"Coyote" is the opening song from Joni Mitchell's 1976 albumHejira and also the album's first single.
Background
Though the song had been introduced on the tour to support 1975'sThe Hissing of Summer Lawns, "Coyote" was a significant musical departure: where Hissing was ornate with pianos, layered vocals and percussion, "Coyote" was stripped down to electric and acoustic guitars and a fretless bass guitar played by virtuoso Jaco Pastorius. In a sense, this was similar to Mitchell's early albums, but the sound was extremely spacious, even repetitive, with the verses made much longer and more like a long story. Thus, although this is one of the faster-tempo songs on Hejira, it still lasts for an even five minutes. Mitchell's guitar itself was in an unusual C-G-D-F-C-E tuning - presumably a type of open tuning designed to play a seventh, ninth, or even eleventh chord. Lyrically, "Coyote" is concerned with the difficulty of establishing any sort of connection with people who come from "different sets of circumstance". In particular it describes an encounter between the narrator and "Coyote", a ranch worker. The narrator sings about Coyote pursuing them across Canada, similar to an actual coyote on the prowl. In her 2019 book Joni Mitchell: New Critical Readings, Ruth Charnock described the song as "either the most flirtatious song about fucking or the most graphic song about flirting ever written." In Chris O'Dell's 2009 autobiography Miss O'Dell she details an affair she had with married playwright Sam Shepard and states that Shepard then cheated on her with Joni Mitchell. O'Dell claims that "Coyote" is written about Sam Shepard. The song describes Coyote as being "far from the Bay of Fundy". In the summers of 1972 and 1973, Shepard resided in a waterside cottage in West Advocate, Nova Scotia, located on a strip of land which extends into the Bay of Fundy. The narrator also mentions looking an actual coyote in the face while "on the road to Baljennie near my old home town", a reference to the former hamlet of Baljennie, Saskatchewan. Mitchell was raised in Maidstone, North Battleford, and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan. Coyote represents nature contrasted with the narrator's big city life where "pills and powders" are necessary to "get them through this passion play". The aforementioned line is also a reference to Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revueconcert tour, which Mitchell was a part of in the fall of 1975. During a performance of the song by Mitchell in the film , Roger McGuinn of the Byrds states that, “Joni wrote this song about this tour and on this tour and for this tour,” to which she does not protest. A version of "Coyote" was performed by Mitchell with The Band for the concert movieThe Last Waltz and is included on the soundtrack. The song was also covered by Spirit of the West on the 1992 Mitchell tribute albumBack to the Garden.
