And here's another one from today's Jam Music:

Blue Rodeo's Keelor gets help from pals By ROB HONZELL -- Calgary Sun

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They were due for a break.

Blue Rodeo had just returned from touring their 2005 album, Are You Ready, and frontmen Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor asked themselves, 'What do you want to do now?'

"(Jim) said he wanted to do a solo album, so I figured, well, I guess I'll do one too ... I'm going to have all this extra time on my hands," says Keelor, who will be in town to play songs from his new record, Aphrodite Rose, with The Sadies at Mac Hall on Oct. 27.

"It's gonna be a blast," he says.

And having a blast is what Keelor hoped to accomplish with this new album.

"My previous solo albums (1997's Gone and 2005's Seven Songs for Jim) were so full of subtext and melancoly," says Keelor.

Not that he minded that, but he wanted Aphrodite Rose to be an album full of "amateuristic joy."

"I wanted to do it all myself," says Keelor, who explains though his talents as a drummer are merely passable, he was keen on playing every instrument on the album.

"Then I realized I would have been there forever."

That's when The Sadies -- an alternative country-rock act from Toronto -- were brought in to help.

"The great thing about bringing someone fresh in is you could have been in a rut for a couple of years and not even known it," says Keelor.

"It helps you remember the limitless possibilities of life that music offers.

That's where the idea of 'amateuristic joy' comes in.

Keelor says he wanted to capture the pure love for music he remembered feeling when he heard inspiring songs and artists when he was younger.

"When you're young, in like three minutes of a song, or that opening snare beat of (Bob Dylan's) Like a Rolling Stone ... the possibilities are limitless."

"You realize you don't necessarily have to do those things that have been laid out before you. The world is full of choices and horizons.

"It's more the possibilities of the music that I really love."

He looks back on the original British invasion, when bands such as Cream and The Beatles swept in with their rock-tinged tunes, as a moment in history he wanted to capture.

"They were just playing music for the sake of playing music ... because they loved it," says Keelor.

This love of what music offers shines through on Aphrodite Rose.

Keelor is obviously having fun on this record.

And that joy was helped along by one of Canada's sweetest voices, Sarah McLachlan.

Keelor and McLachlan had worked together several times in the past, including on the song Dark Angel from Five Days in May, a track Keelor refers to as "probably the best recording I've ever done."

"We were great friends, and for whatever reason I hadn't really seen her all that much in the past 10 years or so," says Keelor.

"So I had this solo album I felt was worthy of her beauty and grace and elegance ... and I called her up and asked her if she'd like to be on it and she graciously accepted."

But guest appearances aside, Keelor says Blue Rodeo fans don't need to worry: The band is still together, and the relationship between Keelor and Cuddy is stronger than ever.

"It's more than just a friendship, we're like brothers," says Keelor.

Keelor even credits Cuddy with making him want to learn how to play the guitar.

"I didn't start playing guitar until I saw him hanging out with his friends, drinking beer and getting high and playing music. I just said 'I wanna do that.' "

Tickets for Keelor's show can be purchased through Ticketmaster.

Thanks Donna, with each interview posted I'm learning more and more about our dear Greg

And another one from today's Edmonton Sun. 

Blue Rodeo's Keelor brings blues By YURI WUENSCH -- Edmonton Sun

Greg Keelor has been playing guitar and singing with Blue Rodeo for nearly 25 years, but has reserved some of his biggest blues for his solo material. Historically, anyway. Keelor stopped at the Fairmont Hotel MacDonald earlier this month as part of a national press tour for his new album, Aphrodite Rose, and is happy to report it's more a product of whim than weeping. He'll be playing selections from the album Saturday night at the Powerplant on the U of A campus and is co-headlining the show with the Sadies. Keelor and the band will also be at Megatunes (10355 82 Ave.) Saturday at 3 p.m. for a free in-store performance. Keelor seems relieved, content and glad, at 52, to have finally produced a solo album of music for music's sake. His last two solo efforts - 1997's Gone and Seven Songs for Jim, an EP he released last year - both came about because of life-changing upheaval. "Gone was about my being adopted. The Keelors picked me up on waivers at three months," he jokes. "I was from Cape Breton and was born Francis McIntyre. When my mother was 17, she didn't want to marry the guy who knocked her up, so she came to Toronto and had me there. About 10 years ago, I went to Cape Breton and met her, my birth father and met all my half brothers and sisters." At about the same time, Keelor was diagnosed with diabetes, and part of his overall catharsis saw him spending about six weeks with a guru in India, where he realized a spiritual awakening. The titular "Jim" on the EP was Keelor's father, who passed away in 2003. The songs, he says, represented an "emotional tombstone" to his dad and helped him mourn his passing. "It was a very sad process," Keelor recalls, "but it was also very loving. I call it a macabre record, because someone told me that 'macabre' means dancing with death. In a way, he became more alive to me in his passing than he had been when he was alive. With the love that grows out of someone departing like that, I've always found singing to be a great way to be with and sit with emotions." The new album is different, with Keelor describing its songs as material he just had kicking around and as stuff that "just didn't fit into the Blue Rodeo thing." For him, it also represents a personal, more empowering approach to crafting an album. Forgoing digital, Keelor recorded the entire album to eight-track tape, because the raw, lo-fi acoustic crackle and pop are elements he enjoys hearing in music. Even now, he says, he still prefers listening to old, worn vinyl LPs from his collection rather than CDs. With no label looming over him for a completion date, he had also planned on taking his time with Aphrodite Rose, playing all the instruments himself. That is, of course, until the Sadies told him they were setting out on tour this fall. "They're one of my favourite bands of all time," enthuses Keelor. "They play so many types of music: from country to psycho-billy to Syd Barrett to surf. They remind me of why I got involved in music." The tour meant Keelor had to hurry with the album, perhaps to better rationalize going out on tour. And who better to enlist in helping him complete it than the Sadies themselves? The band's Travis Good lent a hand on bass and guitar, while Mike Belitsky beat the drums. And, with a smile, Keelor says he can't help but think about beating out Jim Cuddy, his partner in Blue Rodeo, who just last month released a solo effort of his own. Cuddy will be at the Winspear Centre on Nov. 9 in support of The Light that Guides You Home and Keelor says there's nothing like a friendly rivalry to keep things interesting. "I think there's always sort of been one between us," Keelor says. "In any sort of endeavour you're involved with, and when you've got a partner, you've got to edge each other along, in a way. I'm sure he'll be calling me and telling me how much more he's selling." Advance $19 tickets for the show are available at Blackbyrd Myoozik, Listen Records, Megatunes, the Powerplant, U of A students' union info booths or through Ticketmaster.

Excellent article!  Thanks for posting!

Jim and Greg rivals???  I never would have guessed! 

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I carry with me the memory of a field I once knew, of a night so full of stars that I was left humbled by it's endless beauty. I know that whatever the cost, life is worth living. So bring it on...I can take it.

This one is from a few days ago but I don't think I've seen it posted (from the Georgia Strait):

http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=21380

Former Hi Fi Greg Keelor revisits his musical past

By adrian mack

He looks groggy, like he just rolled off the couch after a three-day pot coma, but Greg Keelor’s memory is very much intact when he meets with the Straight at a West Side coffee shop to discuss his newest solo album, Aphrodite Rose. Recalling Toronto’s late-’70s punk milieu, the Blue Rodeo cofounder speaks warmly about his salad days, fresh out of high school, when he played in a band called the Hi Fis with his friend Jim Cuddy.

“There weren’t many records getting made,” he says, dropping names like the Demics and the Forgotten Rebels. “But there were lots of great bands at the bar.”

Most of those great bands never made it out of the bar—the Edge at Gerrard and Church streets to be specific, run by the legendary Two Garys, and a ground zero for first-wave Hogtown punk. Keelor and Cuddy went on to achieve enormous domestic success, meanwhile, after dropping the skinny ties and broadening their musical palette with Blue Rodeo. For his third solo release, Keelor has examined those roots and the music that inspired him in the first place to produce a charming exercise in evoking his past. Even the one-inch eight-track deck he used has its significance, and not just because he wanted to capture the “heavy air” intrinsic to analogue recordings. “It’s the same machine that we did Diamond Mine on,” he says, referring to Blue Rodeo’s classic 1989 release. “It felt really good to bring that machine home.”

Keelor also resurrected one of his first songwriting efforts from the predigital Hi Fis era: a delicious wedge of power pop called “Colour and Rhyme” that he’s proud to announce was recorded in its original key. (“It took me quite a while to warm up to it,” he admits.) The rest of the album tackles the various shades of golden-era pop, rock, and country that have long bubbled beneath Blue Rodeo’s comparatively polished surface. “No Man’s Land” opens the album with a jangly folk-rock statement that could have been nicked from a lost Searchers B-side, while “Prisoner” takes CCR’s version of “I Put a Spell On You” and bumps it up against the Yardbirds, making for an elementary demonstration of Keelor’s intention that Aphrodite Rose should recall “the effect the British invasion had on American music”. In its second half, the album extends into meatier stretches of psychedelic country, like in the extraordinary “Alaska”. In a rather nifty move for a man whose heart maybe beats a little bit faster for the barroom than it does for the concert hall, Keelor turned to the Sadies for assistance on much of the record.

“They’re a cosmic band,” he continues, “and they play everything with such sincerity and authority, whether it’s Syd Barrett or Clarence White—they just do it.” The collaboration gives Aphrodite Rose much of its excitement.

“The influence of the Sadies is like a young pup teaching an old dog new tricks, and really, I thank the day that I bumped into them. They put the vibration in my head again. They rang the bell.” Peering up from his coffee, he concludes, “I might have been a little bit on automatic pilot there for a while.”

Greg Keelor plays the Commodore Ballroom on Sunday (October 22).

Yes it was posted already on 10-19-2006, 4:14 PM I see you have your Google Alerts set eh  Donna?

I guess this thread will do. I don't think this has been posted before. I just came across it by chance on the Megatunes site. It's an interview with Greg done while he was touring Aphrodite Rose with the Sadies. It's an interesting read.

http://megatunes.clearetail.com/article;story,18;Greg-Keelor 

Greg Keelor

Friday Jun 01 2007

Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo fame was nice enough to give us a call from Vancouver where he is currently on tour with The Sadies, just a few days before they both put on a very memorable SideShow at Megatunes. Greg has a new solo album out called “Aphrodite Rose” which we talked about at length and also Greg was nice enough to tell us some Blue Rodeo tales which were fun and enlightening. Always the gentleman, Greg was a riot to talk to.

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David: Listening to "Aphrodite Rose " I detect a bit of a Beatles influence running through some of the songs. Would you agree with that and if so to what extent did they influence your songwriting on this album?

Greg: When I started listening to music and when music first hit me, it was the British Invasion, in 1964 I was 10 years old and all that music just blew my mind, even as a 10 year old. The Animals, The Kinks, the Stones….and then the influence that had on American music like Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds and the original garage bands. So that stuff really had the most reverberation for me. When I started making this new album, I set out to do it myself. I wanted to engineer it myself and play everything myself, so my limited musicality led me to that vibe. So the Beatles were a huge influence.

David: Your previous albums "Gone" and "Seven songs for Jim" were defiantly more of a laid back, sparse, stripped down affair with "Seven songs for Jim" being an incredibly personal album dealing with the loss of your father and all the questions about life that come with such an event in someone's life. What occurred in the past year since that albums release that allowed you to make such an upbeat, uplifting album?

Greg: The first two albums had a lot of subtext to it and was kind of music for a snowy day. Nothing really happened and albums make themselves, the first two were just really big moments in my life and this one….when Jim and I came off the road last year, Jim said he wanted to make a solo record and I had nothing to do so I thought “Well I’ll make one too”.  This one, I had a bunch of songs lying around and if there is a thematic to it, it’s because I was engineering it and going for a certain sound.

David: Working with The Sadies and Sarah McLachlan on this new album, among others, were you able to feed off the guest musicians to create something you may not have been able to create by yourself?

Greg: When I play everything myself, there is kind of an amateurish joy to it I would say. So Travis (The Sadies) called me up and said they were going on tour in October and I should come with them. So I had to finish my record quicker than I thought. So Mike and Travis came over and became the rhythm section and played on 6 songs. There is this Notorious Byrd Brothers outtake where they are arguing and Crosby steps in and says “Just play it right man, just play it beautiful” and that’s what The Sadies do, they just play it right and play it beautiful. The just got the sound and it reminds me so much of a lot of those bands from the original British Invasion.

Singing with Sarah, you know we used to hang out together and do a lot of work together. Before she became “Sarah McLachlan” she sang with us on “5 days in July” and when I did my first solo album, she played piano and sang on that as well. I haven’t really hung out too much with her of late so it was just nice to catch back up with her. I just love her singing; she’s one of my favorite singers.

David: Some of the songs on the new album date back a long way in your past, was it comforting to revisit some of these older unfinished songs and ideas from your past?

Greg: You know the first few songs I recorded had this British Invasion vibe and I had that song “Colour and Rhyme” which goes back to our first band with Jim called the “Hi-Fi’s”. I’ve always liked that song and I hadn’t played it in a while, I’ve just always like the feel to it. I just loved hearing it materialize again and there are a couple others that are old songs that were old Blue Rodeo songs that were recorded with the band but for some reason never made it on any albums so I thought it was time to use them up.

David: The song "Glory Oh" has an interesting origin as a song. Tell us about that?

Greg: I'd forgotten it was Valentine’s Day and my girlfriend was very mad at me. I have a very bad memory, I would forget Christmas if it weren’t such a big deal you know. So when I was driving home from the city, I live about an hour outside of Toronto, so I thought I better come up with something to get me out of the doghouse so I came up with this poem. Also part of the deal to get me out of the doghouse was I had to put the poem on the back cover of the “Are you ready” record. It’s seldom that I have a whole lyric written like that, so I made it into a song. So the poem that appears on the back of “Are you ready” actually turned into two songs….”Glory Oh and Aphrodite Rose”.

David: Is the title of the album symbolic of something personal in your life or was it a case of it just sounded right?

Greg: I had the song the song “Aphrodite Rose” on the record already and then I thought it was a nice play on words because I really like “American Beauty” and all the Grateful Dead roses

David: Your relationship with Jim Cuddy goes back to a pre-Blue Rodeo band called the "Hi-Fi's" and before that you went to High School together, how have you managed to maintain a working, successful relationship with Jim for so long?

Greg: We’re kinda like brothers you know. It’s like a family vibe; I think our humor allows us to find a way to still do it. I really don’t know how or why it works…I don’t think about it really.

David: Blue Rodeo has been around for the better part of 20 years, what do you get out of working solo that you don't get in Blue Rodeo?

Greg: Blue Rodeo is a pretty fulfilling band; it’s a great band I think with a great rhythm section. The solo thing, it’s nice because I have my studio at home and I just work on things until it feels right. Blue Rodeo works by committee and everyone’s got their two cents and that’s what a band is.  When it’s just me I can putter around and when it’s just me I can play drums and I love playing drums and playing bass and that’s all stuff I can’t do with Blue Rodeo.

David: Jim Cuddy's new album seems to be a much more energetic album as well; will this re-newed energy carry over to the next Blue Rodeo album?

Greg: You never know, I have no idea. I can never predict what kind of song I will write. I feel very lucky when a new song does come out of me but I never know which way it’s gonna go.

David: Blue Rodeo has been one of the rare Canadian bands that have been able to make a successful go of it without relying too much on American support, what quality does Blue Rodeo have that has allowed them to flourish while so many other great Canadian bands have fallen by the way side over the years?

Greg: Again, I don’t really know but since you asked…..I think it’s the songs. I believe so much in fate and that things just happen and you try to make sense of it and it just sorta happens. When Jim and I were learning how to write songs, our influences were songs were you can sit around and have a beer and sing, songs that you can just sit around with friends and sing.  I think that’s why the band has been able to continue to have a career and have meaning for people.

David: Is there one or two songs in particular on the new cd that you can pick out and say "That's what I do best" or maybe that you’re the most proud of?

Greg: I love all my children on this record. Something like the last song on the record “In the Reflections”, it’s like a jam and you never know where it’s going to go. If you hear the first take of that song, you would think “Well they’re never gonna be able to get that one down” but the one on the record is the third take. I love that jam type stuff, it’s a roll of the dice because you never know where it’s gonna go.  So I was impressed by that, everyone played fantastic. A song like “Alaska”, some of the little backward things on there and using sound effects and delays and out of the chaos a certain beautiful irregular symmetry happens.

David: Speaking of which, how has this new material translated live? Is there a personal live favorite?

Greg: It’s funny because it all changes live so much and there is such a vibe playing these songs with the Sadies.  The two songs I just mentioned, when we play these live it almost sounds like Syd era Pink Floyd in spots which is great.

David: What are you currently listening to?

Greg: On this tour we’ve been DVD’ing a lot. So everyone has their DVD collection. My favorites have been these two New York Dolls DVD’s, there is this one from 1973 where Arthur Kane (New York Dolls bassist) gets stabbed in the hand because his girlfriend doesn’t want him to go on tour so he watches from the side and the roadie is playing bass, I mean that’s just incredible. The other New York Dolls one is from their re-union gig in London and then Arthur dies just shortly after, it’s just beautiful.  The Sadies and their crew got the great collection down, some great Gram Parsons and Love DVD’s.

David: If you had a chance to put together your dream show with you included, what bands or who would be on the bill?

Greg: There is two answers for that, one is that I am in it right now. Playing with the Sadies is just great. The fantasy band would be like Hal Blaine on drums, Norman Putman on bass, Leon Russell on keyboards, maybe Billy Preston on Hammond. I’m not sure who I would have on guitar; I’ve never been asked that. My brain’s overloading with the possibilities…of course this whole thing would have to be around 1972.

David: Success to some artists is selling a million albums, to some it's breaking through in the American market, to some it's writing the perfect song. How do you define success for yourself?

Greg: I think for me it’s more of the personal thing. I figure success for me is that I can engineer my own record and I can sit there with a drum machine and put down the bed track and build it up from there. That I feel is most important to me, I mean my day job is pretty good and I got it covered. I feel pretty chuffed about that.

David: What’s the weirdest bill you or Blue Rodeo have ever been on?

Greg: We played in this place in Pittsburgh where the place had two rooms. We played in one room and in the other at the same time were the Misfits. We opened for Midge Ure (ex-Visage, Ultravox) which was interesting, that was at Barrymore’s in Toronto. The opening slots are usually the weirdest.

David: Have you ever experienced one of those Spinal Tap moments during an in-store appearance? Also have you ever met a label rep like the one in "Spinal Tap" and did you kick them in the ass?

Greg: Blue Rodeo has had many of those, and yes we have met those types of reps…what’s his name again?

David: Artie Fufkin?

Greg: Yeah that’s right, well we were signed to Atlantic and we were one of the first signings to Interscope if you can believe it and the guy that signed us got fired and at that point the guy that signed us and this other lady, who I forget her name, were vying for the top job at Interscope and we were the other guy’s big band and she had some R&B act. Well he got fired and Interscope went on to be one of the most successful labels. In that era around “Casino” which was on Interscope, we toured America a lot, you would do everything and anything asked of you and your doing in-stores everywhere and you do them at record stores and book stores and it’s all part of a big plan from the record label and at certain points in your career you kind of surrender to that. So during that period touring America for “Casino”, I think we went through, well if all the band sat down and thought about it and told all the stores about that, it would be a hilarious book of continued humiliation and some of the Los Angeles label people, that’s exactly what that character in Spinal Tap is based on. You defiantly meet those people and you go through limitless amounts of humiliation along the way and I think once you go through that for a period of time you realize that it’s just not worth it and it just takes too many pieces out of your soul.

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" The power of gift is the beauty of choice" Off The Wall 2006

What an excellent interview... thanks Phyl! 

thank you!!  this is a great review from mr. greg keelor!!