IN CONCERT
What: The Jim Cuddy Band with Barney Bentall, Devin Cuddy and Sam Polley
Where: McPherson Playhouse
When: Friday Feb. 23 8 p.m.
Tickets: Sold out
Pull Me Through might be the most satisfying No. 1 song of Jim Cuddy’s career, even if it took 12 years for the single to reach the top.
Released in 2006 on a solo album by the Blue Rodeo singer-guitarist, Pull Me Through managed to crash the iTunes servers at one point this week, after it was used in a video celebrating Canadian figure skaters Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue.
The CBC TV clip went viral following the pair’s emotional gold-medal win Monday night, a performance some have ranked among the greatest free dance routines in Olympic history.
The Moir-Virtue win and subsequent video quickly catapulted the piano-driven ballad into the No. 1 spot on iTunes — where it remains today, ahead of new hits by Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake and Imagine Dragons.
“It’s a good example of how people listen to music,” Cuddy said Wednesday on the phone from his Toronto home.
“The song is actually about losing somebody. But when you watch the video, you’re really drawn to the idea of two people so attached to each other that they can always pull each other up when the other one is down.”
The video was put together by CBC video editor Tim Thompson, who asked Cuddy a month ago if he could use the tune in a tribute video he was putting together for the Olympics.
Cuddy agreed, and went back to preparing for the Jan. 26 release of Constellation, his fourth solo album.
When the video finally aired, Cuddy was caught off guard by the response.
“When somebody asks to use your song, they often use a portion of it — they don’t use the whole song like they did here,” Cuddy said. “I’m extraordinarily grateful to be associated with such an incredible moment. I think it’s got to be one of the finest Olympic moments I’ve ever seen. Those two are so ridiculously inspiring.”
Cuddy kicked off his 31-date solo tour of Canada on Feb. 8, which brings the 62-year-old Toronto native to Victoria for a sold-out performance Friday night at the McPherson Playhouse.
The tour is a special one for Cuddy, who is bringing a mixture of friends, family and Blue Rodeo bandmates along for the ride. Colin Cripps (guitar), Anne Lindsay (fiddle), Bazil Donovan (bass), Joel Anderson (drums) and Steve O’Connor (keyboards) from the Blue Rodeo camp will join Cuddy’s sons, Devin Cuddy and Sam Polley, and Cuddy’s longtime friend and collaborator, Barney Bentall, for the trek.
“I’ve always been inclined to sticking with people around me, to be partner-oriented,” Cuddy said of the players he assembled for the tour.
“Because we’ve developed all this camaraderie and musicality over the years, it just seemed natural to put it all on the stage.”
Cuddy is busy at the moment — he played with Blue Rodeo at a show in Toronto on Wednesday and will be on stage in Vancouver tonight — but he’s hardly complaining. He wants to be as active as possible while he’s still able and eager.
“I like the pace. I like to keep working. I have a skillset that I have developed over 30 years that would definitely decline if I didn’t work. I have no interest in taking a long period of time off. Singing is really about keeping the muscles sharp. I do lots of travelling and have lots of time off. But the last thing I want to do is sit around and drink, and not sing.”
Constellation features a number of songs about loss and mortality, as Cuddy was writing for the first time about the deaths of two longtime friends, and the eventual death of another.
Cuddy was especially close to Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie, whose spirit can be heard between the notes on Constellation. Downie’s final performance before his death last year was a cameo on stage during a Blue Rodeo concert at Massey Hall in Toronto.
Couple that with the assisted suicide of a longtime friend and the declining health (due to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease) of Spirit of the West’s John Mann, another longtime Cuddy associate, and the record practically wrote itself, Cuddy said.
“[These things] just sort of determined the theme of the record. I don’t ever sit down with a theme in mind. I just mull over what’s been going through my mind over the past year, and muse over what I should write about.”
Songs about tough times are often the ones that resonate with fans, he said.
“This was a really significant year, and in that regard, it made it easy to write. I wasn’t making up subjects. I was trying to honour subjects.
“There was a little bit of pressure — not stultifying pressure — to get it right, to not waste words. With any record, if you’re writing 12 or 15 songs, there’s a line here and there you put in because it vaguely fits and it rhymes.
“And I really tried to not do that at all on this record. Who knows how many opportunities like this you’ll get, so don’t waste any lines.”
To view the Pull Me Through CBC video, go to youtube.com/watch?v=0T_dqPeAZKg
