Formed in 1975, the Canadian Western swing outfit Prairie Oyster first came together as a trio of lead singer and bassist Russell de Carle, guitarist Keith Glass, and steel guitarist Denis Delorme. The group spent its early years performing live and on television without entering a studio, then split in 1978. Four years later the members reconvened, adding fiddler John P. Allen for a handful of shows; keyboardist and songwriter Joan Besen joined soon afterward, and drummer Bruce Moffett completed the lineup in 1986. Under this revised configuration the band cut its first album, Oyster Tracks. Demo recordings produced by Steve Berlin eventually reached RCA executive Joe Galante in Nashville, who offered the group a contract after attending one of its performances. Prairie Oyster’s RCA debut, Different Kind of Fire, featured further contributions from Berlin; its opening single, “Goodbye, So Long, Hello,” climbed into the Top 70 of the U.S. country chart in 1990. The follow-up album Everybody Knows and its accompanying singles earned widespread praise in 1991. Although the band never returned to the American charts after that year, it maintained an active recording and touring schedule in Canada throughout the remainder of the decade. In 2000 the retrospective String of Pearls: A Greatest Hits Collection appeared in both Canada and the United States.
