Retrospective Review: Blue Rodeo - 'Five Days in July'

There’s a space between the heartbreak of classic country and the puppy love of modern pop-country and its name is Blue Rodeo. Twenty years ago, the Southern Ontario alt-country outfit, fronted by Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, formed in Toronto and became radio-popular with songs like “Diamond Mine” and “Lost Together.” But in 1993, Five Days in July made them kings.

In cities like Toronto, Montreal or Halifax, it’s easy to forget that the rest of Canada is mostly rural despite places like Calgary, New Brunswick and the B.C. interior which are full-time rodeos. Sometimes, most times, a music culture is a symptom of geography. In the last decade, Southern Ontario artists like Daniel Romano and Nick Ferrio have taken classic-country-folk into hipster indie scenes. It’s almost a novelty but the authenticity is drawn from the rural towns in which they were raised. Drive two hours south of Halifax and the Hank Snow Museum in Liverpool reveals where the roots of American country music actually started. Don’t forget Anne Murray, Canada’s Snowbird from Nova Scotia, George Canyon or Gordie Sampson, writer of Carrie Underwood’s hit, “Jesus Take the Wheel.” The diversity of the Canadian landscape has agriculture in common, and that industry has its own music which therein lies the obvious: country in Canada is huge.

Blue Rodeo has always walked the line between city slickers and real cowboys with band members from Nova Scotia (Keelor and Bazil Donovan) and Ontario (Cuddy, James Gray, Colin Cripps and others over the years). The chaff of Neil Young’s Harvest decorates this record. The album cover reveals something, too: love is a fire and music stokes it.

Cuddy’s raspy “1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4” preludes the harmonica intro of “5 Days in May,” the album’s first and flagship track. It’s a romance pulled from Cuddy’s life, couched in gentle words with a dynamic keyboard solo and sexy pedal steel. It’s an introduction to a collection that flirts with the ecstasy of love and the sadness of its inevitable loss, but tempered and never raw. All these songs are sing-alongs.

“Out in the middle of Lake Ontario,” sings Cuddy, “The same snow is falling / Into the waves of my heart.” There we go. There’s the classic-country feel that sets up “Bad Timing,” which is an epistle of sorts. Cuddy calls up the love of his life from a “restaurant round the bend” and it’s the most heart-breaking song on the record, containing the truest thing about love: staying together is stupid luck. This song became and remains one of Blue Rodeo’s biggest hits. Anyone who’s ever had love prevented by circumstance knows that the living existence of the other person, when you aren’t near them and can’t hear them, is the deepest kind of pain: “I know I shouldn’t call. / It just reminds us of the cost, / of everything we’ve lost. / It’s just bad timing, that’s all.”

The record picks up with “Cynthia” for a dirt-road ramble and moves on through cornfields and the Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris cover, “Til I Gain Control Again.” Sarah McLachlan’s ghostly vocal appearance on “Know Where You Go” brings resolution to all the loss experienced and contemplated across Five Days in July. With the catchy yet well thoughtout nature of this album it's no surprise that it would go platinum six times in Canada and up to now the band still plays those gorgeous and meaningful songs with the very same intensity. For all the uncertainty and vulnerability behind country music’s love songs, there isn’t one weak moment on this record.

Adria Young is a writer living in Halifax - @adriayoung