SPIRIT IN THE SKY
Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy confronts mortality on his fourth solo album, Constellation
It took Jim Cuddy a lifetime to write Constellation.
The Blue Rodeo co-founder displays the sensibilities of an old soul on even his band’s earliest recordings, but says the songs of loss on his fourth solo album come from the experiences and emotional scars endured later in life.
“Even when I was 50 and everybody thought, ‘Oh, you’re old’ — that’s not old,” Cuddy, 62, said from Toronto the day before Constellation’s Jan. 26 release. “You’re not experiencing the same things as when you get in your 60s. When you’re in your 60s, mortality and life’s unexpected and yet expected twists are much more frequent.”
Characterizing Constellation as an album about both the end of relationships — not just romantic ones — and their durability, Cuddy said: “There are not as many memory pieces. I’m not looking back. … A lot of the songs are about a contemporary state of mind. And yes, I think a lot of these things would not have occurred to me before.”
The almost-title track, Constellations, an uncharacteristic hymn sent skyward by piano and strings, encapsulates the themes of impermanence and constancy. “Out on the lawn looking at the constellations / Pick a star, give it your name,” Cuddy sings. “But we’re all too drunk to make the observation / We’ll never find that star again.”
The tragedy in the lyric lightens a shade when he discusses the inspiration: the celebration of a terminally ill friend.
“He was in the middle of treatment, but the treatments weren’t working and we all knew it. I have a little farm that’s north of the city; we took a couple of his friends and had a really big night.”
After eating too much and drinking too much, “we started to talk about the subject of his passing and said how much we loved him. And then we said, ‘We’re going to go out and we’re going to name a star after you so we can always remember you.’ We chose a star in the handle of the Big Dipper because it would be easy to find.
“My farm is on the top of a hill; there’s nothing obscuring the sky. And we could not find the Big Dipper, we were so intoxicated. … We were so amused by our own ineptness. We were laughing, we were crying, we were taking pictures. And when I was writing the song and wanting to tell the story of fate taking away your precious things, I wanted to embed that story in the song, because I wanted to feel the happiness of being with him every time I sang it.”
Cuddy ’s skill at finding gratitude amid sorrow is heightened by his band, most of whose members have been playing with him for two decades — even longer in the case of steadfast Blue Rodeo bassist Bazil Donovan.
He sounds momentarily amazed upon mentioning the length of time he has been in the company of Donovan, fiddler Anne Lindsay, drummer Joel Anderson, keyboardist Steve O’Connor and guitarist Colin Cripps.
“I guess it’s just the nature of my personality. I like constancy,” Cuddy said. “I don’t want to go through the orientation of a whole bunch of new people. I’ve done it — I’ve gone around and played my songs with other people, and I’m never as satisfied as when I play with the people I play with.”
On stage, Cuddy routinely shares the spotlight: the breezy Cold Cold Wind’s fleet-fingered climax sounds like it was conceived for an in-concert guitar showdown, and Lindsay’s blazing centrepiece in the Blue Rodeo standard 5 Days in May has been a showstopper since the first solo tour. For the extensive Constellation trek, which starts in Saint John, N.B., and wraps in Montreal in April, Cuddy plans to go a step further, giving a showcase to his sons and support act Barney Bentall.