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Another trip to the five-ring rodeo

Iconic Canadian rock group, Blue Rodeo will take the stage in Whistler for their third Olympic Games
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Just about any Canadian, young or old, can sing along to a Blue Rodeo song. They're one of those iconic groups, ranking alongside hockey, maple syrup and Tim Horton's as things that are stereotypically Canadian.

Well, you can now raise their Canuck status another notch - one of their founding members, Greg Keelor, is a self-described former ski bum who lived in Lake Louise for two years and even visited Whistler back in its hippy heyday.

"I've been to Whistler many, many times," Keelor recalled during a recent interview. "My first time in Whistler was in like '75.

"When I first got to Whistler there was a Keg and Cleaver (the original Keg)... and I was there for about a couple of weeks skiing and you had to climb to do the back bowl - there were no lifts or anything, you had to actually climb up."

It appears that before founding Blue Rodeo back in 1984, Keelor was shreddin' the gnar, old-school style.

"I loved (skiing) then; its weird, now, for me," he said. "I was at Lake Louise in '74 and '75 and Lake Louise was such a little village - there was one little hotel and a gas station and that was it! And I worked at the Chateau Lake Louise and we lived in the hotel and there would be house counts of like 17, 35, and Christmas break there was like 110 people in the hotel. The world was our own."

During that time, he had a chance to spend some time right here in Whistler, long before the days of Intrawest and the Peak 2 Peak gondola.

"There was a bar that everyone hung out at and the Keg & Cleaver, and that was it, and it was fantastic! And now, it's like Yorkville in the mountains and I don't get it, myself. It's not my world - I don't need a Prada suit to go skiing. I come from the generation where you did a lot of mescaline and you went skiing. That was our world: getting high, hanging out, and skiing."

Keelor is preparing to return to Whistler, gracing the stage as final act of the Olympics on Feb. 28 at Village Square stage. They'll also be playing in Vancouver and Surrey during the Olympics. But this isn't their first experience with the Games - Blue Rodeo played the 1988 Calgary Olympics when the band was just four years old, performing as part of a gala show for the prime minister and dignitaries from around the world. The band also traveled to Sydney, Australia during the 2000 Olympics to perform in Canada House.

"A large part of it is people are just having a party - a huge party! And so we're the backdrop to just another party," Keelor said.

"This will be different. This will be playing outside in winter, which is always a little daunting, because it hurts your hands," the guitarist noted. "But, you know, its going to be a pretty great party."

Though they don't have a set list nailed down yet, Keelor said the band will probably be focusing on keeping the crowd warmed up and singing along.

"For those (Olympic) shows, I bet we'll lean a bit more on some of the more popular stuff."

When they're here in February, they'll actually be in the midst of a cross-Canada tour to promote their latest album, The Things We Left Behind .

Their latest release is a 16-track double LP specifically designed to be played on vinyl, which is a far different approach than most artists are taking these days.

"When Jim (Cuddy) and I first started putting songs together for this record, we realized we had a good crop of songs and we didn't really feel like losing any of them and we didn't feel like condensing them. So we thought, 'well, let's do a double CD.' And that seems pretty absurd in this day and age; when people aren't really buying CDs and it's all downloads. So in our sort of against-the-flow sort of nature we thought, 'let's even do a double LP.'"

Every purchase of the record also includes the CDs, and all of the tracks are available to buy online, as well.

"It's not like we're isolating ourselves, but the record has sold really well. We're actually selling CDs and of course there's a lot of downloads. But I think having the LP is of the favourite things that we've ever done."

It definitely holds appeal for fellow vinyl purists who are drawn to the older medium for better artwork and a more soulful, authentic sound.

"I prefer the vinyl myself still. To this day I listen to more records than CDs."

Keelor and Cuddy have been the songwriting force behind the band for over 25 years, but it's never a struggle to come up with new material that's still fresh and interesting for the musicians and fans.

"Writing music is just sort of what I do - it's hard for me to get outside of it and look at it. It's the way that I just think about things... I like to take in the world and see how it comes out in a song."

This latest album opens with a powerful track, All The Things That Are Left Behind, that Keelor wrote on piano - the first time he's approached the songwriting process this way.

"The song just sort of came out of the sound of the piano and not knowing where I'm going, and there's a certain melancholy to that song and even a little bit of that sort of relief after the pain of being left behind by someone that you love.

"You just feel so destroyed by it, almost to the point where you don't know how you're going to cope, and then you just sort of get numb and what a relief it is to be numb."

Using the piano to hammer the track out was a cathartic experience, though Keelor wasn't personally recovering from heartbreak.

"Its not like I went through that experience at that time, but I've been through that enough and I know enough people that it's sort of a constant around us somewhere, and it's a pretty vivid experience. It was great to lean into the chorus when it sort of presented itself."

They always struggle with the sequencing of their albums, but Keelor's track seemed like a logical starting point for The Things We Left Behind .

"Its one of the more dramatic songs on the record, and scattered about the record there's some dramatic sort of songs - some orchestrated tunes and that - so I think we just wanted to say that this record is a little different than some of the stuff we've done in the last few years."

Though they've been in the music game for almost 25 years now, the members of Blue Rodeo have no plans to retire from professional music anytime soon.

"I always sort of figured that we would get to this point where people would stop coming or stop buying the records, and that doesn't seem to be happening, which is sort of weird."