I’m certain that whole restraining order issue is now null and void, so I can talk about my enduring infatuation with Blue Rodeo without fear they won’t let me through the gates at Riverfest Elora this weekend.
Blue Rodeo is not just a band to me; they are the soundtrack of my life.
Through every major change, every heartbreaking loss and life altering win, somewhere in the background their music was part of the scene.
Back when I still had a Rose-Coloured Glasses view of the world and every Try led to a new path on the Outskirts of my angst, I turned to my muses, my new Lennon and McCartney in the form of Cuddy and Keelor, backed up by incredible musicians who gave the music a flavour that was all their own.
Nobody, anywhere, sounded quite like them.
Give me Dark Angel and Diamond Mine over top 40 anything any day.
Even now, their sound resonates with a piece of my memory; a time and place before now that lead me to where I’m meant to be, right here, right now.
I was 17 when I bought their first album, and ended my first year of college in time for the band’s second release. Those were some critical years in realizing it’s a big world out there and I had no map.
The year the band released Lost Together was the year the Carpenter and I became a couple: two souls trying to figure out who we were, where we were going and if we should be headed in the same direction.
I distinctly remember us getting lost, for real, on one of my zany road trip adventures somewhere north. The Carpenter was driving and I was navigating, or attempting to. A Blue Rodeo song came on the radio: Lost Together. I declared then and there that was our song.
We always had the best times together when we were off the map, and we were learning to let life take us where it wanted us to go. It was a metaphor for our friendship. Kismet. The Carpenter agreed. The song stuck.
From then on, there was a Blue Rodeo CD in the stereo everywhere life’s road took us. One time we parked that car for a brief and perfectly harmless make-out session (oh, like you never did it) and Five Days in July was playing. We were the couple in Five Days in May who dreamed of running away.
Later, Lost Together became the soundtrack for the commute the Carpenter and I took to see each other during our five-year long distance relationship. That album distinctly marks a place in time when I felt most alive and brave, in every way.
Seven years later, Lost Together was our wedding song and those two words are inscribed in our wedding bands.
True story. Metaphors matter.
The Carpenter and I have seen Blue Rodeo no less than 10 times and this Saturday, we’ll do it again. So if you are sitting behind us and we’re dancing like fools, or singing off key, leave us be or come join in.
We still know the words to every Blue Rodeo song.
It’s the story of us.