Ride Me Down Easy b/w For the Good Times

Kent Tocher was a working Ontario country singer by 1973. That September the Toronto booking office T & C Agency listed him among its solo acts in an advertisement in RPM.

This private single comes from those early years. Tocher produced it himself and chose two songs by the new Nashville writers: Billy Joe Shaver's 'Ride Me Down Easy', which Bobby Bare released in 1973 and Waylon Jennings cut for Honky Tonk Heroes the same year, and Kris Kristofferson's 'For The Good Times'. The plain labels carry no record company name or address.

Tocher became the entertainer the Erin and Hillsburgh area called on for decades. In 1979 he played the Queen's Ball and put on a full country show at the fourth annual Hillsburgh Country Bluegrass Jamboree, with Hillsburgh guitarist Bob McFee and a new Guelph band called Diamond Reo. In August 2014 he was still playing all day at Hillsburgh's Family Fun Day.

Tocher died in 2016. That July, Erin's mayor offered council's condolences to his family and friends on the loss of "a community icon."

-Robert Williston