Multiple gold-record creator and songwriter Jim Cuddy, who shares one half of the frontman load in Blue Rodeo, is a master of crafting love songs.
Cuddy’s deep catalogue of tunes, that often have an old-country or folk twang to them, are essential musical backdrops to the Canadian summer landscape and they often focus on the windy paths of relationships.
One of those paths leads Cuddy to closing the 36th annual Canmore Folk Music Festival, Aug. 5.
“There are a lot of permutations in long-term relationships. I think being in love keeps you in touch with that feeling, but I don’t think all the things I write about always happen to me,” Cuddy said.
“Nothing stays constant in a long-term relationship. The moment that you think you’ve reached a plateau or everything is just cruising along, everything changes.”
Unlike the shiny, happy feel of a lot of radio-hit, relationship songs, Cuddy has always maintained a strong realism within the darker side of love in songs like “Bad Timing,” “Everyone Watched The Wedding” and many more.
“I think that it is a truism that you have to accept with any relationship, and of course, I’m well along with many relationships, and even though a lot of them can have very curvy paths, they can last. They don’t have to have a shelf life, necessarily,” Cuddy added.
“I think that ending a relationship was once a latent fear, but I now understand that a relationship – no matter how strong or no matter how long – could end at any time.”
One of the landmark albums of the 11-time Juno Award-winning band is the 1993 release Five Days In July.
Cited as a highly inspirational album for various Canadian musicians, Cuddy remembers the surreal moments that surrounded the making of the album, which was recorded on bandmate Greg Keelor’s farm near Peterborough, Ont.
“That was our perfect storm because it came after Lost Together and when we finished that tour, we were really exhausted and really fragile, too. We needed to do something that was gentle and we didn’t really do Five Days as a major project – we sort of did it as a side project,” Cuddy said.
Letting the naturalistic setting of Keelor’s farm inspire the quiet and haunting tracks, Cuddy and the band listened to the playback of the demos outdoors, as the recording took place in a mobile truck.
“It was the right setting. To stand outside the truck and listen back, all of that stuff made so much sense when you listened and looked at the sky, and things that had a quiet beauty became really strong to us because they enhanced our surroundings in the woods,” Cuddy said.
Reminiscing about the power of many guest performances, such as Sarah McLachlan, the record was released with a very communal accent to the songs.
“When we did the takes with Sarah McLachlan, she was just such a beautiful presence. So every decision we made for that album ended up being the right one – and not because we are so damn smart, but because it was the right one and it fell into place,” Cuddy noted.
Oddly enough, the band returned to the enchanted property this past year for the recording of its latest record In Our Nature, which is set to drop in September or October.
Cuddy, however, wasn’t overly enthused at the idea, as the band also recorded the 1995 release Nowhere To Here at the farm, but experienced very different and stressful results.
“I went back with a lot of trepidation because the last time we had worked there, that was not a good experience. We were all cooped in, it was during the winter and everybody was fighting and the music went really psychologically dark,” he said.
“And so that traumatized me and I did not want to go back and so I went back kicking and screaming, but again, it has this incredible power when it all seems to be working and everybody is so calm. Gradually, my fears were erased and it turned out so beautifully.”
After the release of Blue Rodeo’s epic, 16-song record The Things We Left Behind, Cuddy released his third solo album in 2011 entitled Skycraper Soul.
Although he loves playing with the band, Cuddy also sees the release of his solo works as important creative ventures.
“I need to continually work to stay involved and to keep my voice strong. I love working on my own and to be the final voice, but when I’m done with it being only my voice I want to be part of a group. I need both of those realities,” he said.
After living in Banff in the 1970s, Cuddy is excited for his first live performance in Canmore at the Canmore Folk Festival on Aug. 5.
“I’ve always wanted to play in Canmore. I lived in Banff back in the ’70s and Canmore was just beginning at that time so I’m very interested to see what this festival is like, and I’m very interested to go and play music there,” he added.
For more information on schedules and times, please visit canmorefolkfestival.com.
