Jim Cuddy of the band Blue Rodeo, strikes out on his own with a solo performance at the Winspear Centre tonight. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Magic mushroom memories were running through Jim Cuddy’s head yesterday preceding his band’s concert date in Banff.

Cuddy was 15 years old when he first indulged on a camping trip in Banff.

“My initiation to hallucinogens was here, in the mountains, and it was profound,” he recalls, laughing. “That’s not why I’m connected to the mountains, because of the profundity of the hallucination. But it’s part of the serendipity of all these experiences kind of happening in the same place.

“It was a very different time; there was a lot of encouragement to experiment and there was a plenitude of things to experiment with.”

Now 50, Cuddy might be less prone to such experimentation, but time hasn’t dulled his spirit or sense of adventure. His latest set of inspirations – songs from his new album, The Light that Guides You Home, will be showcased tonight at the Winspear Centre. The concert starts at 8, and tickets ($31.50 and $39.50) are available at the Winspear box office.

Cuddy is touring with the Jim Cuddy Band, though anyone who’s been a fan of popular Canadian music for the past 25 years will most associate his name as a cornerstone of Blue Rodeo.

And if you look closely at and listen closely to the Cuddy Band it might sound an awful lot like Blue Rodeo, with the group’s Bazil Donovan on bass, Bob Packwood on keys, both along for the ride.

Part of what makes it Blue Rodeo-less is the absence of Greg Keelor, who also happens to be touring in support of a solo album, Aphrodite Rose. But it’s also a changeup, says Cuddy, because the songs on The Light that Guides You Home were written with one voice in mind, not two.

“I’ve been accused on this trip of not being so different from Blue Rodeo, but so be it,” Cuddy says. “But I never want to get myself in the position with the band where anyone thinks I’m withholding things or working on something with a different attitude. I didn’t start writing this record until we’d finished Are You Ready.

“I may have had fragments around, but they weren’t songs. I don’t necessarily distinguish between one song being more intimate or less intimate between one band or the other. It’s really just about the execution.”

Certain tunes from Cuddy’s new album, his first solo effort in eight years, were actually tried with and rejected by Blue Rodeo, notably Countrywide Soul. It’s a distinctly Canadian tune (“stealing the lives of people I’d meet,” as the song says), remembering big shining skies in Winnipeg, sweet Rocky Mountain air and “the magic in the mushrooms in P.E.I.” – the latter lyric was inspired by students Cuddy met from the University of P.E.I. in Charlottetown.

“They do mushrooms every spring,” he says. “There’s a time when they wander off and pick them out of the fields. I imagine it’s a pretty mild trip, but it seems to be as common as your first beer out there. I was really struck by how much that experience changed those kids, in a good way. that’s why they were slightly different, slightly more open-minded.”

Thus far, Cuddy says his new album has been similarly embraced. It’s also been an effort he’s been running in a friendly competition against Keelor’s sophomore record.

“My joke to him was that we could have a tour and pick up his records from the stores,” he laughs.

“Aw, come on! We’ve been together for 35 years and we’re not going to make fun of each other? We were a lot more fragile when we first made solo records and that would not have been a good time to make that kind of joke. It was much more challenging to us, being committed to Blue Rodeo.

“But I think we’ve reached a good place where we can do solo records and they can be just as reverently treated as everything else we’ve done.”