I could listen to David Bromberg sing  Summer Wages 100 times in a row and never get bored. Once in a while I like to have a look on the YouTube machine to see if there’s a version I’ve missed.

Let’s not forget it was written by Ian Tyson. Here he is with Sylvia and Emmylou Harris…

I recall being at that show back in the day. It was an “Ian and Sylvia Reunion” show. I think it was filmed at Canada’s Wonderland. The show was set up for TV, complete with big cue cards. I came to know Ian Tyson’s music in the early 80s and not from the Ian and Sylvia days. I finished university back in 83 and I was restless. I had a car that ran pretty well and a little bit of cash (back in those days, getting a university education wasn’t the expensive proposition it is today), and I took off for the west for a few months before facing the prospect of balancing making paintings and making ends meet. Radio stations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and Alberta were playing tunes from an album of cowboy tunes by Ian Tyson called Old Corrals and Sagebrush. I suppose it was his re-emergence into the music scene singing cowboy songs. For me it was just what the doctor ordered and I cranked the volume and listened to cowboy music across the prairies.