Blue Rodeo pair mount flood relief concert

KINMOUNT — At the height of the Minden Flood, it took Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor only a moment’s reflection to agree to make music for those who lived through the deluge.

When his Blue Rodeo partner, Jim Cuddy, asked to come along, Keelor’s decision evolved into After The Flood, an Aug. 3 fundraising concert at Kinmount.

Keelor and Cuddy are donating their performances to the show, proceeds of which will help undo more than $4 million worth of damage to homes and businesses in Minden.

The province will help out with the repairs but a volunteer fundraising effort will need to contribute at least $1.3-million. After The Flood is part of that effort.

Keelor, who withdraws from the hurly-burly of the music world to a forest retreat not far from Minden, has had a lifelong love affair with the Haliburton Highlands.

It goes back to boyhood summers spent at the family cottage on Big Bob Lake, not far from the Gull River, which overflowed its banks in April and kept some village neighbourhoods under water for weeks.

Though Keelor

and

Cuddy both have solo careers of their own, After The Flood will be a rare chance to see them perform together outside the larger context of Blue Rodeo, the countryrock band they founded in 1984.

When Blue Rodeo was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, it had sold more than four million records and won an unprecedented 11 Juno Awards for its music.

Keelor will bring along some of his musical friends to perform in the first half of After The Flood, which will begin just before dusk and end under the stars at the Kinmount Fairgrounds.

Kinmount is north of Peterborough, just a few miles down the road from Minden. Moving the show there from Minden makes room for a larger crowd to raise more money for The Township of Minden Hills Flood Relief Fund.

For more information, or to buy tickets online, please go to www.madeinhaliburton.ca. Tickets also will be available next week at Organic Times in Minden, Photo Shop in Haliburton, Gateway Variety in Kinmount, Moondance Records in Peterborough and Kent Bookstore in Lindsay.

Radio station Canoe FM will be handling calls related to the concert at 705-457-1009.

CLIFFORD SKARSTEDT Examiner Jim Cuddy, left, and Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo perform in March 2010 at Showplace Performance Centre in Peterborough. The pair are performing a benefit concert Aug. 3 in Kinmount for victims of the April flooding in Minden.