The heart is a lonely hunter for Ian Tyson

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Ian Tyson At Hugh's Room in Toronto on Monday

For the first of his two nights at a Roncesvalles folk-and-supper club, Ian Tyson sang cowboy songs.

Of course he did.

His bedroll baritone now only a husk of its former low croon, the plainsman poet won on guile, narrative and warm presentation. He sang often on themes of mortality, doing so at nearly 78 years of age. He wore a white hat; his forearms were taut and tan – pulling on horse reins might do that.

Four Strong Winds did not figure, nor did anything else from the saddlebag of Ian & Sylvia.

Country music didn't figure either. A man of his landscape, Tyson does Western music; when he writes, his watch is set to Mountain Standard. But not always: The balmy strum and forlorn sentiment of Under African Skies, a new one, came to Tyson in Morocco, his audience was told. "Still running from the memory, of the love that will never die," he sang, in a voice hushed, dry and high, "the heart's a lonely hunter, under African skies."

In John Einarson's new book, Four Strong Winds: Ian & Sylvia, the male half of that former partnership told the author "I never should have left that woman." On Monday, he didn't say what relationship inspired the wistful Love Without End, but he did talk about how Lioness (from 2008's strong Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Stories) was inspired by an African mother animal and "another lioness, that I also know."

A touching lament however, was directed to Tyson's daughter – "Now I'm waiting out the flight delays, waiting for the storm to pass / waiting for the sky to clear, and I see your face." Since the release of Estrangement, also on the Yellowhead album, the rift has passed.

Flanking Tyson were Gord Maxwell and Lee Warden. They played electric bass and acoustic guitar, respectively, but their priority was as harmonists, feathering Tyson's arid vocals just like the coat of the birds the headliner likes to metaphorically exploit.

Early in the first set, the Albertan rancher warned us in advance that the second set would have in it fresh material. He said the new stuff – from the EP Songs from the Stone House – was "pretty good" and that the quality had surprised him. Rio Colorado was folk rock, about getting older but still with time left for rides on wild waters – "the river of life, canyon of dreams."

Earlier, on Brahmas and Mustangs, a cowboy wondered "Did I stay too long, did I play too long." It's a question to consider, though it doesn't seem that the trail is done quite yet. Tyson has lost his some of his vocals, but none of his voice.

Ian Tyson plays Hugh's Room again on Tuesday; Picton, Ont. on Thursday; and Edmonton, with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Sept. 4.