Jim Cuddy has written many of the songs that have become indelible in the soundtrack of Canadian lives. With the release of his fifith solo album, Countrywide Soul, he continues to contribute to that extraordinary songbook and on this record, Jim continues to find new ways to balance personal reflection and plainspoken storytelling, remaining both intimate and accessible.
Both as a solo artist and as one of the creative forces in Blue Rodeo, Jim has received nearly every accolade Canada can bestow upon a musician including 15 JUNO Awards, The Order of Canada and, along with bandmates Blue Rodeo, has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, received the Governor General Performing Arts Award and a Star on the Walk of Fame.
“I’ve always found fascination in the smallest details of human behavior,” says Cuddy of his songwriting. “It has been something that I look at and remember, whether it is the details of an exchange that I witnessed or an exchange that I have. Of course, as you get older there are bigger things that happen in your life that you realize you’ll never totally understand. There never seems to be a loss of things to write about.”
As one half of one of Blue Rodeo’s songwriting partnership, Jim Cuddy has one of the most recognizable voices in Canadian music thanks to omnipresent hits such as “Try,” “5 Days In May,” and “Bad Timing.” As a group Blue Rodeo has sold over 5 million records world-wide, won countless JUNO Awards, been inducted in to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, received a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame and Jim (along with songwriting partner Greg Keelor) was invested as Officers of the Order of Canada.
In 1998, in between Blue Rodeo projects, Jim released his first solo album All In Time and hit the road with the eponymous Jim Cuddy Band featuring Colin Cripps (guitar), Anne Lindsay (fiddle), Joel Anderson (drums), Bazil Donovan (bass) and Steve Cooper (keyboards). Since that first release the Jim has recorded three more solo albums; The Light That Guides You Home (2006), Skyscraper Soul (2011), Constellation (2018). Jim’s latest release, Countrywide Soul, is a celebration of sorts – a celebration of music and the musicians who join him on stage each night.
After an extensive tour in support of their album, Constellation, The Jim Cuddy Band reconvened at Jim’s family farm in Southern Ontario. Inspired by the band’s live show, Jim wanted to capture this energy on record and showcase each member’s skill, allowing them to stretch out and shine. Produced by Tim Vesely, Jim Cuddy and Colin Cripps, Countrywide Soul was recorded live on the top floor of Jim’s barn and kept as natural as possible to retain the woody sound of the barn board room and the energy that only comes from playing together live.
“When we go into the studio to make records, the songs are born out of my imagination and the band contribute their incredible talents to make those ideas come to life. The songs evolve and become part of our collective imagination,” explains Jim. “But it is on tour that they really take flight. We are connected by art. We are connected by what we create together. That’s what I wanted to capture on this record. How much I enjoy listening to the band reveal their imagination and add their creativity to the songs was really the inspiration. How vital that is to me. So as much as this is a musicians’ record, it’s really an example – if you’re lucky – of what bands can create together.”
To achieve his goal on Countrywide Soul, Jim re-worked a number of songs previously recorded for his solo career and with Blue Rodeo. To round out the record, he wrote two new songs and included a couple of favourite cover songs.
“When choosing songs for the album, I tried to find those in which I could change the mood and tone as in ‘All In Time’ or songs that had been underdeveloped on previous records such as ‘Clearer View’,” says Jim. “’Almost Persuaded’ was a song Blue Rodeo performed in the early days. It was a favourite of an old friend of ours, so I recorded this in her honour.”
Countrywide Soul tracklisting:
All In Time (Jim Cuddy – All In Time)
Countrywide Soul (Jim Cuddy – The Light That Guides You Home)
Clearer View (Blue Rodeo – Palace Of Gold)
Everybody Cries (Jim Cuddy – All In Time)
Dragging On (Blue Rodeo – Tremolo)
The Light That Guides You Home (Jim Cuddy – The Light That Guides You Home)
Glorious Day (new song)
Maybe Sometime (Jim Cuddy – The Light That Guides You Home)
Back Here Again (new song)
Almost Persuaded (inspired by the original George Jones recording)
Rhinestone Cowboy (inspired by the original Glen Campbell recording)
Wash Me Down (Jim Cuddy – Skyscraper Soul)
Recorded live on the top floor of Cuddy’s barn, Countrywide Soul is intended to be as “natural as possible” to keep the “woody sound of the barn board room.” It consists of 12 songs, including two new ones, a few covers and some re-worked material from his solo albums as well as from Blue Rodeo.
“When I was choosing songs for the record I tried to find those in which I could change the mood and tone or songs that I felt had been underdeveloped on previous records,” Cuddy said in the release.
“All In Time,” a remake of his 1998 solo album’s title track, opens Countrywide Soul and as Cuddy says, the “mood and tone” are changed from his original tune. It’s has a slowed-down tempo, with Cuddy heard listing chords before getting the band ready to play the love-based tune. Opening softly and slowly like a sunrise, there’s constant drum beating throughout, with strings, guitars, a mandolin, a Wurlitzer and an accordion type sound all heard on the track.
Two new songs on the album include “Back Here Again,” and “Glorious Day”; the former is a classic toe-tapping country song, pining for a lover, with drums, the violin and other string instruments including a banjo playing on the track. The latter is a positive mid-tempo song, with Cuddy sounding like the “cool guy” in the storyline. Strings are a big part and even include a solo, while drums pound, electric guitars electrify and the bass gives the song some extra edge.
“Clearer View,” a song from Blue Rodeo’s 2002 full-length Palace of Gold, is one Cuddy said felt “underdeveloped” when previously recorded, is still upbeat, but also includes keys, guitars and drums, while “Wash Me Down,” a Cuddy solo tune from 2011’s Skyscraper Soul, focused on remembering someone when they leave, closes out the album, with strings being the main focus of the slowed-down beat and his band singing along with him. This song works as the last one on the album since it’s like saying “goodbye” to Cuddy and his band until next time.
Cuddy also puts a cover spin on two classic songs, one being “Almost Persuaded,” originally recorded by George Jones, and the second is Glen Campbell’s ‘Rhinestone Cowboy.” Both covers help shape the overall album, and help Cuddy show the variety of tunes he can interpret via his own vision.
With the creativity to recreate all these songs, Cuddy showcasing his vocal abilities and his band coming together to record in a different kind of space, Countrywide Soul is a unique blend of making what is old new again. (Warner)–
PICK OF THE WEEK
Like Blue Rodeo’s albums, Jim Cuddy’s solo records blend countrytinged rock with pop ballads. The only real difference is that, without Greg Keelor, his co-frontman in Blue Rodeo, Jim’s recordings are generally more upbeat. That said, some of the best songs on Constellation are those steeped in melancholy. The title track is a piano ballad about a dying friend. Jim, 62, sings about struggling to say goodbye as the song builds to a stirring crescendo. “You Be the Leaver” is another meditation on separation and includes the memorable line “So you be the leaver, I’ll be the left behind.” But there are plenty of brighter moments. The joyous, organ-fuelled “While I Was Waiting” revels in finding romance, while “Roses at Your Feet” is a gentle song of devotion, directed at his wife of more than 30 years, actress Rena Polley. Striking a balance between love and loss, Jim – who’s set to tour Canada as of Feb. 8 –has created an album that’s rich in personal truths.
– Nicholas Jennings
Jim Cuddy, co-frontman for Canada’s venerable Blue Rodeo, has rarely sounded better. At 62, his voice remains as uncannily clear, affecting and inviting as it was back in his band’s 1990s heyday. But age has deepened the tones a touch or two, and warmed up the edges; it’s a remarkable, enviable gift, and no small part of what has kept Cuddy in the game for so long. Even on otherwise average material, his vocal work is often astonishingly beautiful.
Not much on Constellation, Cuddy’s fourth solo outing (and first since 2011’s terrific Skyscraper Soul), will surprise longtime fans. Cuddy has long since perfected the art of the country-pop song, and Constellation is a typically reliable collection. But this is a bit of faint praise, since the consistency that has kept Cuddy from too many misfires over 30 years of songwriting is also what makes him somewhat predictable. He has crafted a unique and eminently recognizable voice in a business where that’s exceedingly difficult, but this signature sound has become a bit of a creative trap.
Still, what he offers on Constellation is better than most of what we get from a generation of Cuddy’s admirers and acolytes, and for this we are thankful. On the mandolin-driven stomp of “Where You Gonna Run,” we catch a glimpse of a back porch jam that’s as irresistible as it is fleeting, while on album standout “Hands On the Glass,” with its driving shuffle and menacing guitars, Cuddy reminds us of what he can do when he and his crack band stretch into more expansive sonic territory. Even if much of the album feels a bit familiar, it’s hard to complain much when it all sounds so sweet.
Jim Cuddy isn’t a natural born bluesman, but it sure is fun to hear him play the part in “Water’s Running High”. The Orleans-flavoured sizzler will be a shock for those who associate the gentler half of Blue Rodeo’s front line primarily with bittersweet ballads, and there’s no question Skyscraper Soul is the most adventurous of Cuddy’s three solo releases. For one thing, the title track – the disc’s most poignant song – is an ode to the city, not to a lover. For another, the previous albums’ searing violin is muted in favour of vibrant organ and trumpet. And while a less subtle songwriter would have turned “Everyone Watched the Wedding” into a pile of royalist goo, Cuddy uses Will and Kate as a novel framing device for the everyday struggles he documents so well.
– Jordan Zivitz
OTTAWA — The first thing fans will notice about Jim Cuddy’s third solo album, Skyscraper Soul, to be released Tuesday, Sept. 27, is that it’s a lot less country than his past endeavours. Instead of fiddle and pedal steel, the sounds of trumpet and piano decorate the musical landscape.
The songs are still breezy and melodic, and the singing represents some of Cuddy’s sweetest, so it’s not a huge departure for the singer-songwriter best known as the frontman of Canada’s beloved roots rockers Blue Rodeo. Thematically, however, it did not go in the direction he had planned.
Blue Rodeo had just finished a tour and Cuddy was back home in Toronto, determined to write some songs featuring the talents of violinist Anne Lindsay, a longtime friend and key member of the Cuddy band.
“I just couldn’t do it this time,” says Cuddy. “It wasn’t where my interest lay and it didn’t work with the themes of the record. Every time I would write a song that I thought would be suitable for the fiddle, I couldn’t make it rural. I kept making it more city-sounding, more a brick neighbourhood than a field.”
One of the first songs written was the title track Skyscraper Soul, a love letter of sorts to Cuddy’s home city Toronto, where he and his wife Rena Polley have raised three children, now in their late teens and 20s.
“There are all these urban centres around the world that I’ve got so much inspiration from, and then I come back and write about the mountains and Lake Louise. OK, that was inspiring at one time too, but I’ve had as much inspiration from New York and Toronto as anywhere,” he says.
Another source of inspiration was this year’s Royal wedding. Upon hearing reports that two billion people were planning to watch the union of Will and Kate on television, Cuddy was fascinated. It led him to write a song called Everybody Watched the Wedding, taking the perspective of an ordinary person with a less-than-perfect life.
“Something about watching this event made him feel good about life, that a beautiful fairy tale would manifest in front of him,” Cuddy says, adding that he had also seen The King’s Speech around the same time he wrote the song.
“I was really taken with this notion that, in order to be inspiring, the royals couldn’t have any characteristics of normal people,” he says. “Somehow this kid, Will, has accepted the fact that he needs to serve some function for his nation, and he has to understand how to adopt that character. I thought that was very noble. So then really, the contemplation was about ‘what is the wedding doing for people?’ ”
As the new songs fell into place, Cuddy decided to include a loose jam he had written earlier for a short movie written by and featuring his actress wife. The film is a 22-minute black comedy called The Four Sisters, based on four sisters who lose their mother. The song is a bluesy torrent of wailing organ, vocals and trumpet, a wild child compared to the crisp, melodic nuggets that make up the rest of the album.
“If you saw the film, it would make sense,” says Cuddy with a laugh, noting that he loved the way they set the band up in the studio to record it. “The song is almost a complete anomaly on the record. But I was so happy with the recording that I said, ‘OK, this is going to be the template for making my own record.’ It was more a recording template than a writing template.”
Five years have gone by since Cuddy’s last solo album, The Light That Guides You Home, and the singer-songwriter would find it a challenge to record any more frequently because he works around Blue Rodeo’s schedule. Lately, though, he’s been wondering if there’s an expiry date on a music career.
“I’m 55, I don’t know how much more time I have,” he muses. “I used to think that 60 was the end, but now maybe it could be 65. McCartney was 68 on his last tour, and he was magnificent, but I’m not McCartney. Maybe 65, but that’s like two more records. I don’t know if that’s enough.”
In the meantime, he plans to keep busy. “Certainly, there is going to be a diminishing return on physical assets,” he says. “I think that’s one of the reasons I work hard now. I can still sing and I don’t feel much deterioration from being older so I want to get it down while I can.”
****
If Blue Rodeo were The Beatles, Jim Cuddy, we humbly submit, would be Paul — the slightly poppier and more accessible yin to the Lennonesque Greg Keelor’s darker and more enigmatic yang. Hold your angry e-mails, that is not a dig at Cuddy. After all, Lennon made some groundbreaking solo LPs — but whose stuff do you hear more often?
The same could be said of the Rodeo leaders’ solo work. Sure, Keelor has made some daring and unconventional choices with his psychedelic experiments but we suspect Cuddy’s second solo album will end up in heavier rotation on most fans’ iPods. Mainly because The Light That Guides You Home — his first extra-curricular full-length since 1999’s All in Time — delivers everything you know, love, want and expect from Cuddy: Impeccably crafted, slightly nostalgic country-rock and roots-pop laced with gorgeous melodies, bittersweet lyrics, heartfelt vocals and twangy sincerity. There are cuts that gently rock like Neil Young in Laurel Canyon circa ’69.
There’s some strummy folk with Dylanesque harmonicas and fingerpicked acoustic guitars.There’s heartsqueezing piano balladry flecked with strings and a lonely, lyrical trumpet. There are jangly, Byrdsian guitars. There are fiddles that lend a Mellencampy air to the proceedings. And there’s even a rollicking honkytonk number that boasts a boisterous barrelhouse piano and the album’s funniest line: “16 bottles and a wedding trunk / Oughta be a law against marrying drunk.” Yeah, it’s a silly love song. But what’s wrong with that? It’s still a charmer. Just like the rest of this disc.
The Light That Guides You Home — his first extra-curricular full-length since 1999’s All in Time — delivers everything you know, love, want and expect from Cuddy: Impeccably crafted, slightly nostalgic country-rock and roots-pop laced with gorgeous melodies, bittersweet lyrics, heartfelt vocals and twangy sincerity. There are cuts that gently rock like Neil Young in Laurel Canyon circa ’69. There’s some strummy folk with Dylanesque harmonicas and fingerpicked acoustic guitars. There’s heartsqueezing piano balladry flecked with strings and a lonely, lyrical trumpet. There are jangly, Byrdsian guitars. There are fiddles that lend a Mellencampy air to the proceedings. And there’s even a rollicking honkytonk number that boasts a boisterous barrelhouse piano and the album’s funniest line: “16 bottles and a wedding trunk / Oughta be a law against marrying drunk.” Yeah, it’s a
silly love song. But what’s wrong with that? It’s still a charmer. Just like the rest of this disc.
****
Fat, driving country-rock rhythms, gorgeous ringing guitars, soaring piano and organ chords, and one of the truest and most expressive voices in contemporary music are the core matter of Blue Rodeo frontman Jim Cuddy’s second solo album, a set of 12 mostly confessional, sentimental and articulate songs about love in various stages of engagement, fulfillment and disintegration. Meticulously and lusciously produced by Cuddy and Colin Cripps, the album is a generous, big-budget item that boasts loads of musical muscle – but never loses sight of the power of songs that come from the heart.
****(out of 4)
…the band flex a lot of muscle. This pushes Cuddy’s ageless voice to unexpected heights, and his exuberance at fronting a different cast of characters is palpable….
The fact is, the man is one of this country’s great songwrites, and this album is a timely
reminder to not take him for granted.
– EXCLAIM
As strong a catalog as Blue Rodeo has compiled over the past decade, Jim Cuddy’s solo debut actually ups the ante.
– No Depression
Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy slips into solo waters for a little soul-cleansing with All In Time. There’s no gurus on Cuddy’s CD, just a lingering melancholy whose heartache becomes a thing of musical beauty thanks to his haunting melodies, lyrical honesty and a voice that’s become a Canadian classic when it comes to combining the gentler qualities of country and rock.
– Calgary Herald
“Cuddy and company dished out one of those exceptional sets that feed off the crowd and build from the original tunes…. The beauty of Cuddy’s All In Time material is that it builds on a familiar sound and takes his extraordinary vocal skills to a new area.”
– The Ottawa Sun
Page: B5, Section: Life
Byline: Eric Lewis Music Reviews
The Light That Guides You Home (Warner Music)
****
What do you get when you take one-half of the primary songwriters in Blue Rodeo and have him release a solo album? If you guessed an album that sounds exactly like his Blue Rodeo output, you guessed right. Jim Cuddy doesn’t break any new ground on this album, his second solo effort, but he doesn’t need to. He is simply a great songwriter who tells stories of life and love in a way that comes across like it is effortless to him. He is the poppier, perhaps more accessible side to Blue Rodeo, where Greg Keelor has a bluesier, rougher style of song.
Cuddy is in fine form here. This is an album full of good folk-rock tunes occasionally bordering on country. They’re catchy, melodic, and familiar sounding, but in the best way possible.
Kathleen Edwards’ unmistakable voice appears on “Married” where she and Cuddy do their own June and Johnny Cash-ish duet. It’s a really fun song, and their voices complement each other. Kathleen has been touring with Blue Rodeo and her husband Colin Cripps produced this album, so there are a few connections there.
The title track, “Maybe Sometime,” “Married,” “Countrywide Soul” the upbeat “Fine Day” and the sweet piano ballad “Pull Me Through,” are all good tunes, but there isn’t a bad moment here.
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