With more than a quarter of a century under their belts, Blue Rodeo has spent a lot of time together as a band touring across the country and making music.
With that much time together on the Canadian musical landscape, and an anthology totaling 12 studio albums with millions of records sold, five Juno awards and being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2012, many would argue that Blue Rodeo are already musical legends.
Not happy to rest on its laurels, the band is close to finishing its latest record, tentatively titled In Our Nature, which is set to be released this fall.
Co-founder, singer-songwriter and musician Greg Keelor said the band has seldom been on the same page as it is right now, which is a really great thing.
“We are just about finished a new record right now and it is really good and it will be out in the fall and it is one of our best ever,” Keelor said. “This band has been going for over 25 years, and there’s times when things are really good and synchronistic and there’s times when things are baffling and troublesome. There is no reason or why for it, you could never explain it and you can’t make it one way or the other, it just sort of has its season.
“But this has actually been an excellent season for Blue Rodeo.”
While the band debuted in 1987 with its album Outskirts, Keelor began playing with co-founder Jim Cuddy in a band called the High-Fives while they were living in New York in 1978. The Big Apple, it turns out, is where they got their inspiration to play country music.
“It was in New York that we actually got into country music,” he said. “There were a couple of bars that we used to go to that were great country honky tonkin’ bars and we just sort of knew we wanted to do a bit more country.”
That desire to play country music resulted in Blue Rodeo being formed and since then, Keelor said, the band’s albums have often reflected nature and the joys that come with being in the natural world.
“And just the inspiration and epiphany that happens once in a while when walking through the woods or the mountains – the little glorious surprises you stumble upon while you are just walking around.”
The band plays The Banff Centre’s Shaw Amphitheatre this Sunday (July 9) and Keelor said the venue and being surrounded by nature in Banff National Park is pretty spectacular.
“It is sort of idyllic isn’t it? Way up in the mountains with the sun setting,” he said.
Keelor is no stranger to the area, having worked at Chateau Lake Louise from 1974-76. He said he enjoys being back in the valley and when in town takes time to get out into nature by doing things like hiking the Bee Hive or Tunnel Mountain. And the band has been in town quite a few times over the years, having played close to 20 shows in Banff while touring the country, including two previous shows at the amphitheatre.
Keelor said he still enjoys touring even after all these years.
“On many different levels it is great fun,” he said. “There is a bit of a gypsy in me and there is a bit of gypsy, I think, in a lot of musicians. You just sort of get used to going on the road and leaving your home life behind and you are quite comfortable with it – being on the road feels like another room in the house.
“The great thing is that when you are playing music every night your voice gets better, your guitar playing gets better, there’s the collective musicians playing better together, it is nice watching it all come together.”
Time spent playing music, however, has taken its toll on his hearing and Keelor said that is why he now plays acoustic over electric guitars when performing live.
“I just think guitars in general are beautiful things; not only are they the transmitters of sound and music, they are also beautiful things to look at with the craftsmanship, the ingenuity of it all,” he said.
Keelor said he considers instruments like the guitar or the piano, for example, as forms of technology. With the advancement of computer technology, he said as a musician all the technological advancements available allows him to get deeper into the music.
“When computers first started operating they sort of lacked the musical resonance that analog music had, but in the last five or six years they have really got it so improved it is ridiculous,” he said, adding computers are now a very viable tape machine with the plugins available instead of outboard devices. “And where the computer is really stupendous is when you are mixing a record – analog mixing it was great fun, but it was a little hairy. It was a lot of work and with the computer you can sit back and paint a little bit here and paint a little bit there – very relaxed.
“And you can also use analog gear in unison with your computer, so you really do have the best of both worlds.”
Blue Rodeo performs on Saturday at the Shaw Amphitheatre as part of the Banff Summer Arts Festival. Tickets are $50 and gates open at 5:30 p.m.
