Music memories thanks to Blue Rodeo
HALIFAX - It’s a family thing.
That’s how I view Canadian band Blue Rodeo, who have been in my life since the late 1980s, thanks in large part to my oldest sister, Lori.
I had known of Blue Rodeo since their first album, Outskirts (1987) and songs like Rose Coloured Glasses, Try and the title track (still a favourite) became radio staples. Known and enjoyed would be ratcheted up 100 times thanks to Lori who, for my birthday, took me to see them at Halifax’s Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in October of 1989 as they toured in support of their second album Diamond Mine.
Lori and her family lived in Dartmouth at the time, and I had just moved to Halifax to attend Saint Mary’s University. The Skydiggers (remember them?) opened, and I remember coming away thinking, ‘OK, Blue Rodeo rocks and is joining my shortlist of favourites,’ which starts with and always will be lead by the incomparable Bruce
Springsteen.
Since that time, I have seen Blue Rodeo live around a dozen times and in venues as diverse as the Fort on Citadel Hill (not on the hill, in the fort with Great Big Sea opening), on an airfield in North Bay, a bar in downtown Sudbury (another birthday outing
and easily the most intimate concert of the bunch), Acadia University’s Raymond Field, and numerous arenas like the Scotiabank Centre, where I saw them last Saturday (March 26). Awesome … as always.
Still, it’s easy to pick a favourite. It was in 2008, as
they were promoting Small Miracles and I was working as a reporter in Salmon Arm, B.C. After the arena concert, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor for an interview and they couldn’t have been more gracious and accommodating, even as a blizzard outside awaited their bus and the roughly seven-and-a-half hour drive to Victoria for a concert the following day. They themselves could have been flying out the next day; regardless, it was a tight and busy schedule.
As an aside, I told them about my sister Lori being my real introduction to them and how she had to be among their ‘Number 1’ fans since day one. They reacted warmly to a story I’m sure they had heard versions of, at that point, 10,000 times.
But I wasn’t exaggerating. Lori’s love for the band was deep and genuine and radiated to where it was tractorbeamed in me, our nephew Chris, her daughter Marybeth and her partner Jamie, among others in our large family.
Sadly, we lost Lori in March of 2020 to cancer. She was only 62.
But she was there on Saturday night with Chris, Mary-beth, Jamie and I in downtown Halifax – we could feel her presence singing and swaying to beloved songs by the band she adored.
Thank you, Blue Rodeo.