70cCeO’S rural treat

Michael Becker
“3 “RECORD REVIEW

HAT OLD tis vilight
afterglow on the farm
vibe informs Blue
Rodeo’s fifth release, Five
Days In July. Fi i
Greg Keelor's 12-acre rural
«patch near Peterborough provided
’. the setting for what o- iginally was
to be'a relaxed eat, drink, sing and
-be merry retreat with friends and
_ family. .
The resulting recording is an
“Unexpected treat from what is
essentially a new version of the
tband.! ;
Sarah McLachlan contributes
» vocals on several tracks. Colin
“Linden guests on guitar and
Lorena McKinnett collaborator
Anne 8ourne.adds ambient
<> touches on cello‘and vocals.”.
“Blue Rodeo will feature the
‘album live in:a series of perfor-
“smances set for:Jan: 7‘at Whistler,

“Jan. 12 at the Vogue and jan. 13 to

'15/at the Commodore i in Van-

Music Now recently | talked to
lue. Rodeo vocalist and guitarist.” ”

~ GUES REVIEWER | Maya
~ Beckersmith

Jim Cuddy about the making of
Five Days In July.

Music Now: Does the band
usually rehearse and demo-tape
at the farm?

Cuddy: ‘Never. We have a
rehearsal space, an old warehouse
that we have in Toronto. This was
almost like a reward. With all the
touring we did last year with (new
members) Glenn Milchem on
drums, keyboardist James Gray
and Kim Deschamps on pedal and
lap steel we felt like we made a
lot of progress together and that it
was a nice musical reward to go to
the farm, have really nice meals
made for us and invite some
musical friends to come out and
record it,

“Whenever we devise some:
thing it always has to have some
Blue Rodeo purpose to it. So we
thought, well we'll put an EP
together and see what happens. if
it's all covers that will be fine, It
just evolved into something dif-

ferent,

“We had a lot of electric songs
and a lot of accoustic songs. It was
very apparent when we started
that the acoustic songs fit together
and they had a kind of coherence.

“They just sounded beautiful in

that setting, listening to the

’ playbacks at night sitting on the
porch. *
~ “Acoustic music and a natural’ "
“setting isa very beautiful comple-
ment.

“The rock stuif felt like

“fit into that setting so that was an.

_impetus to take it more seriously,

“to release songs that v we might

Catchy carols

re GUEST. "REVIEWER Maya
Beckersmith, 9, shares a festive
favorite freshly released this
year on Elephant. Records by

hildren’s entertainers Sharon, ;

‘Lois and Bram:

“1 you enjoy , listening to
‘Christmas carols and fun, lively
music you should give this one

at." oe
‘It's called Candles, Snow. &

"Mistletoe, With 20 songs, it rep- -

it didn’t --

have been saving for the electric
record and work them into this
one.”

Music Now: So how did this ses-
sion challenge you as musicians?
Cuddy: “In a band you can be
isolated in your own playing and
just listen to yourself or you can
try to fit in with the rest of the
band.

“Truthfutly, in the last couple
of years we've played at a par-
ticular volume where its very dif-
ficult to really play together.

“Coming way down, ycu find
that you can listen to each other
closely.

“That's a whole new
clfallenge, you have to learn each
other's playing. We're probably
two-thirds of the volume we used
to be so we listen to each other a
lot more. Being out at the farm, we
couldn’t really play in the room
loud, Playing acoustically, it's a
whole diterect type of intensity,.
you're very vulnerable,

“It's easy to get into a charac-
ter when you play rock music, it’s
very aggressive and defined. It’s a
lot more difficult to show how in-
tensely you're ‘affected by the
vulnerability of acoustic music.

‘It touches a lot more parts of
you. We've bonded and it’s totall
changed the way we relate to eac
other.

” “At the farm we had really ex-
traordinary dinners and also there
were gigantic bags of pot around

too and that has a pretty bonding
effect. Kids‘and dogs and food and .

pot and music!’

worth a listen

resents Christmas and
Chanukah. {t's vibrant music
sting by Sharon, Lois and Bram
and a talented kids’ choir.

It has several- traditional
Christmas songs,’ for example.
The Twelve Days of Christmas, -
which has been pepped up.a‘.
bit~ with some different Bn
guages.

\ like this music because it’s

BLUE RODEO will
of performances set for Jan. 7 a2 Whistler, Jan. 12 at the Vogue
and Jan, 13 to 15 at the Commodore in Vancouver.”

1
Photo submitted -

feature the album - live

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a blosed
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