Mind’, in 1962, and three years later it reached #3 on the Billboard chart for a group called We Five, subsequently hitting the British charts as a hit for Crispian St Peter.

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Through the sixties and early seventies, Ian and Sylvia produced thirteen popular albums and toured extensively in North America and Europe, sharing their manager, Albert Grossman, with such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, The Band, and Janis Joplin. Together with Ian Tyson she also fronted the country rock band Great Speckled Bird. The duo went their separate ways in 1977.

Sylvia has continued to have a long and successful solo career. She has recorded ten albums, written over two hundred songs and has for the last twenty years also recorded and performed with three other well-known Canadian female singer-songwriters in a group called Quartette. As well, she has had a long and distinguished radio and television career, both in music and in documentaries.

Sylvia is an emeritus member of the boards of CARAS (Canadian music awards) of FACTOR (funding body for Canadian artists), and she is one of the founders and past president of The Canadian Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. She is also a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, The Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, and has received Canada’s highest civilian honour, The Order of Canada. In 1985 she co-edited with Tom Russell a songwriter book entitled ‘And Then I Wrote – The Songwriter Speaks’, a collection of quotes from songwriters about their craft (from Stephen Foster to Stevie Wonder). Her first book, ‘Joyner’s Dream’, a work of fiction was published in March of 2011, and a CD of music was released under the same title. She continues to perform as a solo artist, and as a member of Quartette. She is presently working on her second novel.

Where and when did you grow up? Was music a big part of your family life? Did the local music scene influence you or inspire you to play music?

Sylvia Tyson: I was born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, a farming community of about 30,000. I come from a musical family. My father played piano and electric organ and loved ballet music and Gilbert and Sullivan, my Mother was classically trained as a pianist, specializing in Chopin. She was an organist and choir leader in our church, and taught art and music to children with mental disabilities. She was also a potter, weaver and painter. There was no music scene in Chatham, and no access to musical culture other than popular tunes heard on the radio. I became interested in traditional music through English literature and songbooks from the library. I taught myself to play guitar.

You began playing music as a singer-songwriter and soon formed a popular folk duo Ian & Sylvia.

I didn’t start songwriting until 1962. I had moved to Toronto in 1959 to pursue a career as a folksinger, and was introduced to Ian by a man who was his boss where he worked as a commercial artist. We became local stars, and in ’61 drove to new York to find a manager and a record label, which we did.

You released a lot of albums for Vanguard. 

Vanguard was considered to be the ‘folk’ label in the early ‘60s, mainly because of the success of Joan Baez’ first recording. Up to that point they had been a classical label, specializing in chamber music. We recorded seven albums with them. We were managed by Albert Grossman and signed to ITA, a booking agency best known for their work with the Kingston Trio. They specialized in booking college concerts, and for the next ten or so years we toured the United States extensively. We played the major clubs across the country and did concerts in most of the major concert venues, including town Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York…

Ian and Sylvia’s first album was recorded in the Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Brooklyn, New York. It was recorded live, off the floor (no edits) to two track, with Maynard Solomon, one of the owners of Vanguard Records as producer. As I recall, it was done in two days.

‘You Were On My Mind’ followed a couple of years later. How would you compare it to your previous release?

‘You Were On My Mind’ was my first songwriting effort. Ian’s was ‘Four Strong Winds’.

The group was featured in the film The Festival Express that took place in 1970. What are some recollections from that train ride?

The Festival Express was the brainchild of Thor Eaton and Kenny Walker, two Toronto entrepreneurs. It was an ambitious undertaking that was to start in Montreal and end in Vancouver and included most of the top acts of the time, a real bargain at around ten dollars for two nights. We got as far as Calgary where it went bust. It had been plagued from the beginning by demonstrations from The May Fourth Movement, mostly university students and hippie dropouts whose contention was that music should be free to the people, with no regard for what the event actually cost. This seriously affected the box office for the shows and led to eventual bankruptcy. One of my lasting memories was of Janis Joplin being accosted in the parking lot by two young women after the Calgary show, chanting, “Janis Joplin is a ripoff!”. She turned and confronted them saying, “Do you know how much it costs me to pay my band? Do you know what it costs me to travel? Do you know how much my clothes and food and management costs are? Furthermore, if I looked like you, I’d sell my ass!” Enough said.

“The difficulty I had in going solo was that nobody knew what I did outside of Ian and Sylvia, so I had to start over.”

In the mid seventies you also started recording solo albums. What would you say is the main difference in going solo?

The difficulty I had in going solo was that nobody knew what I did outside of Ian and Sylvia, so I had to start over. Fortunately I had a really good publicist called Larry Leblanc, who is now a world acclaimed music journalist and music historian. Over time I built up a substantial following. I have had very good luck in choosing band members, some of whom I still work with, and one of whom, Danny Greenspoon later become one of my record producers. My first efforts were produced by Daniel Lanois long before he became a household word and who also initially played guitar and steel in my band.

In the nineties you started Quartette which is still active. Would you like to share a few words about it?

Quartette came about by accident. Colleen Peterson (now deceased) had been asked to put together a group of female singer/songwriters for and afternoon concert at a Toronto venue called Harbourfront as part of a summer festival. She contacted myself and Caitlin Hanford, and Caitlin suggested we add Cindy Church. We got together for rehearsal and realized, as we progressed, that we all knew each other’s material and began to sing along. It started to sound really good. The response to our performance at Harbourfront was electric, and we immediately started getting offers for radio and TV appearances and live shows, with recordings to follow. When colleen Passed, Gwen Swick joined the group and 25 years later we’re still going strong. We all have separate but equal music careers.

How are you coping with the current world situation?

As for coping with the current world situation, I’m doing what everyone is doing, coping. Like all of us, I’ve gone from a life crammed with goals and deadlines to having neither. I have to say that at 81, I resent having lost a year at a point when I don’t have that many left, but on the plus side, I’ve had a long and productive creative life, and not many regrets. Sylvia Tyson

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