2010-06-09 06:02:09

PETER BLACKSTOCK: Blue Rodeo, South of Home

Filed under: Blue Rodeo, Featured, Music, Peter Blackstock, Uncategorized
Posted by: John

by PETER BLACKSTOCK

First, a confession: Deep down, there’s something about me that I’ve probably known for quite some time, something that has become increasingly impossible to deny as the years have passed. There’s really no sense in fighting it anymore.

I am a closet Canadian.

Raised in Texas, granted. (Although born, fittingly enough, in Rochester, New York, just across Lake Ontario from Toronto.) The United States is home, always has been; in fact, I’ve been to all 50 states, and have lived in five of them. I love our nation’s ideals, our landscape, our horizons, our heritage, our hope.

But, man, I gotta say, every time I’ve been to Canada, I just marvel at what a good thing they have going up there. I’m sure I’m romanticizing to some extent — Canada undoubtedly has its troubles and its downsides, like any country on Earth — but there is a peacefulness in the north country, and the wide-open spaces are plentiful, and the citizens are predominantly polite, and they value the arts, and their health, and they aren’t so vastly beholden to material greed over human welfare. There is much to love about our neighbor land.

Damn good music, too. You know about Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen, and Cowboy Junkies, and The Band. (And we’ll forgive them for Celine Dion.) You probably don’t know about Stan Rogers, and Huevos Rancheros, and the Skydiggers, and Geoff Berner, and the Lost Dakotas. A shame, that, but no one gets to hear everybody (I’m sure I’ve missed a lot, too).

Chances are pretty fair that you know at least something about Blue Rodeo. The phrase which has forever been quoted about them, ever since it appeared in a Rolling Stone review more than two decades ago, is: “The best new American band may very well be Canadian.” That was back when they WERE new, in the late ’80s; nowadays, they’ve got more than a dozen albums to their name, along with a bookcase full of Junos (”the Canadian Grammy,” as the shorthand goes). In their homeland, they play large theaters, arenas, big festivals.

And, once in awhile, they dip down south and visit the States. They’re in the midst of one of those runs right now, to support The Things We Left Behind, a double-disc release that holds up rather well with their best work. Monday night, they played in my neck of the woods, at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro, North Carolina, to a couple hundred folks — a fair percentage of them displaced Canadians (you can tell, as they’re the ones who know most of the songs by heart), supplemented by a smattering of Americans who’ve managed to come across the band one way or other during the past 20 years.

Blue Rodeo is a really easy band to like. If you’re a fan of the Jayhawks, certainly, or probably even simply if you like Tom Petty or John Mellencamp or Bruce Springsteen, there’s a strong chance you would appreciate these guys. That old Rolling Stone quote was meant to underscore the quintessentially “American” nature of their music; North American, perhaps, but this is populist rock ‘n’ roll with a rootsy perspective, a healthy dose of country harmonies, and bluesy grooves permeating the narrative.

As with a lot of classic American bands, the essence revolves around a yin-yang partnership, in their case the congenial and sweet-voiced Jim Cuddy, and the more ruminative and rougher-edged Greg Keelor (That’s an oversimplification, of both of them really, but you get the point). Their longtime crew is no small part of the story: bassist Bazil Donovan has been there since mid-’80s the beginning, drummer Glenn Milchem joined in the early ’90s, and pedal steel guitarist Bob Egan (who spent the late ’90s in Wilco) is now a ten-year Blue Rodeo veteran.

But wait, there’s more. The latest in a line of keyboardists who have contributed significantly to the band’s sound over the years is Mike Boguski, who also sat in for several songs on this night with the excellent young opening act, Cuff The Duke (whose new album was produced by Keelor). Wayne Petti, the frontman for Cuff The Duke, returned the favor by joining Blue Rodeo onstage for about half of their songs, adding acoustic guitar accents and fine vocal harmonies. The real ringer, though, was Anne Lindsay, a firebrand of a fiddle player and superb supporting vocalist who helped take several songs to a whole ‘nother level during the night.

And so, on a sleepy Monday in a small venue on the edges of Chapel Hill, a band that routinely plays to thousands in its native Canada played a generous selection of their best material to a couple hundred fortunate folks, with a stage lineup ranging from six to eight musicians. Really, really good musicians. For a remarkably reasonable ticket price of 17 bucks.

For the Canadian transplants in the crowd, most of them accustomed to seeing the band at much larger venues, such a gig is probably dreamlike. For the band, well, maybe it’s not so great having to acknowledge that their top-tier success in Canada has never translated to the United States at anywhere near the same scale.

Then again, there is an element of this reality that is in fact quite a gift. Not many bands who reach large-venue status can still avail themselves of the opportunity to also play small clubs from time to time when they want to. Sure, you make a lot more money playing theaters and arenas and sheds … but just about any musician I’ve come across who’s worth a salt will allow that there’s nothing more fun than playing an intimate club gig. To have an outlet for reconnecting with such a fundamental musical experience, all the while knowing that the larger audiences are there for you back home, is in many ways a perfect balance.

Which is not to say Blue Rodeo wouldn’t love for a lot more Americans to hear their music. But if that doesn’t happen, well, hey, from the looks of things on this fair summer evening in the heart of Carolina, they’re gonna be just fine playing from their hearts for whoever’s fortunate enough to be out there in the crowd.

And for those of us who can’t be in Canada, our appreciation knows no bounds.

Peter Blackstock was co-founder and co-editor of No Depression magazine from 1995-2008, worked many years as a copy editor for daily newspapers in Seattle and Austin, and served as archivist for the SXSW music festival from 1989-1997. He blogs occasionally at That Magnificent Ghost.

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