covering dylan: Ian & Sylvia

The haunted isolation often found in the landscapes of western Canada forms the hallmark of Ian Tyson’s folk classic song Four Strong Winds. There’s another haunting song of loneliness and love found on that Four String Winds album, which was first released in 1962. It’s Tomorrow is a Long Time, by Bob Dylan. This is a song made even stronger by being sung with both a man’s and woman’s voice, the shared and diverging and converging feelings presented with both passion and care.

The duo, who were managed by Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman for a time, were the first to record the song. They’d revisit the Dylan connection several years later. In the meantime, together and separately they would write and record several of the most enduring songs to come out of the 1960s, including Some Day Soon and You Were On My Mind, and shine light on the work of fellow Canadian writers such as Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot.


part of an occasional series on perhaps less than expected covers of the music of Bob Dylan

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