Today - on her 83rd birthday - after a decade lay-off from recording on her own, Sylvia Tyson announces the release on November 3rd, 2023 of her most powerful, and most incisive recording to date, “At The End Of The Day,” on Stony Plain Records – and shares that this will be her final album.
“It was time,” says the beloved Canadian artist, renowned for her independence, intelligence, and songwriting prowess. “It is kind of a gathering of all of the things that I wanted to record, but never got around to. I just felt that it was time to record. I really feel that this may be the best album that I have ever done.”
With her final studio album, the aptly titled recording combines an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of a public figure at peace with her ordered life as a songwriter, and as an artist. For a woman who has lived a public life for decades, Tyson is the most private of household names.
“It’s the good times I remember at the end of the day,” sings Tyson on the new album, a collection of songs that look back across a life well-lived, while offering advice for those just starting out on their own unique journeys.
Tyson’s impact on popular culture has been immeasurable. A pillar of the Greenwich Village folk scene from the late ’50s through the ’60’s as half of the groundbreaking Ian & Sylvia, the duo headlined NYC’s Carnegie Hall and topped the Billboard charts, all while championing Village contemporaries Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot by being the first popular artists to record their songs. Moreover, Tyson’s own song “You Were On My Mind” and Ian’s “Four Strong Winds” became standards that were covered by dozens of popular artists. Throughout the sixties and early seventies, Ian & 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. The duo were equally influential in the country genre with their band Great Speckled Bird.
On At The End of The Day, Tyson sings of memories, family histories, and lost loves, while also offering pragmatic how-to’s on handling love and tough times. It mixes the good with the bad, the bitter with the sweet, all topped off with healthy sprinkle of realism, as evidenced on the introspective, waltzing opener “Sweet Agony”:
Watch the lyric video for the first single “Sweet Agony” | Pre-order Album