WINNIPEG - Blue Rodeo frontman Jim Cuddy underwent surgery recently to remove polyps from his vocal cords, but you sure wouldn't have known it from his solo show at the Pantages last night.
Cuddy's achingly pure voice -- arguably one of the finest, and certainly one of the most distinctive in the pantheon of Canadian music-makers -- was in pitch-perfect form, allowing him to effortlessly fill his dual roles as plaintive country balladeer and rough-and-tumble roots-rocker.
Touring in support of his sophomore solo disc The Light That Guides You Home, Cuddy opened yesterday with Second Son, the first track from his debut solo album All I Need, released a full eight years ago.
The song was one of several that benefited as much from the spirited fiddle playing of bandmate Anne Lindsey as it did from Cuddy's crystal-clear delivery, building into a barn-burning rave-up by the final few bars.
A few numbers later, Cuddy drew laughs while explaining the origins of Married Again, a song from the new disc inspired by a tabloid account of a couple who travelled to Vegas to finalize their divorce, only to wind up having a little too much to drink together.
"When they woke up the next morning, they were in the wedding suite ... so they had to go through the process all over again," he quipped.
A far more sobering experience provided the impetus for What She Said, a sombre track inspired by the shared hell two of his married friends went through while their young child was in the hospital.
But whether spinning sad songs, or uplifting -- like Country Wide Soul, a track dedicated to Cuddy's love of Canada -- or just plain awesome, like the Blue Rodeo favourite 'Til I Am Myself Again, Cuddy's rock-steady pipes left us with just one request: that he not wait quite as long before heading back to the studio, either alone or with his bandmates.
Earlier in the evening, up-and-comer Justin Rutledge delivered a half-hour set of similarly bluesy, but slightly slower-paced country rock. Rutledge later returned to join Cuddy onstage for a "chipper little number" called I'm Gonna Die One Sunny Day.
