Music of the West
By Hugh McLennan
Dec-Jan 2007
Splicin’ the Wire
 Tom Cole & Brian Salmond
Not since the late Rex Allen Sr. has anyone done a better job of singing the Streets of Laredo than Tom Cole on this new release. This ballad of the West, with its roots in Ireland and Scotland, has been recorded numerous times, but Ol’ Rex was the first one to sing the chorus a full octave lower than the verse. Few singers have the range and vocal power to sing it that way, but a few, including Jim Reeves and Johnny Western have also recorded it that way.
It’s been Tom’s choice to stay up on the Northern range with his family, horses and lots of work in the oil patch, but I think if he chose to be singing full time, the fans of pure western-flavoured music would flock to support him.
Splicin’ the Wire is the third combination of Tom’s songs and Brian’s poems, and the chemistry continues. They have included many of the numbers their fans have requested from their popular live shows; including Brian’s poems taken from real-life ranch situations, from Wormin’ Barn Cats, to a ranch wife using a hockey stick to fight off a cantankerous mother cow, aptly titled, Slapshot Delivery. One of his all-time best, a poem that has every rancher who hears it stirred with emotion is his wonderful Ode to the Ranch Lady. Tom’s fine band, Ol Blue, does real justice to Marty Robbins’s Big Iron, with some dramatic steel guitar from Beau Hugh’s and lead guitar from Andy Ferraz.
Two of Tom’s originals are well worth hearing, Joe Misses Mary and my favourite, Roundin’ up the Slick Ones, based on the wild horse roundups around Montney Creek.
Order from www.canadiancowboy.ca.
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