Didn't mean to kick your opinions around PoppaGator--yup, just having fun. The best thing about listening to 50 Tracks all winter was the arguments between the panelists.

I had actually thought about phoning in "Cold Missouri Waters" last year when they were doing 50 Tracks without a Canadian Content proviso--but it wouldn't have gotten more than a two-second audio clip, cause, again, both this year's and last year's selections were for POPULAR songs. And I'm a big fan of James Keelaghan, but however terrific a writer/performer he is, and obviously well-established on the international folkie circuit, he is sadly NOT on the popular radar. Pretty much like every other folkie singer-songwriter type whose career started after 1975. (Fire away, no doubt I'm wrong and you can dig out the discographies to prove it!)

I have this view that western writers are an entity unto themselves--in the forty-odd years of Ian Tyson's writing career, his songs have been notably about the west, and which side of the forty-ninth parallel a song was set on hasn't been made much difference. One reason his writing is so good is that he has never succumbed to any kind of flag-waving approach to songwriting...always tells a real story.   

Summer Wages is my favourite too--you can play that sucker anywhere, in a country bar or a folk club. (Maybe not at a womyn's festival, but you won't see me there anyway)

The thing about Someday Soon is that there is no one way to sing the lyrics, you have to make all these decisions--is he going to ride the rodeo and she'll follow, or can he ride but follow her, or maybe she rides the rodeo and his pa can't stand her cause he's a chauvinist patriarch who thinks she should be barefoot in the chuckwagon? This can be kind of fun but personally I don't like to think that hard.

I could go on and on, but I have to go to work instead.
Cheers
W-O