Press
Toronto Star
2021-05-21 by Nick Krewen
‘I’m definitely an expert on my heartbreak’: Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor on his solo album, ‘Share the Love’
At least someone has found some comfort with this pandemic.
Greg Keelor, co-founder of Blue Rodeo and solo artist in his own right, has endured aural issues for years. So, as much as he dreaded the live music shutdown mandated by COVID-19, it’s been a welcome respite for his hearing.
“The COVID’s been good to my head because I do have trouble with my ears,” says Keelor, who recently released his seventh album, “Share the Love,” and will share the stage with Blue Rodeo for their streaming show “Live, Online and Lost Together” from the Danforth Music Hall on June 11, provincial guidelines permitting.
“It’s not just the tinnitus; the tinnitus is fine. I’m used to it now. I’d miss it if it went away. But my ears got super sensitive to volume and certain frequencies — everything was hard on my head. It gave me migraines and it sort of affected the way I saw myself in the world: it was making me a little crazy at times,” Keelor says.
“So I’ve had a nice chunk of time where my ears have been able to relax and recoup, and they’re better than they’ve been in a long time.”
While he took a break from touring, Keelor hasn’t stopped playing, assembling Sheepdogs guitar phenom Jimmy Bowskill, Blue Rodeo drummer Glenn Milchem, Melissa Payne on organ, violin and vocals; guitarists James McKenty and Kyler Tapscott, and Ian McKeown on bass for impromptu jams on the Kawartha farm he’s owned for the better part of three decades.
“I have a nice sort of bubble out here with some very conscientious, fantastic musicians,” says Keelor, 66.
“Usually everybody’s on the road, but these guys and woman have been around. We sit around and sing old country and old bluegrass. That went really well when we went to record this record because we’re a pretty tight unit and it made for great recording.”
Actually, a great second recording: Keelor says the band finished the nine songs that comprise “Share the Love” before the pandemic and were discussing when to release the project with Steve Kane, president of Warner Music Canada, when the world stopped.
Encouraged by other artists who continued to release albums in spite of the pandemic, Keelor decided he would prepare some social media visuals to accompany his music and booked the Community Hall at Gores Landing to perform the album.
That’s when he made an unexpected discovery: “When we listened back to the tracks, we liked it better than the album,” he says. Which is why he shelved the studio version of “Share the Love” and released the live take instead.
“It’s a very nice treat to record live off the floor: there’s something very exciting about the connection of a group of musicians and a room when they’re playing and their hearts are into it,” he says.
“It’s something that I could feel in this recording and I think most people will feel and enjoy that connection.”
As compared to the work he does with Blue Rodeo, Keelor songs and albums are a little more rustic and roots-oriented with a touch of mysticism and “Share the Love” is no exception, with some tunes rooted in anguish and others in celebration.
For example, the songs “Goodbye Baby” and “What Am I Gonna Do” stem from the dissolution of two romances — one his, one a friend’s — while other songs focus on the death of a long-time friend from brain cancer.
“I’m definitely an expert on my heartbreak,” says Keelor with a chuckle. “This record has both sides; it’s got the heartbreak, but it also has songs of infatuation and even seduction.
“A very dear friend of mine and a great mentor, and my bookkeeper and accountant as well, she died of brain cancer and, at the very same time, my girlfriend of five years, we broke up.
“So I was in a dismal spot. But that’s not an unfamiliar landscape for me. It’s a landscape that I’ve used many times to write songs and I’ve sort of realized that when I was writing the songs for ‘Share the Love,’ that I should take a deeper look at this and see what’s causing this cycle of relationships that don’t work out.”
Keelor says he found some answers that traced back to his adoption and his pre-Greg identity as Francis McIntyre.
“There’s a line in one of the songs that says, ‘I was born in shame/I’ll wear that curse to my grave.’ That was just a realization (of) the moment I was conceived. My mother was a 17-year-old Cape Breton girl who got pregnant and left Cape Breton without telling her family why she was leaving. She just went to Toronto and Catholic Children’s Aid (Society) to have me. So in that womb, I was born in a sea of melancholy and a sea of shame and depression.
“Metaphorically, it sort of made sense to me, that there always has been a little bit of melancholic detachment in my being.”
Keelor, who’s recorded a dozen songs for the upcoming Blue Rodeo record expected in 2022, says the germ for “Share the Love” began with guitarist Bowskill.
“Jim started playing with Blue Rodeo and we just hit it off,” says Keelor. “He’s a neighbour — I’m here in Kendal and he’s down in Port Hope — and we just love sitting together and playing guitars and singing; we love what our voices do when they hit.”
They started recording some of Keelor’s original songs and found they were connected: “it was pretty obvious that this group of songs were meant to be together to tell a story.”
One of the things that has given Keelor peace of mind over the past 35 years is his farm in the Kawarthas, an hour-plus country retreat from the hustle and bustle of Toronto.
“To move out here and reignite my infatuation with the forests and nature has been life-saving and such a spark to my creativity. I just love it out here.
“Now I find the city so surreal — it’s so intense and it’s changed so much since I’ve moved out — the density of it, the amount of foot, bicycle and car traffic … if you live there every day, you grow used to it and accustomed to it, it doesn’t seem like anything. But for me, because I don’t really go out to the city that much anymore, it’s like playing a pinball game when I do, it’s so hyper.”
And as much as he’s enjoyed the reprieve with his hearing, Keelor looks forward to touring again as soon as it’s safe to do so.
“The road’s a funny thing,” he says. “It’s a routine and that routine is a big part of my life. Whether it’s just sleeping on the bus, waking up and having breakfast with the crew, or having a nap, doing a sound check, dinner, show, hotel, down the road to the next show, there are certain pleasant disciplines and just a nice thing to be in that routine.
“When we do go out, that will be an amazing time because everyone will be doing it with a different headspace. We’re in a new landscape; we’re sort of in a new world. Everyone is a little tentative about sharing public spaces and sharing the air that we breathe, so it’s going to be an interesting time.”
The Top 100 Canadian Singles
2018-05-22
MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: GREG KEELOR – LAST WINTER
BY BOB MERSEREAU
Keelor’s bandmate Jim Cuddy has carved out a significant solo career during downtime from Blue Rodeo, with a separate band and long national tours. His albums are actually more commercial in tone than the Blue Rodeo ones, echoing the alt-country tunes he brings to the band, with hooks and that famous voice. Keelor takes a different approach. He uses solo work to experiment, to try out things he really couldn’t with Blue Rodeo, and to record some very personal songs. This four-track set at first seems like a small effort, but it isn’t at all. At 34 minutes, each cut here is a near-epic, with a lot of thought and emotion throughout.
Keelor has explained that the songs came out of a trying time for a couple of reasons. He was witnessing the passing of several people close to him, including his birth mother, and Gord Downie. Songs directly inspired by those two bookend the collection. The album itself is calm and meditative because that’s what he could play at the time. He made it coming off the road from a grueling Blue Rodeo tour, and he was physically beaten up.
Keelor loves mid-to-late ’60’s pop, especially moody, orchestrated works from the likes of Lee Hazlewood, and each cut here is in that mold. They feature strings played and arranged by Jimmy Bowskill (The Sheepdogs) and the long songs go through several sections, especially City Is A Symphony. That songs builds like a day for city dwellers, calm in the start, more intense and complex as it progresses, with bright and dark periods. On paper, even as I write that, it sounds a little trite, but it’s actually quite lovely, and the strings are used to great effect. There’s a radical cover of Peter, Paul and Mary’s Early In The Morning (heard recently in Mad Men), taken at a much slower tempo, almost a crawl, turning the folk-gospel number into a hymn.
Keelor calls this music “uplifting melancholy,” and that’s a perfect description. Although they are tinged with sadness for the passing of people, he finds joy in important memories, whether it’s a somewhat mystical night with his mother and aunt recalled in Three Coffins, or the experience of watching his friend Downie perform with the Tragically Hip on their final tour. He speaks for most of us I think, with “It was a celebration, the years, the love, the songs/I had to remind myself I’m supposed to be sad.” With his absorbing and eloquent vocals, Keelor has created a powerful set of songs, far away from the rock stage.
CANADIAN PRESS
2018-04-26
BY DAVID FRIEND
TORONTO – Coming off Blue Rodeo’s most recent tour, co-frontman Greg Keelor thought he was nearing the end of the road.
After years of struggling with progressive hearing loss, he found this run of nearly 30 nationwide shows too much to handle. His ability to tolerate high-pitched sounds was worsening and he was “quite defensive and insular” around his band mates.
“This time I didn’t handle it,” the 63-year-old musician says, ahead of the release of “Last Winter,” a solo album of four songs due Friday.
“Often I’ll get a little out of sorts, but this one, I didn’t know how to talk as (myself).”
Keelor says his inner-ear problems were getting worse, which made it difficult being around volume at all. Past attempts by bandmate Jim Cuddy to swap out stage amplifiers for ear monitors wasn’t helping as much as it used to.
He compares the feeling to the same head pressure many people experience while flying — but far worse.
“I was destroyed,” he added. “My head becomes my enemy. It just gets a little poisoned.”
A number of rock musicians have faced similar hearing loss in recent years, including Neil Young, Eric Clapton and most recently Huey Lewis, who bowed out of his 2018 tour dates earlier this month after being diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, an inner ear disorder.
When the Blue Rodeo tour finished, Keelor retreated to his home near Peterborough, Ont. and focused on recovery. For a while he wondered if he’d even make another album.
“I couldn’t play music, couldn’t play guitar, couldn’t sing,” he said. “I turned on myself. It sort of becomes existential. I can’t trust my brain or what I perceive.”
But like many career musicians, Keelor didn’t last long without picking up his guitar. He started playing a chord that grew into the first song.
“Last Winter,” which Keelor describes as “aural wallpaper,” carries the melancholic tone. Each song is a mellow reflection on life, with three tracks ruminating on mortality in some way.
“Gord’s Tune” pays homage to the Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie who died of brain cancer last October. Keelor watched one of their final Toronto shows from a hallway backstage where he wouldn’t damage his hearing.
“It was a confusing thing because it was so great, but at the same time it was so sad,” he said.
“Gord wore the mantle of it so beautifully.”
Another track, “City is a Symphony,” hovers around the sentiment of loss as observed by Keelor in a Montreal hotel room around Christmastime.
“All around me these people were going through serious medical problems or dying,” he says.
“My generation is moving towards death.”
Keelor says he isn’t scared of mortality, but often finds himself overwhelmed by the experiences of his friends and family, some who have faced their own health problems.
For his part, he’s still trying to adapt to the changes of his own life.
Whenever he visits the busy streets of downtown Toronto he must wear earplugs to protect hearing. He’s also been forced to turn off other sounds he once loved.
“I haven’t listened to the car radio in five years,” he contends.
“I live in a very silent world, and I don’t really listen to music casually too much — not like I used to.”
He pauses before adding: “Losing the car radio was a challenge.”
Keelor hopes to continue performing with Blue Rodeo, but says the band is scaling back the number of concerts they play. Right now, the goal is to perform about 30 shows a year. He’s unsure if he’ll perform his new solo album for audiences.
“I couldn’t wear earplugs, I would want to be able to hear everything,” he said.
“I’m just worried about damaging my ears more.”
NOW
2012-04-12
NOW MAGAZINE | April 12-19, 2012
NNNN
Good, Pinsent, Keelor – Down And Out In Upalong
(Warner/TeleSoul)
BY SARAH GREENE
This unusual, slightly strange double album came out of a collaboration between Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, the Sadies’ Travis Good and Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor.
The first half is Pinsent’s poems put to music and sung by Good and Keelor, while the second half is the same lyrics performed as spoken word by Pinsent with musical accompaniment. (Bryden Baird helped with the arrangements.)
The album is reminiscent of Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue, but with strong Canadian flavour: Good’s bluegrass-inspired guitar work is as fluid and distinct as ever, and “upalong” in the title track refers to what Newfoundlanders used to call the rest of Canada. There’s a breadth of material, from toe-tapping love songs to the mysterious Night Light and Seagrass.
Pinsent’s spoken-word versions are often quite different than the songs, sometimes wearied and thoughtful and sometimes evoking a bit of Johnny Cash with a smile.
Top track: Night Light
http://www.nowtoronto.com/music/discs.cfm?content=186151
The Sun Media Group
2010-05-10
GREG KEELOR
Gunless
Soundtrack
***
Who better to score a Canadian cowboy movie than someone from Blue Rodeo? But Keelor doesn’t play along without he comedic aspect of Paul Gross’ gunslinger satire. Instead, he shoots straight, crafting a moody, orchestrated soundtrack inspired by the sweeping spaghetti western twang of Ennio Morricone. Bandmade Jim Cuddy plays Sundance to his Butch on a few cuts.
Calgary Herald
2010-05-01
Greg Keelor’s soundtrack helps ground Gunless
Blue Rodeo vet scores comedy
By Eric Volmers
When Greg Keelor sat down to compose the soundtrack to the comedy-western Gunless, he had some specific inspiration in mind.
There was Leonard Cohen’s melancholy songs that accompanied Robert Altman’s revisionist western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for instance, or Bob Dylan’s work for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Of course, those westerns weren’t quite as goofy as Gunless, a comedy that pokes fun at Americans, Canadians and the dusty hallmarks of the genre with a gentle nudge rather than sharpened point.
“In my head, it would have been easier without the comedy,” admits Keelor, in an interview from his home in Ontario. “I would have liked a few more existential moments.”
Keelor is best known as half the brain trust for Canadian institution Blue Rodeo, a band not generally known for its musical goofiness. Gunless producer Niv Fichman approached both Keelor and musical partner Jim Cuddy to write the score to his comedy, which stars Paul Gross and opened on Friday.
But Cuddy, concerned that the act was too busy with recording and touring the band’s sprawling double album The Things We Left Behind, ended up taking a back seat on the project.
So while the movie poster may boast new music by Blue Rodeo, the majority of the score was written by Keelor at home, where he sat with guitar in hand watching the film for three days straight.
Having viewed Gunless “a thousand times,” it’s perhaps understandable that the veteran musician’s enthusiasm for it is a touch more measured than your average actor immersed in that giddy ritual of opening weekend publicity.
“I think it’s pretty good. Gentle comedy. Gentle romance. No sex. I could have gone with a ruder comedy and a little more sex.”
The film, written and directed by William Phillips, is not without its moments of drama. But Keelor’s score — particularly the moody, trumpet blasting opener, the haunting and slightly nihilistic Montana Kid theme and closing ballad Don’t Let the Darkness In Your Head — gives the production a gravity that it might not have otherwise.
Keelor wrote the latter track about Blue Rodeo bassist Bazil Donovan’s recent health troubles and it opens Disc 2 of The Things We Left Behind. Despite the claims on the poster, it’s the only song that is played by Blue Rodeo proper and it isn’t particularly new. For the most part, Keelor’s soundtrack alternates between haunting, piano-centred mood music, brightly orchestrated numbers that recall Ennio Morricone’s classic spaghetti western sounds and only the occasional interruption by his recognizable harmonizing with Cuddy.
“It’s pretty committed to the style,” Keelor says. “I don’t like those movies that use modern music for old pieces. I hated that Knight’s Tale, using (Queen’s) We Will Rock You. I don’t like that stuff. So I wanted to avoid using pop-rock song and that sort of thing.”
While admitting the process was perhaps more time-consuming than he had initially planned, Keelor hasn’t ruled out doing another soundtrack. But he will be choosy.
“I couldn’t just do movies,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind doing some kind of heist caper. I’d be good for that, too. A heist caper or a western. But I don’t think I could anything too happy or comical.”
Toronto Star
2010-04-30
RE: Gunless
Gunless does have its heady moments. They include a sublime soundtrack by Blue Rodeo stalwart Greg Keelor and evocative lensing by cinematographer Gregory Middleton, who makes mountainous Osoyoos, B.C. (where the movie was filmed) look like a scene from a John Ford movie.
Assorted Highlights
2007-11-21
“Keelor has managed to perfectly marry dreamy Byrds-era psych-rock with a brilliant pop hook. It’s more than a single – it’s a trip”
– Rob Bolton (Standard Interactive) on the track “No Man’s Land”
“It’s a definite extension of his work with Blue Rodeo. The harmonies are top notch and it has a very recognizable start from the very first listen. ”
– Brian Ellis (The Wolf, Peterborough) on the track “No Man’s Land”
“psychedelic nuggets… No Man’s Land would be a classic by now if it had been written in the paisley-coloured decade… ragged in all the right ways.”
– * * * * MONTREAL GAZETTE
“Aphrodite Rose really nails the jingle-jangle late-60s vibe… such a blast.”
– * * * * NOW MAGAZINE
“Aphrodite Rose is extroverted and accessible. California country-rock, folk and paisley psychedelia… rustic overtones of The Band”
– WINNIPEG SUN
“By channeling heroes like Neil Young, Tom Petty and Gram Parsons, Keelor can practically count himself one of the greats… Definitely a career high point.”
– WHAT’S ON WINNIPEG
“Aphrodite Rose takes risks in terms of songwriting and production. Gordon Lightfoot meets The Byrds and The Beatles. An elegant and creative treat.”
– * * * * EDMONTON JOURNAL
“Plenty of guitar-heavy folk-rock with Keelor’s emotive, slightly rough voice singing about life and love… there aren’t really any low moments on this.”
– MONCTON TIMES & TRANSCRIPT
“A bittersweet affair, with pretty ballads like Miss You and ominous numbers like Prisoner. Keelor’s moody songs run deep.”
– ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
SUN Newspapers
2006-10-21
Greg Keelor
Aphrodite Rose (Warner)
”I am a prisoner of endless sorrow,” confesses Greg Keelor on his third solo CD. Tell us something we don’t know, dude. OK, that might be overstating it. But the truth is the Blue Rodeo co-founder’s previous discs were dark, introspective works that dealt with some serious personal baggage (including the death of his father). By comparison, Aphrodite Rose – even with a few lyrics like those above – is extroverted and accessible. Backed by co-conspirators The Sadies (with guest vocals by Sarah McLachlan), Keelor plays it loose and keeps it real on these earthy and unvarnished tracks, letting the tape roll, cranking the reverb and leaving the occasional flub in the mix. Musically, the disc takes most of its cues from California country-rock, folk and paisley psychedelia, ambling along to lazy gaits and gently grooving to twangy arpeggios. The politicized No Man’s Land and Steal Your Mind lightly crunch like they were penned in Neil Young’s Laurel Canyon pad in the early ‘70s; Glory Oh has rustic overtones of The Band; Colour and Rhyme wear its jangly hippie overtones like a fringe vest; and the bipolar prisoner toggles between a bluesy dirge and a garage-rock bash. Which goes to show: Keelor may be a captive, but he still knows how to bust out and enjoys himself now and then.
***1/2
NOW MAGAZINE
2006-10-12
GREG KEELOR Aphrodite Rose (Warner)
Rating: NNNN
A new Greg Keelor record usually means plenty of Canadian landscape. The Blue Rodeo co-frontman never had an issue with showing his rural side; he lives (and records) on a farm. His chores include listening to his extensive Byrds collection daily. Aphrodite Rose really nails the jingle-jangle late-60s vibe. Backing, of course, is provided by the chameleon-like Sadies, who are always able to recreate certain musical eras flawlessly. Nevertheless, it’s Keelor’s Roger McGuinn-style pop vocals on No Man’s Land and Colour And Rhyme and his garage rock stomp and howl on Prisoner that make this such a blast. He does veer off onto the gravel road occasionally, especially on High Meadow, where he gets misty about an old barn, but closes the album in full psychedelic mode on drugged-out Doors jam In The Reflections. It burns out a little at the end, but this is a 60s record.
JASON KELLER
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