Unlike his cowboy contemporaries Skip Gorman and Don Edwards, Ian Tyson doesn"t reach back to the Old West for inspiration. He has been a working rancher since the 1970s, and Tyson"s songs make reference to cell phones as well as bay studs. Rather than demand that he not be fenced in, he sings, "I"ve roamed this world as a free man / One thing I ask of you / Don"t let them put no tubes in me." No managed care for Tyson! Lost Herd finds the Canadian range rider mining the kind of big-sky acoustic sounds that first earned him notoriety as one-half of Ian & Sylvia, of "You Were on My Mind" and "Four Strong Winds" acclaim. Alternately virile and sensitive, this cowpoke is comfortable enough with his masculinity to sign off with a Judy Garland tune--"Over the Rainbow." Culled from sessions out of Toronto, Nashville, and Calgary, these songs are as wind-worn and comfortable as a weathered saddle. --Steven Stolder