Blue Rodeo played the first of two final shows of its 40th anniversary tour in Toronto on Friday. Jag Gundu/Handout
Fans who flocked to Toronto’s Massey Hall on Friday night would have expected a few things: jangled country rock, commiseration in minor keys, Jim Cuddy’s exquisite jawline, Greg Keelor’s grizzled, warm demeanor; CanCon campfire classics marked by lovely vocal harmonies and melodies for miles. What wouldn’t have been anticipated was sharp political commentary.
“I’m so sick of Donald Trump,” Keelor said early in the first of two hometown concerts that close the band’s 40th anniversary tour, which began last fall. The singer-guitarist cited the American leader’s “misogyny,” “gleeful ignorance” and its government “thug” immigration police. Keelor’s knickers were in a knot, even tighter than the long white hair he had tangled up in a bun. He dedicated the 1989 song God and Country to the vainglorious president.
“Forever lost in comparisons, between you and the better man,” Keelor sang. “Yeah, you’re always so quick to take a bow.”
Three of the original members (songwriting co-frontmen Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, and bassist Bazil Donovan) remain. Jag Gundu/Handout
Blue Rodeo played its first show in 1985, at the Rivoli on the city’s Queen Street West strip. Three of the original members (songwriting co-frontmen Cuddy and Keelor, and bassist Bazil Donovan) remain. Through the years, a consistent lyrical theme has threaded its way through 16 albums. For lack of a better word: contrast − strains of light within the darkness; slivers of hope when facing doubt; refuge from storms.
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The sold-out crowd heard it time and time again, whether on the Rickenbacker-guitar pop of Rose-Coloured Glasses, or the ballad 5 Days in May: "They met in a hurricane, standing in the shelter, out of the rain."
In Blue Rodeo’s music, streetlights shine on cold December nights and diamonds sparkle in mines. On the concert-closing Lost Together: “Strange and beautiful are the stars tonight.”
Musically, Blue Rodeo roughly compares to the Eagles. Soothing harmonies soften edges for pop radio; rock rhythms satisfy the Molson Canadian crowd. It would be disrespectful to describe them as a poor man’s Eagles, though. Let’s call the Eagles a rich man’s Blue Rodeo instead.
The show at Toronto's Massey Hall on Friday was sold out. Jag Gundu/Handout
Lyrically, Keelor is poetic and impressionistic, while Cuddy leans to relationship-based songs that tell tales that are often bittersweet. Cuddy explained the backstory to the softly rocked and slightly twanged Finger Lakes, about an unplanned road trip in the 1980s with his emotionally distant father that involved a steak dinner, a baseball game on a motel room television and an abrupt goodbye.
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The other band members had their moments. Donovan’s low-riding bassline gave Diamond Mine its iconic boogie; Mike Boguski’s organ work on the cosmically countrified Nice Try drenched the room psychedelically; multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Bowskill worked his Gretsch guitar’s tremolo bar on Side of the Road for all it was worth; guitarist Colin Cripps’s atmospheric solo transformed the loping 5 Days in May into a spellbinding jam; and in the great tradition of seventies arena rock, drummer Glenn Milchem was given a solo.
Blue Rodeo's Greg Keelor offered some sharp commentary early in the show. Jag Gundu/Handout
Cuddy showed off his silvery tenor on Try. (His falsetto still works too.) During the Dylanish What Am I Doing Here, he flubbed a vocal. I swear he blushed − something he probably hasn’t done since he was 14, if then.
On the mandolin-dappled Hasn’t Hit Me Yet, Keelor told the audience it was their turn to sing. They understood the assignment.
At the end of the night, he said, “See ya down the road.” Forty years in and with no end in sight, that’s a given. In fact, three more Ontario shows next week were tacked on to the end of the tour. And bassist Donovan sits in with another band on Sunday afternoon upstairs at the Rivoli, the venue where it all began.