The genre's first and greatest queen, Sylvia Tyson, plays a rare solo show at Aeolian Hall tomorrow night.

That is just days after the music's leading poet prince, Leonard Cohen, triumphed farther west on Dundas Street, at the John Labatt Centre.

"I don't do that many (shows) these days -- I do maybe eight, 10 a year, of my own stuff," Tyson says of tomorrow's concert. It brings her back to London, where she has relatives, as a solo performer for the first time in many years. "Quartette, we do more of course."

Tyson and the other Canadian singer-songwriters in Quartette -- Gwen Swick, Caitlin Hanford and Cindy Church -- have been in the London region many times.

They return to play a Christmas show in Tyson's hometown of Chatham later this year.

"I was 18 when I left," she says looking back to the era when the teenaged Sylvia Fricker set out for Toronto, determined to share her folk songs with the world.

Told that she must have been brave, Tyson says it might seem that way now.

Then, she had planned how to chase her dream using the Toronto phone numbers and names of friends collected by her mother, a musician and amateur theatre player.

"I'm a Virgo. I have a rather thoughtful and methodical nature about stuff like that," she says of her approach.

Tyson made an impression immediately at legendary spots like the old Bohemian Embassy coffee house where Toronto's poets, folkies, artists and fans mingled.

"I was comic relief on poetry night because everybody was so serious," she says.

Thanks to a recent event in Toronto celebrating the Bohemian Embassy scene, Tyson knows what one of the greatest of those poets recalls. When Raymond Souster, now 88 and still conjuring, beautifully with words thinks of the Bohemian Embassy, he thinks of Sylvia Fricker.

"(Toronto writer) John Robert Colombo read a poem by Raymond Souster and the Souster poem was about me as he saw back in '61 or '62.

"It's very strange to be confronted by your 20-year-old self," she says. "He had written it for the occasion. It's quite a wonderful poem, though it makes me a little embarrassed. I will be putting that poem up on my page on the Quartette website." (The poem is printed here by permission of Souster).

Sylvia Fricker had arrived in Toronto by train. Not long after, she and folk singer Ian Tyson had become a duo and were ready to move on.

"Ian and I were kind of the 'Kansas City stars' in Toronto," she says. "So we thought if they think we're that good, we should go to New York. So we drove down -- literally drove down with a friend."

The duo signed with an uber- manager, the late Albert Grossman, who had just signed folk supertrio Peter, Paul & Mary.

"His response, as I recall it, was 'Well, I really like you, but I've just signed this trio and I don't know how much time I'm going to have,' " Tyson says.

A couple on and off the stage, Ian and Sylvia Tyson became folk icons, too. The duo recorded more than a dozen albums, including country-flavoured gems, then split up in the 1970s. One of the songs from the Ian and Sylvia era, You Were on My Mind, is still part of her solo shows.

"People expect that and they expect River Road and a few others, Sleep on My Shoulder, but I always get some new ones in," Sylvia Tyson says.

Following Ian and Sylvia's breakup as an act and as a couple, Sylvia released solo albums.

In the 1970s, Sylvia hosted CBC Radio's roots music series Touch The Earth, and hosted CBC-TV's Country In My Soul series. She received Canada's highest civilian award, the Order of Canada in 1995. She is one of the founders, past president, and song honouree of the Canadian Songwriters' Hall of Fame. She was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1992, and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 2003.

The Quartette project has also flourished. Quartette's first album was released in 1994 and the group won a Canadian Country Music Award the same year.

Tyson has also appeared in stage shows, with River Road, her one-woman show and The Piano Man's Daughter . . . and Others, based on the Timothy Findley novel.

One constant in Tyson's career has been good musicians who have been drawn to her music. Jazz bassist Bill Lee, father of film director Spike Lee, was on hand during the Ian and Sylvia era. When the duo flew on to become the Great Speckled Bird, guitarist Amos Garrett was in the band.

Joining Tyson tomorrow are musicians who been with her in Quartette settings and many other gigs. The visitors are combining forces with London guitarist Larry Smith.

"He's played with me a couple of times. He played with me out in B.C. about a year and a half ago," Tyson says.

A SWEET SONG\ Sylvia Fricker at the Bohemian Embassy

A fond memory
across much time,
though somewhat blurred
at many of the edges.

Is it the simple truth
or utter fantasy
that a young girl or lady
in a shiny blue dress
suddenly at eight o'clock
mounted the small stage
near the cafe's entranceway,
with one hand carrying
a high stool
and in the other
a dark brown guitar?

Did she or did she not
set the stool down,
then perch precariously
with long legs sheathed
in gloriously shiny nylons?

Then, after quietly
adjusting her guitar's strings,
did she not begin
singing
in a low but clear voice
a sweet song
with the guitar
closely following the melody
flowing from her fingers?

And in that brief moment
did not the steady hum
of idle chatter
in the large echoing loft
abruptly cease
and all that reigned
and held sway
was that sweet girlish voice
reaching out and touching
as if by magic every lonely heart?

RAYMOND SOUSTER

(February 2009)

-- Used by permission of the author

One of Canada's great poets, Raymond Souster, was born in Toronto in 1921 and continues to live in the Toronto area. He came to know the young folk singer Sylvia Fricker (later Tyson), when they were both part of the scene at the old Bohemian Embassy coffeehouse in Toronto about 50 years ago. Author and critic John Robert Colombo requested Souster write a poem for a recent celebration of the Bohemian Embassy. He responded with this lovely work about the folk singer. It was read by Colombo at the gathering. Souster graciously agreed to allow The Free Press to use his poem as part of its coverage of Sylvia Tyson's concert at Aeolian Hall this week.

TORONTO - With her national touring theatrical show and newly released album, both of which are titled "River Road and Other Stories," Canadian singer/songwriter Sylvia Tyson superbly sums up a remarkable four decade career.

The 18-song album, featuring a poignant photo of Canada's folk/country music matriarch by fellow countryman Bryan Adams, was released Tuesday (5) by her Salt Music label, which is distributed in Canada by Outside Music.

Still brimming with unbridled enthusiasm over the July sessions, helmed by producer Danny Greenspoon at the Canterbury Music Company Studios here, Tyson, who turns 60 on September 19, jokes, "The album was put together in land speed record [time] due to growing theater commitments. I was a real bitch on the phone. I got on every body's case to get it done."

"It's quite a range of songs. She's a remarkable woman, " says Greenspoon, who played in Tyson's backing group from 1978-86, replacing now internationally renowned producer Daniel Lanois.

The album and theatrical show features Tyson repertoire from throughout her lengthy career, including "You Were On My Mind", "River Road" (recorded by Crystal Gayle in 1980), "Denim Blue Eyes", and "Woman's World." There are also two previously unrecorded songs, "Hazel's First Ride" and "Donegal Tavern." The theatrical presentation also includes Tyson's stories and personal anecdotes which are available in a booklet ...(with the CD).

"Despite the autobiographical aspect of it, the show is about songwriting," says Tyson. "I'm quite proud of [the production] because I've never put [the songs] together like this before.

"The album should do well, because there has not been a recording as complete as this by Sylvia," says Stewart Duncan, director of music at the Indigo Book Music & Café chain, which operates 14 stores in Ontario.    More....

There were two Sylvia Tysons at Berkeley Street last night: one on stage and one in my memory.

The fact that my mind was divided between the past and the present seems highly appropriate, because River Road and Other Stories is about time, memory, music and how they all fit together ......More

The singer/songwriter and former spouse of the equally tireless cowboy balladeer Ian Tyson doesn't sit surrounded in her sprawling old Rosedale home by the souvenirs of a rich life in music - first with the Ian and Sylvia folk duo, which in the 1960s was among the half-dozen leading acts of the time, then as a solo performer in the 1970s through the mid'90s and most recently as a member of the groundbreaking all-female country/folk ensemble Quartette. ......More

For most of us, there are few things in life more evocative than music -that single chord or lyric that twists time and space to open, ever so briefly, a window on the past and its people, places and experiences.

Most of us, however, are not songwriters - and even the few who are aren't songwriters of the calibre of Sylvia Tyson, whose new one woman show, River Road And Other Stories, had its Toronto premiere at Canadian Stage Berkeley Street Theatre Wednesday night.

For songwriters like Tyson, the people, places and experiences inspire the single chord or lyric -a process she reveals with quiet wonder in this new show. in its way, River Road takes Tyson back to the coffee houses that spawned her career, before the young girl from Chatham, Ont., hooked up with Ian Tyson to become one half of Ian and Sylvia, major players in the folk movement that flourished in the '60s and early'70s. As Tyson quietly recalls small moments in her life, it is easy to imagine her seated in a smoky Yorkville, dive, spacing out her lovingly crafted songs with personal patter. It would be equally easy. to imagine her sitting in a sunny kitchen, pouring tea for a friendly stranger and regaling them with anecdotes while she strums her guitar.

It is that kind of easy familiarity, as much as its limited use of theatrical device, that gives the evening its charm.

What gives it its back bone, however, is Tyson's music -a rich grab bag of songs - the sad, the nostalgic, the humorous, the reflective and even the slightly embittered, each introduced by a story or vignette - that sets the stage. .....More

There were two Sylvia Tysons at Berkeley Street last night: one on stage and one in my memory.

The fact that my mind was divided between the past and the present seems highly appropriate, because River Road and Other Stories is about time, memory, music and how they all fit together ......More

The singer/songwriter and former spouse of the equally tireless cowboy balladeer Ian Tyson doesn't sit surrounded in her sprawling old Rosedale home by the souvenirs of a rich life in music - first with the Ian and Sylvia folk duo, which in the 1960s was among the half-dozen leading acts of the time, then as a solo performer in the 1970s through the mid'90s and most recently as a member of the groundbreaking all-female country/folk ensemble Quartette. ......More

It is a not-unusual human characteristic, after having accumulated a healthy whack of life experiences, to want to take stock and recap what has gone before. For writers, this often results in an autobiography. For athletes, politicians, warriors and the like, something seemingly autobiographical, but likely ghost- written. Yet what's a songwriter to do? Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair to have to encapsulate one's entire existence into a three-minute ballad.

Veteran Canadian singer-songwriter Sylvia Tyson has found an answer to this artistic dilemma. In her one-woman show River Road & Other Stories , she has put together a collection of old and new songs, integrated with a series of lengthy stories and anecdotes, to create something that falls somewhere between music, drama and sitting on Jay Leno's couch. ......More