Tyson and Russell, the Cowboy Way

“Cowboy music” may strike the un-Stetsoned as something trite and predictable, as worn and dusty and unadventurous as the beginner’s bridle path at a dude ranch.

But for Ian Tyson, the range and the rodeo are not just places where a singer can take an audience for a pleasing dip in those temptingly narcotic old watering holes, nostalgia and sentimentality.

The mostly mellow songs that Tyson sang Tuesday night at the Galaxy Concert Theatre presented a quiet stampede of horses and cattle, chuck wagons and rodeo races, old cowpokes and onerous plains weather.

All of these come naturally to this old ‘60s folk-boom hero of Ian & Sylvia fame. A veteran rancher and competitive rider who lives on the Canadian plains of Alberta, Tyson remade himself in the early 1980s as a cowboy troubadour.

But the regional color he has absorbed from personal experience was not the essence of his music, only the backdrop. His songs use the West as Robert Frost would use New England or William Faulkner the South--as a highly specific and powerfully evoked setting for universal themes.

Impermanence was a recurring and dominant theme in Tyson’s 70-minute show.

We heard of the fleeting nature of love, especially when tested by the rhythms of cowboy life, with its long, enforced separations.

We heard of the fleeting nature of the West itself: “M.C. Horses” was a nicely framed lament in which two veteran cowhands meet in a bar and bemoan the selling-off of a landmark ranch.

And we heard, in two lovingly etched songs about Will James and Charlie Russell, painters of the cowboy life and the Western landscape, about art’s ability to move and motivate its beholders and to stand as a bulwark against the onslaught of impermanence.

No lament was deeper than the traditional nugget “Leavin’ Cheyenne” (as in “Goodbye, Old Paint, I’m a- . . . “). No quaint period piece, it was brought to life by Tyson as the tale of a man whose family has been shattered, leaving him to comfort himself with a song, and with thoughts of a desirable death on his beloved prairie.

At 62, Tyson is a youthful-looking advertisement for the cowboy way of life. His voice is still pure and strong, rising from a steady baritone to a creamy high range that carries a sweet taste of Everly. Bassist Phil Hall and lead guitarist Nathan Tinkham combined for smooth, precise harmonies; Tinkham’s playing was fluent but not ostentatious, decorating the songs without seeking to wrest the spotlight from the white-hatted star.

Tyson’s natural, easygoing command as a performer, his way of setting up a song with unforced, unstudied quips and anecdotes, was an advertisement for the advantages of a schooling in folk music, where the performer can’t stand behind a wall of feedback, but must learn to hold an audience with wit and personal presence.

In a nice, hopeful touch, Tyson ended with “Horsethief Moon,” a lively benediction in which, urged on by the singer-narrator, a young cowboy is seen in full gallop, hurdling obstacles in pursuit of his romantic dreams of love with a young cowgirl. Not a lament for the passing West, but a vision of its possible propagation.

Tom Russell’s opening set showed that he has the performing skills to match his exceptional ability as a songwriter. Russell is a friend and occasional songwriting partner of Tyson’s, and although they didn’t team up in concert, both performed versions of “Navajo Rug,” a sweet, lighthearted tune they wrote together.

Russell can sing a good western song, but his range of subjects and settings is as limitless as imagination itself. His set included a strange, dramatic tale about a businessman who sacrifices first his possessions, then his sanity, at the altar of love (“Angel of Lyon”) and an action-packed narrative about a Mexican youth’s desperate attempt to right a historic wrong--using a heroic but vulnerable fighting cock named Gallo del Cielo as his champion.

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Russell also scored with more conventional, but still vividly drawn, songs about love going wrong (“What Do You Want”) and love vanished and replaced by jealous, self-tormenting imaginings (“Out in California”).

He deployed a strong, clear baritone that called to mind a more supple Johnny Cash.

He received superb support from his longtime partner, guitarist-singer Andrew Hardin, who complemented Russell’s deep lead voice with reedy tenor harmonies. The tall, slender Hardin also took sparkling solos that frequently peaked with driving chordal runs inspired by Mexican folk music.

The duo’s 45 minutes on stage thoroughly won the audience and left one hungering for a return engagement, perhaps in a headlining spot or, better yet, as a co-star with such illustrious Southern California-based songwriting partners and running mates as Dave Alvin, Peter Case and Chris Gaffney.