Big Muddy Badlands b/w Dusty Rose

It's '79 and Molloy has been away six months, driving south through the windswept Big Muddy country of southern Saskatchewan toward the Montana line. Along the way the song calls up the Sioux, the Blackfoot and Gabriel Dumont standing all alone. It's border country with a long history of people crossing that line. Sitting Bull brought his Lakota north to nearby Wood Mountain in 1877, the Blackfoot homeland runs from southern Alberta into Montana, and Dumont fled south to Montana after Batoche in 1885. Molloy wrote it with Valerie Lord, who sang beside him on his records of that era, and Calgary's Silvertip Records released it in 1982, backed with 'Dusty Rose'. A native of Golden, B.C., Molloy started out with the Cranbrook country-rock band Black Elk in 1974. He went on to win the 1977 Danny Award for most outstanding single performer and took 'Diamonds in the Dark' to No. 14 on the RPM country chart in 1987. He now lives in Pennsylvania and still plays with Cameron Molloy & The Drivin' Wheel.

-Robert Williston