Jim Cuddy has seen it all in a hall of fame worthy career atop the pantheon of Canadian songwriting royalty. What’s now foreign to the frontman of the legendary Blue Rodeo is stillness, an involuntary byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Once it started happening (in 2020), staying still, that’s my first year of staying still in 35 years,” Cuddy shared in a sitdown with The Herald ahead of Blue Rodeo’s return to St. John’s on the Many A Mile Tour. 

“We have a little rural place that’s north of the city, so I was there sitting in this one seat and just playing and writing songs and thinking what I would do with them and how I was going to do this, but not worrying about the final result, just writing songs. And yes, I think that had a very beneficial effect on all of us, because whatever little injuries go along with touring all the time, they cleared up and whatever little complaints you have about, ‘oh, I don’t like this hotel’ or, ‘can’t we stay in Montreal instead of Ottawa?’ All that bulls**t, it doesn’t matter anymore because the essence of what you do is gone, the essence of playing live.”

Blue Rodeo would release their whopping 16th studio album in 2021, Many A Mile, though Cuddy is open to the idea that, pre-pandemic, the reality that the band had released their final record loomed large.

Charge up the lifeblood

“We could never go out and just do the songs that we’d already committed to in the past. I think we’d just feel like a jukebox and so it’s always necessary to charge up the lifeblood a little bit and get everybody playing together,” Cuddy shared. 

“These guys are fantastic players, and just to hear them create is inspiring. But I don’t know. It’s definitely a waveform that two years ago, before this pandemic started, I was pretty sure we were never going to make another record. And then halfway through the pandemic, I was less sure. And of course I was proven wrong. I’m sure we’ll do it again.”

2022 marks milestone anniversaries for seminal Blue Rodeo albums, including 1987’s debut record Outskirts, which marked the shift for the group from applauded bar band to full on national treasure.

“I think that when we made Outskirts, first of all, we were very pleased to be making a record, but that wasn’t the end all, be all. We weren’t going to be super disappointed because we’d already been disappointed. We’d been a band for seven years at that point, and we were a really successful bar band at that point, and we really enjoyed ourselves playing in The Horseshoe, playing the Big Bop. So making the record was a step, and then it kind of failed at the beginning, but being taken out by the record company and being told you’ve sold 5,000 copies, which made us go wow, 5,000 copies! That’s more than you sell off the stage. But then ‘if you don’t sell more we’re going to drop you,’” Cuddy recalled.

Dealing with hits

 “And then Try comes out and it becomes a hit and that changes our lives. But we’re not aware of how it’s changing our lives. But I look back and I realize that all that we had done in the bars and how we formed ourselves as a band, that was the training period and that was over.”

Returning to St. John’s at Mary Brown’s Centre on Sept. 10th (a rescheduled date from earlier this year), and Cuddy laughs when we jokingly thank the consummate gentleman and national treasure for continuing to include ‘The Rock’ in the band’s touring itinerary.

“It’s one of those things you can feel embarrassed being thanked for. Because we’ve always loved coming to Newfoundland,” Cuddy shares with a smile. 

“We used to come and play Memorial University to play the pub there, and you had to go for two nights and Gary Clark would bring us out and it was a thrill. We got treated just like every other band. We were super abused a couple of times at the beginning and then people liked us and then we got invited to parties and we got our education about St. John’s and Newfoundland in those times,” he said.

“I think just generally for us, we started to tour Canada because that’s what we were offered. We toured the States a lot because that’s what we were offered, but it didn’t open our hearts the way touring in Canada has. There’s few exceptions to this – we really loved everywhere we’ve been and everywhere I’ve been on ‘The Rock’ and have really enjoyed it. I have friends now that have places there from Ontario, which is crazy, right. And it’s a way of life. It’s a type of person and it’s a natural beauty there. So we should be thanking you for being there and for also having such enthusiasm for music.”

For all things Blue Rodeo visit bluerodeo.com. For tickets to see the band with special guest Jenn Grant on Sept. 10th at Mary Brown’s Centre visit mbcentre.ca 

Local musician Ryan Snow, a Harbour Grace native now living in South River, is no stranger around a tune. A longtime member of Sheila’s Brush, Snow has branched out solo with his latest effort Tales from the Lighthouse.

Produced and engineered by Brad Tuck with collaborators Ryan Baker and Ray Legere, Snow’s collection is a proper taste of home perfectly paired with come home year festivities.

We caught up with Snow for an in depth look into the new record for the latest in our album deep dive series.

Sea Legs

This was the first song written for the album. This song was written about an excursion I had with my wife and friends out by Harbour Grace Island trying for some elusive codfish. My friend took us out jigging and the wind picked up after I was whistling. He blamed the wind on my whistling. Nonetheless, the water got choppy and I got feeling a little sick. I had to get brought ashore and then home to lie down. Having ‘Sea Legs’ is a rite of passage for most Newfoundlanders and Labradorean’s, I just didn’t get them. I did finish the song with a better ending than I had, as he became quite proud of the ones that he had grown (unlike myself). 

Tales from the Lighthouse

Modern technology in marine travel is becoming more advanced by the day. The use of lighthouses over the course of time have saved many distressed travelers and fisherman alike. 

This song uses the words “The lighthouse keepers eye’s upon us” referring to the actual light from the lighthouse as a metaphor for the lighthouse keepers watchful eyes.

Audrey’s Adventure

This song came about in a funny way. I was writing music one morning and my little girl, who was six at the time, asked how come I haven’t written a song about her? I told her to grab a scribbler and write down some things she would like to have in her song. 

So in her six-year-old fashion, she had fictional characters like witches and wizards and trolls and dragons, like you would. We created an adventure where she went off in a hot air balloon to see all kinds of magical places to end up finding some unicorns in the sky.

The Storyteller

We all have people in our lives that can captivate us in their stories and keep us hanging on for more. This was inspired by my good friend Jim Pike who’s never stuck for words and my father Wendell Snow who always has a great story to tell. I wrote the song in a type of executive summary style format where two stories are introduced (“Of broken hearts and shattered sails”) and the following verses in the song elaborate on their stories.

Music that Makes Us

This is a tribute to all the great music that has shaped so many of us. I can remember being a kid and my dad would have Irish/Newfoundland music always playing in the kitchen. It has shaped the music I play and the music I love – and now the music I make. The song has a start similar to Simani’s intro in Outport People and takes a turn of its own. In this song there are 29 song references to well-known Irish/Newfoundland folk songs. Some songs are easy to pick out while some others are more difficult. See how many you can able to identify!

Jigs in Full Sail

A great representation of the accordion skills of Ryan Baker. Ryan is from Marystown and has played with the likes of The Ennis Sisters, Natalie MacMaster, and even at Casino Nova Scotia where he performed a tribute to Harry Hibbs. His playing ability is one of the best I’ve ever seen. You can even hear the banjo skills of Brad Tuck following along. Brad’s presence is all over the album with various instruments and vocal harmonies. Brad is a professional multi-instrumentalist and a well-known singer and songwriter. I was fortunate to get introduced to both of these guys and will be forever grateful for their contribution to the album.

Dawn

I had to finish off the album with a sad song I wrote for my aunt that has passed. She was my godmother. She had a lengthy battle with cancer and had it defeated many times. Ultimately, she couldn’t take anymore and succumbed to it. I was asked to play a song at her funeral, but I couldn’t think of a song that would fit, so I wrote this one that evening instead. The day after I had it finished and was prepared to play it, I was informed that I was not allowed to play it in the Catholic Church as it was against their rules. I did play it in the funeral home at her wake and haven’t played it live since then.

Who are we? What is our purpose? What do we do when that purpose is gone?

Those were looming questions Catherine Allan and Andrew James O’Brien – aka award-winning duo Fortunate Ones – wrestled in recent years wrought with massive shifts and changes both personally and professionally.

For O’Brien, that change began in 2019, where a procedure on his hand led to him unable to play guitar in any meaningful way for the short-term.

“At the time it just felt like a physical inconvenience, I think, in a lot of ways. We were headed toward and already feeling kind of professional burnout in some ways. We had toured so relentlessly for many years without any real stopping. It just felt like that’s what you do,” O’Brien shared in a stidown with The Herald. 

“So at the time when I had my finger operated on, I wasn’t really thinking about it in the grander sense of life. It was more of an inconvenience. But I started working at The Inn by Mallard Cottage, and it was this job that I took just to do something in the downtime. And I really kind of got into it.

“Once my hand healed I was playing guitar for fun, which is something that I hadn’t done for years. I felt burnt on the instrument. I felt like I had hit a ceiling in my playing. I didn’t feel creative. And then all of a sudden, with this slowdown, it started to creep back in naturally, this kind of creativity and the need to explore or kind of mentally debrief after years of constantly grinding. And then COVID happened, and it was like the ultimate universal reaffirmation that the slowdown was necessary.”

Time to breathe

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic may have served as a grim and uncertain cloud for many in the music industry, but for Allan and O’Brien, it was a respite from tireless years of performance-based burnout.

With O’Brien becoming sober in February 2020, and the duo still re-charging from their tireless schedule for the past five years, the global shutdown became almost therapeutic for a pair in need of time to breathe.

“I had actually gotten sober in February 2020. Didn’t know what COVID was at the time. And so coincidentally, it was basically like the universe was telling me I needed to recalibrate. So the pandemic was this ultimate kind of audit of life. And then when I got down to it, we were able to focus on important life changes and just rest and self-care, getting back to each other. And that was the catalyst for all this kind of creative, almost like a personal, creative renaissance,” O’Brien shared candidly.

“We sort of retreated,” adds Allan. “And we could see a lot of our peers really panicking, which is really unfortunate, racing to see what are we going to do during this time and doing the online shows and whatever they could to keep their ship going, whereas we completely retreated because we had no idea. We thought okay, we need to really reset here and maybe the best use of our time for now is to keep writing, keep making and relax into that.”

Relaxation and mediation would come in the form of a house sitting gig in rural Newfoundland, where the in-and-out-of-music couple would take to a salt box house in English Harbour.

“Honest to God, I thought so many times when I was out there, like this is saving me,” Allan admits. “Just the quiet, looking at the ocean, trying not to get swept up in the panic of the moment, which was really hard for all of us. And we all had our freak out moments. But rural Newfoundland really gave back to us over these last couple of years.”

The pandemic downtime proved fertile creative ground, with O’Brien and Allan communicating with their producer Joshua Van Tassel remotely, setting to work on their third studio album That Was You and Me. 

With production for the album originally scheduled for the spring of 2020, the duo worked remotely with Van Tassel, working on demos in their home before heading to Toronto to record in October of 2020.

Therapeutic distraction

“One thing about having that extra time, because the majority of the songs were written pre-pandemic, we really got to like live inside them when we actually demoed them ourselves and bounce ideas back and forth with Josh,” explained Allan. “We really got to live them and it was such a good distraction and sort of therapeutic to really get inside those songs.”

The promising upstarts that burst on a national stage with their debut album The Bliss in 2015 and the seasoned and battle-tested professionals before us in 2022 – distanced by time and life lessons – couldn’t be more different artists and indeed people.

Desires, dreams and realities change. For O’Brien, realizing there’s indeed life after music, was a strong catalyst in his own road to personal growth and healing.

“Ever since I was 18, I in some way wanted to be an artist or a performer. At first it was an actor for a brief time and very quickly became, no matter what it takes I’m going to be a musician. I’m going to be a songwriter. I’ll do absolutely everything it takes,” he shared. 

‘An honest way’

“And then when you realize you put all this work in and then all of what you’ve built gets taken away so abruptly and kind of profoundly, coupled with the pandemic and me kind of happily working at this inn in Quidi Vidi, writing and playing for fun again for the first time in years, I realized that I wasn’t interested in dying on the hill of music as my sole career or sole identity or sole pursuit. 

“And I think once I actually reckoned with that and kind of came to a place of peace with that, it opened me wide up creatively. I felt the pressure was gone. I felt like it didn’t matter to me how what I was creating was received. It just felt good to be doing it in an honest way again. And I realized that I can play guitar and sing and write songs for fun and do other things for money if I have to and if I want to.”

A beautiful new album, new management team and publishing deal, and the future shines bright for two of our province’s finest musicians, and warmly welcoming humans.

For now though the final word goes to Allan, who channels the good words from the bands’ deeply personal, emotive and all-together from the heart record.

“I’m going to quote a lyric from that new record. ‘All the moments you had, both the good and the bad are just a part of your story.’ It feels like we’re on steady ground for the first time in a couple of years and everything was worth it leading up to now.”

For more information on Fortunate Ones and That Was You And Me visit fortunateones.ca

“Close to the Bone is a true hybrid film and music project,” shared Foster in an exclusive statement to The Herald.

“Written concurrently over the last few years, the film features over half of the new album’s music and that music helps to tell the film’s story about family, chronic illness and how one wishes to be remembered.”

Starring Alison Moira Kelly, Bridget Wareham, Darryl Hopkins, Des Walsh and directed by Foster himself, Close to the Bone, the film, will launch at the Nickel Independent Film Festival this June, with an album on deck for the latter part of 2022.

“I’m excited to start the project’s journey right here at home at the Nickel Film Festival, running in St. John’s from June 13-19. After the last few years, it will be great to be back in a theatre, experiencing the film with others in person.”

For more information on Close to the Bone and the Nickel Independent Film Festival visit nickelfestival.com and infoster.ca

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The tour is in response to the 16th studio album of the same name, which was released on December 3rd, 2021. 

Presale tickets are available now with public on sale kicking off December 17th at 10 am NST.

Visit tour.bluerodeo.com for more information. 

There’s no music as fluid yet chaotic as jazz. Madness meets magnificence, the calamity of sound and improvisation that results in pure artistry, jazz is near-impossible to replicate from one night to the next. And in that lies the genius. You never get the same sound twice.

For the established local trio of guitarist Grant King, bassist Ian Murphy, and drummer Ashley Chalmers – who collectively make up the instrumental jazz-rock outfit Big Space – imperfection is a part of the pleasure of performance. 

“If you’re going to record yourself improvising music, you’ve got to accept the fact that this is not going to be perfect,” shared Murphy in a sitdown with The Herald.

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“We’ve all been involved in other bands where we do have everything meticulously arranged and perfectly set out. And that’s cool too. It’s just what we do in this band is not that at all. It’s capturing the moment and playing together, responding to each other and hoping that we can invent something in the moment that sounds like it’s written, sounds like it’s composed or is better than something we could compose.”

Adds King, “What you want to catch is the energy of the improv. If any of that’s worked out, it’s not the same thing at all. Like rhythmically, it’s not as inventive, and it’s also just a feeling of everything might fall apart right now. You want to have that, but still be good, or at least live with it.”

‘A Moment Captured’

The genesis of their latest studio album In Relation To began pre-pandemic, though for a project that demands chemistry and quick-reaction, the lack of face-time between members tossed a wrench in the Big Space machine, without question.

“We had just started, had basically just set up the room with the mics and everything ready to go. And COVID happened. And then we didn’t see each other until June,” recalls King. 

“We get together once a week, right? And so what we would do is just, once a week at the jam, we would just record one song over and over in hopes that we get a good written part, good improv and a good written end.”

In Relation To is the embodiment of those sessions, a live in studio, no overdubbed sonic slice of the band, with all the fluidity and gonzo merging of styles that you’d expect from a candid Big Space performance.

“Our music, and maybe it’s apparent on the record, maybe not, all of the recordings are like a moment captured, no overdubs, no figuring it all out beforehand,” Chalmers shared. 

“It’s just kind of fly by the seat of your pants and make it to the end together. It’s got to work out and every note has got to sound like it’s not a mistake. It’s not like a recording project where it’s like ‘I’ll send in the bass track and you lay down the drums.’ I know a lot of people were into that during COVID, sending tracks online and multi-track recording. That’s not really what we’re about at all.”

“If you listen to the different takes of these songs, the recordings, and we’ll probably do like four or five takes in a night of the same song. Every one is completely different,” adds King.

“That’s what’s brutal about it. Because you might have one or two good jams off the top and then by jam three or four you’re trying to not do that stuff and kind of run out of ideas. You don’t want to repeat yourself and if you do you’re screwing the whole arc.”

And while this province’s bread and butter rests firmly in the camp of traditional and Irish influenced tunes, a melting pot like Big Space, and the success they receive both critically and in a live setting, is proof-positive that there’s room for more than one sound on The Rock.

“It’s wicked to be in St. John’s doing this kind of music,” Chalmers says enthusiastically. “And I’ve lived in many cities in Canada, and I feel like there’s a lot of support and a lot of positivity from people that come to listen to live  music.”

Rising singer-songwriter Jayne Batstone continues to impress both curious music observers, critics and newcomers alike with her latest EP Line Art.

Born and raised in St. John’s, Batstone has been surrounded by music and the arts her whole life, becoming a multi-talented singer/songwriter, actor, dancer, advocate and ally.

Featuring Chris Batstone, Wade Tarling, Chris LeDrew, Adam Staple, Sean Panting and Alison Batstone, the EP features the hit single I Won’t Say It, which climbed the charts of the station CIOE and won the junior music category at the 2020 Arts & Letters competition.

Batstone caught up with The Herald in the latest in our album deep dive series for an expansive and in-depth look into her latest, personal collection of songs. 

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Teenagers is about being a teen in these crazy times. While in high school, I missed school for protests that were organized by my peers, had to do online school for over half of my high school experience. This song is trying to show that chaos.

I Won’t Say It is about that feeling that you get in new relationships. You feel like you are falling for them but you’re not sure, and you don’t want to say it yet because it might ruin everything.  It’s a song about being afraid of losing someone you barely know.

Pastel Angst is about getting older.  Each verse highlights a part of my life, starting as being eight, then junior high, then high school.  

It’s about wanting to hold onto things like the colour of your childhood rooms walls. It’s walking away from the drama that is getting older and going to do something that’s more childish.

Digital Date is about trying to maintain a relationship online.  During lockdown, I pretty much stopped talking to my friends online for about a week because I wasn’t used to only talking through my phone, but I got into the routine and learned ways of keeping my close relationships without seeing them in person, like we all did.

Celestial is different from the rest of my songs because it doesn’t really have a set message behind it.  

Some people have told me that it sounds like a breakup or moving on from something, others say it’s getting through a tough time.  I think that it’s up to the listener. Whatever you take away from it is your own message. None are correct or incorrect, it’s yours.

The late, great Johnny Fisher passed away on December 2, 2020. One year later, and his bandmates in heavy outfit Last Soul Down honoured his memory with a touching message, and the release of a new album of material, In Hindsight. Full statement below!

“Today is the anniversary of Johnny passing, and suffice to say, anyone who knew him are missing him extra hard right now.

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“From all of the fun, funny moments we spent with him, to the incredible performances and music we shared together as fans and bandmates, he gave us something we should cherish, that we were lucky enough to have had someone as special as him in our lives. So let’s all post some amazing memories we shared with him, and remind the world how great he was, and still is in all of our hearts.

“In honour of Johnny, Last Soul Down is releasing a digital version of the vinyl today so we can all share in enjoying his music, which has always been Johnny’s heart and soul. He is a punk rock and metal legend around here, and I personally would love if we can keep that legacy alive as much as possible.

“We will eventually be physically putting out the vinyl next year once all of the manufacturing is completed, and we finally have it in our hands.

“In the meantime, here is a link to the album on our Band Camp page. It will also be available on the other streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, etc. https://lastsouldown.bandcamp.com/album/in-hindsight

“We love and miss you Johnny!!!”

In Hindsight was recorded over three days in August 2018 by Don Ellis at Mt Scio Studio in St John’s NL Canada. It was mixed and mastered by Don in August 2019.

Stay tuned to The Newfoundland Herald for much more on Last Soul Down and In Hindsight

An impromptu trip to Nashville in 2019 set the wheels in motion for the sophomore record from Americana Folk duo, Quote the Raven. The sounds filling the Nashville airways reinvigorated the Newfoundland duo’s inspiration and they found a new home in the Americana genre. Their upcoming record titled Can’t Hold the Light, is a summation of the journeys that the pair have experienced over the past three years.

Collaboration has always been at the forefront of everything Quote the Raven has done. Similar to their first record Golden Hour, Can’t Hold the Light features an A-list of Canadian collaborators including Chris Kirby, Charlie A’Court, Blake Reid, Andrew Waite, Jessica Pearson, Andrew Sneddon, Nick Earle, and so many more.

In the past two years, Quote the Raven have reached over 650,000 streams, been added to the prestigious “Folk & Friends” playlist on Spotify, and earned showcases and award nominations at the East Coast Music Awards. They’ve performed at the 2019 AmericanaFest in Nashville, been featured regularly on Stingray’s Folk Roots channel, charted on the Canadian Country top 100 and received multiple sync placements, including the CityTV drama “The Wedding Planners”.

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Music Newfoundland & Labrador’s 2019 Group of the Year have embarked on a whopping five tours of Eastern Canada, mapped out a Home Routes trek of Western Canada and performed at the legendary Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival.

Quote the Raven marry smooth vocal harmonies with an, at times, haunting aesthetic that both bewitches and allures the listener. They draw influence from the likes of Joy Williams (Civil Wars), Brandi Carlile, and The Milk Carton Kids. The pair entertain audiences with their quirky, quick wit dynamic that glimpses into the daily lives of touring musicians.

Stay tuned for our interview and album deep dive with Quote the Raven in the coming weeks!

*press release and photos courtesy of Quote the Raven

Born and raised in St. John’s, Batstone has been surrounded by music and the arts her whole life and performance has made her who she is – singer/songwriter, actor, dancer, advocate, ally.

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“Jayne’s voice has been described as “smooth’ and “haunting” underlined by a quiet confidence. While still a teenager herself it’s clear through her songs that she has an “old soul”. Her authentic energy radiates within her songs through economy of words and sound,”  a media release shared ahead of the EP launch.

Featuring Chris Batstone, Wade Tarling, Chris LeDrew, Adam Staple, Sean Panting and Alison Batstone, the EP features the hit single I Won’t Say It, which climbed the charts of the station CIOE and won the junior music category at the 2020 Arts & Letters competition.

Stay tuned for much more from this promising musician!

*Photography by Jeff Parsons