Placing a dear friend among the stars
The title track of Jim Cuddy’s new album expresses the helplessness felt by the loss of a loved one
Whenever Jim Cuddy sings his new song “Constellations,” he’ll be thinking about the time he was stumbling around his farm, drunk on wine and unsuccessfully searching the night sky for the Big Dipper.
More than that, he’ll be thinking about his late friend Rob Gray.
The song is the title track of Cuddy’s new album “Constellation.” Cuddy wrote it about a night he spent with Gray and a couple of close friends at Cuddy’s farm north of Orangeville.
Gray had just undergone a radiation treatment. His friends knew Gray was dying of cancer. The evening was planned as a final fling, a way to say goodbye.
Gray, an award-winning set designer for film and television, was a dear friend. Gray had helped Cuddy and his wife Rena pick out the farm. Their children had played together, grown up together.
Cuddy has told the story of that night on the farm several times since writing “Constellations.” He tells it well, combining laughter with loss. So here’s how he told it to The Spectator.
“We had an epic night,” Cuddy recalled. “We had this big meal, it was when he was still able to eat. Rob always had prodigious appetites, big eater, big drinker, big everything. He encouraged so much drinking ... we all had so much to drink.
“We started talking about the end and then we said: ‘We’re going to go outside, pick a star and name it after you. Then we’ll always remember you when we see that star.’
“We decided to make it easy, by making it one of the stars in the handle of the Big Dipper. My farm is on a hill and there’s nothing obscuring the sky and it was a clear October night.
“We go outside and the four of us are on the lawn, we’re staggering on the lawn. And we can’t find the Big Dipper.
“It became this ridiculous Monty Python scene where we are turning around, crying, laughing, looking for the Big Dipper. It was such a poignant night and I wanted something to hang it on, a fully remembered memory of a person.
“When I sing that song I will be remembering that night. There’s nothing I can do about the loss of my friend. I can just accept it, but that night will come back to me every single time I sing that song.”
Cuddy, who founded Blue Rodeo back in the ’80s with collaborator Greg Keelor, is 62 now. He’s come to a time in life when loss is something with which we are forced to reckon.
Cuddy does it well on “Constellations,” expressing the helplessness felt by those facing a dear friend’s death. “I’d like to know what you want me to do,” the song’s narrator pleads. Of course, there is no answer.
“When you lose somebody, the profundity of the loss is exaggerated by the bewilderment of what to do,” Cuddy says. “There is nothing you can do.”
When it came time to choose a cover for the new album — his fourth solo project — Cuddy was sent a picture of an old pickup truck parked in front of a home in Santa Monica, Calif. It came from his friend Sally Davies, a New York photographer known for her shots of old cars, dingy diners and fading storefronts.
Cuddy saw the photo and was shocked. He has a ’64 Ford pickup on the farm that looks very much like the one he was now staring at.
“We have a family history with that truck, Rob and I,” Cuddy explained. “We even have a picture of Rob with his kids and my kids in front of that truck.”
Cuddy then asked Davies if she could add a picture of the Big Dipper to the album art. He didn’t tell the artist why, but she nonetheless found a place for it, up in the top right corner. You only notice if you’re looking for it.
“She put it in so faintly, that you have trouble noticing,” Cuddy says. “I hadn’t even told her the story. If she had put it in really bold, it would have looked silly, but she put it in faintly.
“Sometimes, the coincidence of these things appear mystical.”
Not everything, however, works with that sort of karma. Take the title of the album. It’s “Constellation” — singular, not plural like the title of the ‘title song’ “Constellations.”
When asked about the contradiction, Cuddy starts out philosophical: “I guess ‘Constellations’ in the song means out looking at the constellations ...”
Cuddy stops midsentence with a knowing laugh: “That’s bogus. I just made that up. I don’t exactly know how that happened. It’s just a stupid thing. I don’t know how it happened and it’s not the first time I’ve done that.”