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 

Randy Bachman, architect of over 120 platinum, gold and silver album/singles globally, with #1 singles in over 20 countries and total record sales exceeding 40 million albums and singles through his work alongside legendary acts The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner-Overdrive, is high atop the pantheon of icons deserving of praise.

You know the singles his godly-bestowed hands have birthed: “These Eyes”, “Laughing”, “Undun”, “No Time”, “American Woman”, “No Sugar Tonight”, “Let it Ride”, “Roll on Down The Highway”, “Takin’ Care of Business”, “Looking Out For #1”, “Hey You” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”, among countless others.

Now, Bachman returns to Newfoundland and Labrador to kick off the inaugural Churchill Park Music Festival this Friday alongside Ann Wilson, David Wilcox and Harlequin in St. John’s, but not before sitting down with us for a deep dive into his storied life and career.

“I was there (in St. John’s) in the early 2000s with The Guess Who,” Bachman recalled during a lengthy and spirited interview/storytelling session with The Herald.

“We reformed in 1999 for the Pan Am games in Winnipeg just to do four songs at the closing. Everybody kind of went nuts and said, ‘Why are you only doing four songs? You got like 30 songs. Would you come back and play?’ So that year was ending. It was 1999, right? Nobody thought there was going to be a 2000. Everyone thought all the computers were going to nuke out in 2000, there’s not going to be anything. We said, Yeah, we’ll come back next year in 2000. There’s not going to be a next year. And lo and behold, January 1st came, nothing happened. It wasn’t the end of the world. And we ended up playing, I think, July 1st. That went on sale early in January, July 1st in Winnipeg, Canada Day, and it sold out in 10 minutes.

“And I remember the tour started in St John’s. I think we went there in late July. It was freezing. That cold wind when it comes off the Atlantic. I was explaining it to my son, because we’re all flying there in a couple of days, even though it’s July and August, you look out there, you see icebergs. They’re coming from Iceland or Greenland or they’re coming from the Arctic. And they actually come by there and there’s actually cold air around the ice. And even though the weather’s nice, it’s chilly there. I mean, I’ve been to Iceland in July and August and everybody said, take a hoodie. When the sun goes down, it is chilly. And if there’s wind, it’s bad. So I’m hoping we have good weather.”

Reflecting on sixty plus years in the music business – one fraught with insurmountable highs and predictable industry lows – and Bachman happily reflects on his days with BTO and The Guess Who, and the numerous reunions and high profile tours in subsequent eras.

“It’s all been quite dreamlike, because when you leave a band you think that’s it, and everybody’s got their chips on their shoulders, everybody’s got their baggage, and after a while the chips fall off, the baggage becomes lighter, and you go, What the f**k? We were great. We did like two or three albums that sold millions of copies. We put Canada on the map. We fulfilled our childhood dream. Then it happens in another band. You figure, well, that was really great. Hell freezes over. Great. And then ten years later, somebody calls us and says we want to hear the music again. Do you want to get back together? And you go what the heck? Sure, let’s do it! And you get back together.

“And the vibe is so good when you get back together because you’ve lost the baggage and the chips and the way you were pissed off, you realized it was 50% pissed off. I pissed them off. They pissed me off. It’s just like any breakup or any guy leaving a team or a marriage or a relationship or leaving your family or whatever, you run away from home. Sooner or later you go home because you like mom’s cooking. You know what I mean? And like her doing your laundry or whatever, you just like being in that comfort zone.”

Back in the glory days, when BTO would top global charts in the 70s, the daily grind of touring – and the far off future tech of global telecommunications – meant artists like Bachman would not realize the true fruits of their labours in real time.

“Everybody says you’re doing great. You’re on the road, you have no idea. We were doing 300 gigs a year. We had no idea that we were big and famous everywhere. You don’t know that everywhere the radio is playing your songs everywhere in every city and town in the world. “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” went to number one, we had no idea. It went to number one in 22 countries and we were on the road. There was no Internet. There was no newspaper. You couldn’t get Billboard magazine. You’re on the road, they didn’t sell it in drugstores. We just went on tour and every day we’d get a fax saying, ‘here’s where you’re going the next three days.'”

As for today, Bachman is honest about his interpretation about the current state of rock music.

“Everybody is going back (to the classics) because, let me be blunt, the new music is lousy. All the country music sounds the same. It’s the same guys in the studio with a different vocalist written by the same team of songwriters,” Bachman explained, delving into why the classic rock of the 60s and 70s still holds such allure five-six decades later.

“Everybody’s very reminiscent and going back to the 70s, which is the era of classic rock from about 62. The ending of Elvis is a big thing and The Beatles coming in 63, 64, going to about 76 when disco came in. There’s like 15 golden years of music for all the guys like me who were copying the Elvis’s and Chuck Berry’s and Bo Diddley’s and Jerry Lee Lewis’s and making it our own music and making it white boys prairie music because we’re from Winnipeg or Neil Young or Glenn Frey or Don Henley.

“You’re copying the black music that came out of Chicago and everywhere else and down south. You’re making it your own. And out comes this new pop rock music that now is called classic rock. And it is so good and so diverse because it came from so many sources and was then translated by so many messengers like me or Neil Young or Peter Frampton or The Doobie Brothers guys who just took that music and made it their own. That will last forever on classic rock radio. It’s a complete genre now, and everybody’s going back to embrace that.”

For part two of our one-on-one with the legendary Randy Bachman – including the story of how he reunited with his long lost guitar, and planned new music with son Tal – stay tuned to an upcoming print issue of The Newfoundland Herald.

Catch Bachman and his band at the Churchill Park Music Festival on Friday August 12th! Tickets still available!

Just For Laughs is excited to announce the return of the Just For Laughs Comedy Tour!  Following his successful turn as host in 2019, Canadian comedy legend Rick Mercer returns to lead a stellar line-up of Canada’s most hilarious and diverse comedians. This 19^th edition, titled Just For Laughs Comedy Night in Canada, will feature co-star of STARZ’s Ramy Dave Merheje, Just For Laughs Festival favourite Eman El-Husseini, and 2018 Juno award winner Ivan Decker. Together, these comedians will visit 18 prestigious theatres across the country – a mari usque ad mare! – starting April 19, 2022 in Moncton, NB and wrapping up in Victoria, BC on May 22, 2022.

The Tour will stop in Moncton, NB at the Capitol Theatre on April 19 at 7:30 PM; Saint John, NB at the Imperial Theatre on April 20 at 7:30 PM; Charlottetown, PEI at the Confederation Centre of the Arts on April 21 at 7:00 PM; Halifax, NS at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium on April 22 & 23 at 7:00 PM; and St, John’s, NL at the the Arts & Culture Centre on April 25 at 7:30 PM. Tickets for all shows go on sale Friday, November 26 at 10:00 AM (noon in Halifax).

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Just For Laughs is also proud to once again be partnering with Movember on the Just For Laughs Comedy Tour. The tour will provide Movember with an additional platform to bring continued awareness to men’s health, including mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.  $1 per ticket sold (less taxes) will be donated to Movember.

The Just For Laughs Tour has been bringing some of its favourite comedians to Canadians from coast to coast for almost 20 years and we are very excited to welcome our audience back into the theatre for live shows, and we are committed to doing so safely.  We will be adhering to all local Covid-19 safety protocols in place in collaboration with each venue and will be closely monitoring the situation in every city we visit.

About Rick Mercer
Rick Mercer is a Canadian comedian, television personality, political satirist, and author. He is best known for his work on the CBC Television comedy shows This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Made In Canada, and Rick Mercer Report. Mercer has received nearly 30 Gemini Awards and Canadian Screen awards for his work on television, and his CBC Television special Talking To Americans remains the highest rated Canadian comedy special ever with 2.7 million viewers.

Mercer is the author of four books, all of which have been national best sellers, and has also written for Time, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post. His newest book – Talking to Canadians: A Memoir – is available now.

He is a recipient of the Governor Generals Performing Arts Award, an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a proud native of St. John’s, Newfoundland.

St. John’s, NL • Arts & Culture Centre
Monday, April 25, 2022 • 7:30 PM
Tickets: $56.50
(taxes included + facility & service charges)
$1 per ticket sold (less taxes) will be donated to Movember.

Tickets on sale:
By phone: 709-729-3900/1-800-663-9449
Online: www.artsandculturecentre.com