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Among the wealth of riches that is the Canadian music industry, Blue Rodeo serves as one of this country's best. With the release of a brand new album, "The Things We Left Behind" and just prior to their upcoming appearance during Sunday's Grey Cup game in Calgary, Joe Leary spent 24 Seconds with singers and songwriting partners Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor.
24: Is this really your 12th album, already?
JC: Well, 12th and 13th - because it's a double album.
24: A lot of people would have had a hard time putting together one record of up to 10 or so tracks, you put together a double album.
JC: I think it was in lieu of one long record, which seems to be what people do now especially because CD's are digital so it doesn't matter. We're kind of fatigued with long records. We sort of feel that after 45 or 50 minutes, you're attention is sort of going anyways, so we decided that with our 16 songs we'd split them up in to two - eight-song CDs, and then it became a very enjoyable thing to sequence; to think about it as vinyl ... everything about it just became a lot more interesting.
24: I read you guys can be on the same page on virtually everything you do when you're composing but you can almost start dukin' it out when it comes to the sequencing of tracks.
GK: This one was sort of a little easier maybe and it sounds funny because it's a double CD. There's a couple of Jim's songs which are finger-picking with orchestration, so each go on a different CD and then I've got a couple of 10-minute songs and they each go on a separate CD and then it's just divvying up like songs; songs of certain drama so that each CD has its own share, so this CD actually ended up being a little easier and we didn't have to put on the gloves at all, or drop the gloves.
24: Would that suggest that you have dropped the gloves in the past?
JC: We're good at dropping the gloves - we can go, and then we pat each other, "Good job - good job."
24: You have a big gig coming up this weekend with the Grey Cup. I know you're big hockey fans - where does your football allegiance lie?
GK: Varying degrees throughout the band, Jim being the most enthusiastic for this sort of event and maybe our drummer and bass player don't really know what the Grey Cup is. I think Jim and I relate to it in a similar way. I know that for me, the greatest enjoyment of the Grey Cup was my parents generation and just hanging around them and their parties and trying to sneak some rye from the bar when they weren't looking, which wasn't too hard by half-time.
24: Any concerns about it being an outdoor gig in November in Canada? Are there any challenges when you're performing live like that?
JC: Specifically, the challenge is don't try to warm things up; whatever the temperature is, just accept it and keep things there.