Latest news with #Cuddy
Ottawa Citizen
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Ottawa Citizen
Skies clear just in time for magic Blue Rodeo show at jazz fest
Article content The skies cleared just in time for Blue Rodeo. Article content Of course, they did. It's the magic of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, but it's also the magical ties that bind this Toronto band to their fans ici. The forecast all week insisted there was a 90- to 100-per-cent chance of rain at 9:30 on Friday night, but the folks at MétéoMédia clearly haven't been listening to the Five Days in July album often enough. There was no way the big free outdoor Blue Rodeo show at the jazz fest was going to be rained out. Article content Article content And the fans knew it. The crowd stretched all the way back to Ste-Catherine St. and anyone who stayed home because of the forecast will be kicking themselves when their friends tell them how inspirational this soirée was. Article content Article content By the time Jim Cuddy got to belt out Try, the very first Blue Rodeo hit, as the encore and sitting at the keyboard, there was no getting away from the fact this was one of the great Blue Rodeo shows here. Article content I mean not that there have been any Blue Rodeo shows much less than life-affirming. I was there Friday night with my daughter Devan reminiscing about the epic Blue Rodeo shows we'd seen at Théâtre St. Denis and Place des Arts. Friday, they ended with Lost Together and if you weren't choking up just a little bit, then you just don't love this thing called rock'n'roll. Article content You could see Cuddy and fellow lead singer Greg Keelor were just loving this as much as the audience. Article content Article content 'Merci beaucoup,' Cuddy said, near the end. 'Nous adorons Montréal.' Article content Later, Cuddy said: 'We'd like to thank the rain for taking a little break for us and mainly we'd like to thank you for coming out in spite of the weather.' Article content Highlights included an incredibly intense take on Diamond Mine with Keelor rocking his vocal hard, a brilliant Trust Yourself with thousands singing along, and the anthems Til I Am Myself Again and Hasn't Hit Me Yet, which were just as great as you might imagine. Article content I bumped into promoter Rubin Fogel, who was talking about how the first show they did in Montreal was at Club Soda in January 1988, back when they were hardly known here. A year later, that was no longer the case.
Montreal Gazette
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Skies clear just in time for magic Blue Rodeo show at jazz fest
Music By The skies cleared just in time for Blue Rodeo. Of course, they did. It's the magic of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, but it's also the magical ties that bind this Toronto band to their fans ici. The forecast all week insisted there was a 90- to 100-per-cent chance of rain at 9:30 on Friday night, but the folks at MétéoMédia clearly haven't been listening to the Five Days in July album often enough. There was no way the big free outdoor Blue Rodeo show at the jazz fest was going to be rained out. And the fans knew it. The crowd stretched all the way back to Ste-Catherine St. and anyone who stayed home because of the forecast will be kicking themselves when their friends tell them how inspirational this soirée was. By the time Jim Cuddy got to belt out Try, the very first Blue Rodeo hit, as the encore and sitting at the keyboard, there was no getting away from the fact this was one of the great Blue Rodeo shows here. I mean not that there have been any Blue Rodeo shows much less than life-affirming. I was there Friday night with my daughter Devan reminiscing about the epic Blue Rodeo shows we'd seen at Théâtre St. Denis and Place des Arts. Friday, they ended with Lost Together and if you weren't choking up just a little bit, then you just don't love this thing called rock'n'roll. You could see Cuddy and fellow lead singer Greg Keelor were just loving this as much as the audience. 'Merci beaucoup,' Cuddy said, near the end. 'Nous adorons Montréal.' Later, Cuddy said: 'We'd like to thank the rain for taking a little break for us and mainly we'd like to thank you for coming out in spite of the weather.' Highlights included an incredibly intense take on Diamond Mine with Keelor rocking his vocal hard, a brilliant Trust Yourself with thousands singing along, and the anthems Til I Am Myself Again and Hasn't Hit Me Yet, which were just as great as you might imagine. I bumped into promoter Rubin Fogel, who was talking about how the first show they did in Montreal was at Club Soda in January 1988, back when they were hardly known here. A year later, that was no longer the case. Close to 40 years on, many of those same fans are still at the rendezvous. One of those was Anita Stephenson. She and her two sisters came from Guelph just to see Blue Rodeo. She's a huge fan and spent the entire drive here playing Blue Rodeo tracks and singing along to them, which kind of drove her two sisters, Janet and Susan, a little crazy. Anita's seen them 15 times. 'They're Canadian and they're part of our culture,' Stephenson said. 'They brought this Canadiana. They weren't forced to go touring in the U.S. I think the songs are great, the people are great, it's a mix of country and rock, but it's not true country. Some songs are more romantic, some are straight-up anthems. I just like it all.' Her sister Janet said they're not nearly as fanatical as Antia, 'but we support our baby sister.' And they're also making a 'girls' weekend' of it, hanging out at the jazz festival for two days. 'Look at the smile on our face,' Janet said. 'I feel like a little kid,' Anita said. Patrick Beaudet has been a Blue Rodeo fan since 1989, the year he first saw them at the Spectrum. 'I fell in love the first night I saw them,' Beaudet said. Friday night was his 12 th Blue Rodeo show and a forecast predicting heavy rainfall wasn't going to keep him away. 'I'm a fan fini, good weather, bad weather, I was going to be at this show,' Beaudet said. 'I can easily cry listening to Blue Rodeo. It hits me viscerally, inside me, profoundly. It's the lyrics, the harmonies. I like Oasis, Pulp, British rock, but I love the Canadian roots of Blue Rodeo.' Stéphane Fortin is also a hardcore fan and has been for over 30 years. 'I love the melodies,' Fortin said. 'And music is all about emotion.'
Montreal Gazette
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor have a soft spot for Montreal
Music Blue Rodeo is one of the most famous bands to come out of Toronto, but the country-flavoured rock outfit's two frontmen, Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, both have strong connections to Montreal. They spoke about those ties to our city in a recent Zoom conversation from their respective homes in the Toronto area. Blue Rodeo will headline a free outdoor show on the main TD Stage at the Place des Festivals, part of the Montreal Jazz Festival, Friday at 9:30 p.m. and the much-loved band — whose hits include Try, Diamond Mine, Lost Together, Hasn't Hit Me Yet and many others — will also be returning to play at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in Place des Arts on Jan. 17 next year, on their 40 th anniversary tour. Keelor, who was born in Inverness, N.S., moved from Toronto to Montreal in 1963 when his dad was transferred here. The family moved to the Town of Mount Royal and 'it was like a paradise for a 10-year-old,' Keelor said. 'TMR was very youth-oriented, very sports-oriented. There were lots of activities for kids and I was a little goalie and they had a great intercity hockey team, the TMR Eagles. It was completely enchanting before I even knew what enchantment even meant.' His parents moved back to Toronto in 1971 and Keelor stayed a year longer in Montreal to play hockey, moving back in with his parents in 1972. 'I went to North Toronto, which is where I met my buddy Jim,' Keelor said. Cuddy was born in Toronto but his dad almost immediately moved the family to the U.S., where they lived in different cities, following his dad's career path as a business consultant. They moved to Montreal West in '63, the same year Keelor arrived in TMR, and his mom vowed to never move again. 'She'd probably moved 12 times at that point so she said she'd never move again,' Cuddy said. 'We loved Montreal West. I liked it, but it was very strict. The school we went to was Protestant but it was very parochial. They had a lot of rules. Then the summer of '67 came and I was a big Toronto Maple Leafs fan. I'd been born in Toronto but never lived there so I had this mystique about Toronto. And that was the last year that Toronto won the Stanley Cup, beating Montreal. Then Expo started. We all had passes. It was the new métro. I was 11 and completely independent. I had a paper route. I'd come and go to Expo all summer long. Then by the middle of the summer, my dad said we're moving to Toronto. For a month, my mom said no. I just thought this was the greatest time of my life. It was Expo, the Leafs had just won the Cup, and I'm actually moving to this city that I cherish. My mom declared that was her last move and it was her last move.' Keelor, by the way, is a Habs fan, and, in our interview, Cuddy, a self-described 'long-suffering Leafs fan,' mock scolded Keelor for being a Canadiens supporter. 'Greg is actually a turncoat,' Cuddy said. 'In the early '70s, Greg saw this glorious team and decided to take off his Maple Leafs jersey and put on his Habs jersey forever.' Blue Rodeo always had a faithful fan base here, right from the moment their debut album Outskirts came out in 1987. 'Montreal was like a new girlfriend, a very attractive girlfriend,' Keelor said. 'It was always an exciting place to play because the audience was so responsive, was so into it. It just made us so excited to play. In those days, we never felt better than we were playing in Montreal. We did a series of shows at the Spectrum and those might've been the best Blue Rodeo shows that we ever did. I remember on our first tour we opened for k.d. lang at the Spectrum and it just seemed like such an incredible place to play.' Cuddy seconded that emotion. 'I said recently when I was playing in Dorval, with a trio, outside in the pouring rain, to a big enthusiastic crowd, that we don't usually book a night after a Montreal show. There's two places we don't do that. We don't do that in St. John's, not just for the crowd but obviously for logistics, we're just not going to make it. But (we do that) for Montreal because whatever the next city is, it will suffer (in comparison). There's just no point in doing it. You can play a very good concert but it just won't be the same. There's a level of sophistication to the musical audiences in Montreal ... and we noticed this very early on. We were embraced by Montreal audiences and they go where you go.' Keelor also fondly recalls the many shows at Bourbon Street North in Ste-Adèle. Astonishingly enough, Blue Rodeo has been together for four decades, a history kick-started in 1987 by the terrific soul ballad Try sung with so much emotion by Cuddy. 'There's part of me that instinctually just keeps on motoring along and tries not to think too much about that sort of stuff because I'm still involved in what I do,' Keelor said. 'But upon reflection you see that just even making it as a band is a miracle. Like how does that happen? Why are you cosmically picked to write these songs that make you a popular band ... and somehow these songs become somewhat iconic in the Canadian songbook and they're sung around campfires and living rooms and at weddings and funerals. And you realize what an incredible gift that is to your life.'
Ottawa Citizen
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Ottawa Citizen
Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor have a soft spot for Montreal
Blue Rodeo is one of the most famous bands to come out of Toronto, but the country-flavoured rock outfit's two frontmen, Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, both have strong connections to Montreal. Article content They spoke about those ties to our city in a recent Zoom conversation from their respective homes in the Toronto area. Blue Rodeo will headline a free outdoor show on the main TD Stage at the Place des Festivals, part of the Montreal Jazz Festival, Friday at 9:30 p.m. and the much-loved band — whose hits include Try, Diamond Mine, Lost Together, Hasn't Hit Me Yet and many others — will also be returning to play at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in Place des Arts on Jan. 17 next year, on their 40 th anniversary tour. Article content Article content Keelor, who was born in Inverness, N.S., moved from Toronto to Montreal in 1963 when his dad was transferred here. The family moved to the Town of Mount Royal and 'it was like a paradise for a 10-year-old,' Keelor said. 'TMR was very youth-oriented, very sports-oriented. There were lots of activities for kids and I was a little goalie and they had a great intercity hockey team, the TMR Eagles. It was completely enchanting before I even knew what enchantment even meant.' Article content Article content Article content His parents moved back to Toronto in 1971 and Keelor stayed a year longer in Montreal to play hockey, moving back in with his parents in 1972. Article content 'I went to North Toronto, which is where I met my buddy Jim,' Keelor said. Article content Cuddy was born in Toronto but his dad almost immediately moved the family to the U.S., where they lived in different cities, following his dad's career path as a business consultant. They moved to Montreal West in '63, the same year Keelor arrived in TMR, and his mom vowed to never move again. Article content 'She'd probably moved 12 times at that point so she said she'd never move again,' Cuddy said. 'We loved Montreal West. I liked it, but it was very strict. The school we went to was Protestant but it was very parochial. They had a lot of rules. Then the summer of '67 came and I was a big Toronto Maple Leafs fan. I'd been born in Toronto but never lived there so I had this mystique about Toronto. And that was the last year that Toronto won the Stanley Cup, beating Montreal. Then Expo started. We all had passes. It was the new métro. I was 11 and completely independent. I had a paper route. I'd come and go to Expo all summer long. Then by the middle of the summer, my dad said we're moving to Toronto. For a month, my mom said no. I just thought this was the greatest time of my life. It was Expo, the Leafs had just won the Cup, and I'm actually moving to this city that I cherish. My mom declared that was her last move and it was her last move.'
Belfast Telegraph
20-05-2025
- Business
- Belfast Telegraph
Two Northern Ireland eateries win prizes at Irish Restaurant Awards
Lir took home the category of best sustainable practices, while Mr Cuddy won the local food hero prize. The ceremony was held at the Clayton Hotel, Burlington Road in Dublin on Monday, May 19. It was attended by over 1000 people from the hospitality industry, including chefs, managers, staff and owners. The awards night followed regional awards ceremonies in the four provinces of Ireland, the winners of whom made up the nominees for the national awards. Staff from multiple Northern Irish establishments were nominated for awards, including Laura Connolly of the Oak Room Restaurant at Derry's Ebrington Hotel, who was the Ulster nominee for the category of best restaurant manager. Liam McKenna, of the Armagh City Hotel, was the Ulster nominee for the employee excellence award, while Noble, in Holywood, was nominated for best customer service. Another Holywood establishment, Frae, was nominated for best casual dining, while Belfast's OX was shortlisted for the best wine experience. The best restaurant award was won by Dede at the Customs House, in Baltimore, Co Cork, while John Kelly of the Lady Helen Restaurant at the Mount Juliet Estate in Co Kilkenny was named best chef. Seán Collender, president of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, said: 'At a time when our industry continues to face significant challenges, it's more important than ever to come together and celebrate the strength of Ireland's food and hospitality sector. 'These Awards are about acknowledging the incredible talent and tireless work of those in our restaurants, cafés and kitchens across the country. 'They shine a light on the resilience and creativity that define our industry. Behind every meal served is a team of passionate professionals dedicated to delivering unforgettable experiences. News Catch Up - Monday 19 May 'This year's Awards have once again highlighted the extraordinary standard of culinary talent across every region. 'I want to extend heartfelt congratulations to all of our winners and nominees, your commitment and passion inspire us all.'
