Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor have a soft spot for Montreal

Montreal Gazette

26-06-2025

Music
Blue Rodeo is one of the most famous bands to come out of Toronto, but the country-flavoured rock outfit's two frontmen, Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, both have strong connections to Montreal.
They spoke about those ties to our city in a recent Zoom conversation from their respective homes in the Toronto area. Blue Rodeo will headline a free outdoor show on the main TD Stage at the Place des Festivals, part of the Montreal Jazz Festival, Friday at 9:30 p.m. and the much-loved band — whose hits include Try, Diamond Mine, Lost Together, Hasn't Hit Me Yet and many others — will also be returning to play at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in Place des Arts on Jan. 17 next year, on their 40 th anniversary tour.
Keelor, who was born in Inverness, N.S., moved from Toronto to Montreal in 1963 when his dad was transferred here. The family moved to the Town of Mount Royal and 'it was like a paradise for a 10-year-old,' Keelor said. 'TMR was very youth-oriented, very sports-oriented. There were lots of activities for kids and I was a little goalie and they had a great intercity hockey team, the TMR Eagles. It was completely enchanting before I even knew what enchantment even meant.'
His parents moved back to Toronto in 1971 and Keelor stayed a year longer in Montreal to play hockey, moving back in with his parents in 1972.
'I went to North Toronto, which is where I met my buddy Jim,' Keelor said.
Cuddy was born in Toronto but his dad almost immediately moved the family to the U.S., where they lived in different cities, following his dad's career path as a business consultant. They moved to Montreal West in '63, the same year Keelor arrived in TMR, and his mom vowed to never move again.
'She'd probably moved 12 times at that point so she said she'd never move again,' Cuddy said. 'We loved Montreal West. I liked it, but it was very strict. The school we went to was Protestant but it was very parochial. They had a lot of rules. Then the summer of '67 came and I was a big Toronto Maple Leafs fan. I'd been born in Toronto but never lived there so I had this mystique about Toronto. And that was the last year that Toronto won the Stanley Cup, beating Montreal. Then Expo started. We all had passes. It was the new métro. I was 11 and completely independent. I had a paper route. I'd come and go to Expo all summer long. Then by the middle of the summer, my dad said we're moving to Toronto. For a month, my mom said no. I just thought this was the greatest time of my life. It was Expo, the Leafs had just won the Cup, and I'm actually moving to this city that I cherish. My mom declared that was her last move and it was her last move.'
Keelor, by the way, is a Habs fan, and, in our interview, Cuddy, a self-described 'long-suffering Leafs fan,' mock scolded Keelor for being a Canadiens supporter.
'Greg is actually a turncoat,' Cuddy said. 'In the early '70s, Greg saw this glorious team and decided to take off his Maple Leafs jersey and put on his Habs jersey forever.'
Blue Rodeo always had a faithful fan base here, right from the moment their debut album Outskirts came out in 1987.
'Montreal was like a new girlfriend, a very attractive girlfriend,' Keelor said. 'It was always an exciting place to play because the audience was so responsive, was so into it. It just made us so excited to play. In those days, we never felt better than we were playing in Montreal. We did a series of shows at the Spectrum and those might've been the best Blue Rodeo shows that we ever did. I remember on our first tour we opened for k.d. lang at the Spectrum and it just seemed like such an incredible place to play.'
Cuddy seconded that emotion.
'I said recently when I was playing in Dorval, with a trio, outside in the pouring rain, to a big enthusiastic crowd, that we don't usually book a night after a Montreal show. There's two places we don't do that. We don't do that in St. John's, not just for the crowd but obviously for logistics, we're just not going to make it. But (we do that) for Montreal because whatever the next city is, it will suffer (in comparison). There's just no point in doing it. You can play a very good concert but it just won't be the same. There's a level of sophistication to the musical audiences in Montreal ... and we noticed this very early on. We were embraced by Montreal audiences and they go where you go.'
Keelor also fondly recalls the many shows at Bourbon Street North in Ste-Adèle.
Astonishingly enough, Blue Rodeo has been together for four decades, a history kick-started in 1987 by the terrific soul ballad Try sung with so much emotion by Cuddy.
'There's part of me that instinctually just keeps on motoring along and tries not to think too much about that sort of stuff because I'm still involved in what I do,' Keelor said. 'But upon reflection you see that just even making it as a band is a miracle. Like how does that happen? Why are you cosmically picked to write these songs that make you a popular band ... and somehow these songs become somewhat iconic in the Canadian songbook and they're sung around campfires and living rooms and at weddings and funerals. And you realize what an incredible gift that is to your life.'