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This interview has been edited for clarity and pace.
On October 27, 2022, Stephen Fearing, of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, hopped on the phone for an interview from the road. We talk about the new album, O Glory, recording during a pandemic, what’s it like to have been together for the last 27 years, and the life changes that inspired their newest offering. We also discuss working with his bandmates, Tom Wilson and Colin Linden.
Check out the gallery from Blackie and the Rodeo Kings show from November 9, 2022 when they took the stage at the Commodore Ballroom.
Jade Dempsey: Where are you guys right now?
Stephen Fearing: Oh, I’m in Toronto in Hyde Park, we’re all scattered today. It’s our day off. Last night we played in London, Ontario and tomorrow we’re playing Massey Hall. So I was just out walking with my wife in Hyde Park, cause the leaves are unbelievable. It’s just a gorgeous day.
For those that don’t know Blackie And The Rodeo Kings, where would you suggest they start?
I don’t know…the new one…Actually, If I were you I’d go back to the first one, just because you get the sense of where we come from. Or the double album, King of Love, is interesting because we didn’t realize something more was going to happen. We wen’t into The Bathouse, the Tragically Hip’s studio, in Kingston, and we recorded for a week, something like that, and we ended up with a double record. That was when everybody started to bring original material in. We realized this thing was going to do more, and become more, than any of us had thought about. The King of Love double album is where the band really became a band. The album Bark is really special in many ways and yeah…there’s eleven of them, so pick a winner.
You’ve been together 27 years now. How did you all meet? And did you expect to be here all these years later?
Well those two questions are entirely related because we met for a special reason, Colin Linden and I had been working together. I was actually opening show Bruce Cockburn. Colin was the band leader for the Nothing But A Burning Light tour. And I had a very strong impression that Colin was the kind of person that I needed to spend a lot of time with, musically. It’s hard to put it into words. He’s a workaholic, but he’s creatively…he just fires on all cylinders, and is just an amazing guy to be around. So I needed to come up with a good project, and I sent him an email, back in the days of dial up, and said “ you know, we should do a tribute album.” It was in an era, 27 years ago, when there was a lot of people doing tribute records. And the typical way of doing it was a record label would kind of coral twelve artists to do twelve songs, and then somebody would kinda master them, and put them all together. So I called Colin and said that we should do a tribute to Willie P. Bennett. Who’s kinda, in hindsight, very much our guiding spirit, but at the time he was kind of a common thread between Colin and I. Somebody we both admired, and somebody Colin had worked with for many, many years as a side man. I had ran into Colin two nights after that a John Hyatt gig, up at the Danforth. He said that he’d been thinking about it and that we should do it as a band, that we should form a band to do this, and that we need one more singer. Between Colin and I we weren’t going to cover the material enough. And he suggested Tom Wilson. And that’s how it happened. Colin, being Colin we were literally in the studio, I don’t know, like weeks later, if that. What was supposed to be a one off record ended up, to answer the second part of your question, it just became this thing. You know, all the cliches about chemistry and all that. It was a lot of things that came together in a lucky way, but it really was that at its heart, the three of us, seemingly disparate elements, Tom Wilson at the time was the lead singer of Junkhouse which is a Hamilton hard rock band, Colin Linden a blues prodigy, and me, the folk guy, so what did we have in common? Well apart from Willie P. Bennett, there were a number of things, and Willie’s music provided a template for us to coalesce around. Once we did that, we found a way in, and it’s been kinda limitless. So we can cover a lot of ground musically. And we like each other a lot, so that’s…honestly, we were supposed to be a one off, one record, there was never any thought it was going to be anything more than that. We weren’t even going to tour it. It just sort of took on its own life.
O Glory is your eleventh album, what was the biggest difference between recording this opposed to your first…besides a pandemic?
Okay, well that would be the major difference. Obviously, what’s happened in between is 27 years of touring on and off, and as you said, eleven records. That’s a lot of water under the bridge. We all lived in close proximity for the first record, and now Colin lives in Nashville, I live in Victoria, Tom’s still in Hamilton and the rhythm section’s in Toronto. So we’re pretty far apart. But because we’ve done all this playing and recording, and socializing, the fact that we were making a record in captivity, in our own little pods, sending files back and forth, which is a very common way to make records now. It meat that we were…we were able to anticipate what each other was going to do a where a thing might go, and so, it felt comfortable. Even after not seeing each other for two and a half years, ‘cause we hadn’t seen each other for the entire pandemic. It was possible because of that. The only other thing, and I wouldn’t say it’s major…well, I mean the first album was all Willie P. Bennett songs, and we’ve gone from that to everybody writing songs a contributing and writing songs together. We’ve gone from being a tribute band to an original band. It’s not even a side project anymore, like half my life is Blackie and the Rodeo Kings.
One of the things that’s really changed is Tom Wilson’s story, to encapsulate, it’s really his story to tell, but…he found out in his late 50’s that he was adopted, which he always suspected, but more that that, he found out the has was Mohawk, that his father was Mohawk, and his mother Mohawk. So he grew up thinking he was white, and he found out, no, you’re Mohawk. So what a time to find that out, with our country going through this very painful and difficult discovery of exactly how bad it has been, and how the institutions have literally tried to wipe out the indigenous people of our country. The residential schools, the unmarked graves, all that stuff is coming to light. In the midst of all that, one of my closest friends discovers that he’s Mohawk. It makes perfect sense if you ever meet him, by the way.
There’s a focus and a tone to this record, that has to do with all the other things I was talking about, the fact that we’ve been together so long, the fact the we made it in captivity, but Tom’s story for me really resonates on this record, and I think it’s the thread that really comes through in the choices of the other writers in the band, Colin and myself. There’s still a sense of aiming in that direction, wanting to amplify something in our collective past that has been swept up under the rug for a looooong time. You know, it’s time for our country to really look at these things, which we are, slowly, painfully, awkwardly. It’s one step forward and a half step back. That’s the thread I hear in this record, and there’s one song in particular called “Grand River” which Tom and Colin both beautifully wrote together, and it really encapsulates the land back sentiments, and that a lot of thievery has gone on, a lot of broken promises, and hollow treaties. There’s been a lot of skullduggery that’s gone on…not to make this song…it’s a simple song in many ways, but it touches on it in a very poignant way, and I think that’s the heart of this record.
This album feels more reserved, intimate than your previous, almost like we’re in the room with you. I was surprised when I learned you made it all remotely. Can you talk about the process?
Well it’s so much tied in the way that you’re making it, I’m in Victoria, in my office. I don’t have a studio, I mean, I live in house that was built in 1913, so you know, I’m in a room that wasn’t made for recording. I’m in there with decent microphones and good software and I try to get as good of a sound I can, and then send it to Colin, who’s playing with a drum loop that Gary Craig’s created, or whatever…And then Colin builds the track around that with the other members of the band, adding a harmony or guitar part, or a bass. So if you’re picking that sense of it up, that’s Colin. Frankly, thats…Colin has got a genius about that stuff. He’s a very intuitive producer and engineer and very very early on in our career, and my relationship with Colin, he explained to me what he was interested in was trying to capture feelings, which is very hard to do in the studio. It’s so difficult to actually capture emotion on tape. It’s like trying to get lightening in a bottle. It slips away so easily, because as soon as you think about what you’re doing and paying attention to the minutiae of recording its very easy to lose the magical, emotional thing, which is what shines through in a good recording. So if you can hear that, like you’re close to us, that’s really a hat’s off to Colin.
Is there anything that still surprises you about working with Colin and Tom?
Oh, everyday. I mean there are…I’m hearing things I didn’t know that they would do. I mean we’re watching each other grow old, you know? I’m the youngest member of the band and I’m hitting 60 in January. So you know we’re all crossing over that bridge and watching how each of us is kind of maturing…and immaturing. There’s a lot of laughter, so that stuff still amazes me that we can still get together after 27 years and still make each other laugh to the point of you know…snotty laughing. It’s pretty funny. So yeah, I’m surprised and amazed that there’s still a lot of road ahead of us. It feels that way.
Your band swaps between singers. Is that chosen based on who writes the song, or does it come out when you start recording?
Yeah. One of the things that’s lovely, is that Tom’s more of a baritone bass, Colin and I are more of a baritone tenor sort of range, so we trade off stuff quite a lot in a song. He might sing the first verse and I’ll sing the harmony and then we’ll switch in the second verse. We switch around a lot and that’s really taking a page out of The Band’s approach. That’s the way they sang together. Whoever felt it grabbed at the vocal line or harmony line and everybody else worked around that, and that could switch. We’re all sort of singing in the same range and it’s not like, you know, bass, baritone, tenor, it’s less formal and more organic. So we do switch around a lot.
Going off that. “I Sleep Like A Fugitive” was written by the three of you. How did you come to be the one who sings it?
Colin sent me the germ of the song. Like a strong…verse, or the chorus and he had bits. He sent it out and I finished it really fast. I felt it right away, and I sent him back a vocal version of what I’d added and written to it and he said “Great. You should sing that.” Sometimes it just works the way. Sometimes we’ll just write a song thinking, “Okay, I’m going to sing the first verse, Colin should sing the second and Tom, the third.” Or visa versa. Sometimes they morph, but usually there’s a pretty strong idea that whoever brings the song to the table will sing the lead.
Going back to a couple of your previous albums, Kings and Queens, as well as, Kings and Kings, where you collaborated with numerous great artists. Is there someone for you, that if they were to call, you’d drop everything?
Yeah! Funnily enough, he’s going to sit in with us tomorrow night at Massey Hall, and that’s Daniel Lanois. You know, he’s a complicated story, but the amount of music he’s made that’s important to me, and I’m thinking of his records like Oh Mercy (Bob Dylan) and Wrecking Ball (Emmylou Harris) and So (Peter Gabriel) and Robbie Robertson (Robbie Robertson). Those are all records (he produced) that really mean a lot to me. Wrecking Ball is probably the record I’ve listened to ever since it was created, several times a year. It’s a go to. We played a show with him last night, he sat in with us for five songs and we’ll be doing the same tomorrow night, and it’s very special for all of us. So, yeah, that’s one person that any opportunity to be around that kind of musical spirit is something you drop what you’re doing for.
As I let you go, who’s a newer artist that has your attention?
Yeah, Serena Ryder. I’ve seen her a bunch, she’s not that new (laughs) but I haven’t paid as much attention to her as I probably should’ve. I watched her a couple of times over the summer and I haven’t seen anyone quite as comfortable in her skin as Serena Ryder. There’s elements of someone like Liza Minnelli about her, she’s old school show-biz in many ways, but she’s just got this energy to her. It’s so powerful and positive and funny. But she’s not messin’ around, you know, she goes out and does as serious show. I really love watching that.
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Stephen's Favourite's
Song?
The first song that comes to mind is “Stand By Me.” Maybe it’s just because I’ve been walking in the park.
Album?
John Martyn’s, Solid Air.
Band?
Los Lobos.
Movie?
Withnail And I.
Place to Visit?
Amsterdam…it’s a special place.
Venue to Play?
Well I’m going to play it tomorrow night. Massey Hall. It is sort of..I mean you’re on a stage and you’re thinking everyone has played here. Duke Ellington has played here, you know. I mean I’ve seen Los Lobos play there. I’ve opened for Los Lobos…Yeah, it’s just one of those places where it is really a temple of music, and it’s been around for so long, and it’s survived, fashion changes, and political changes, and everything. It’s still this amazing, magical place to be in. And when we walk in, and set up, it will be another chapter for us, ‘cause this will be the third time playing there for us as a band, and it’s pretty magical.
Song?
The first song that comes to mind is “Stand By Me.” Maybe it’s just because I’ve been walking in the park.
Album?
John Martyn’s, Solid Air.
Band?
Los Lobos.
Movie?
Withnail And I.
Place to Visit?
Amsterdam…it’s a special place.
Venue to Play?
Well I’m going to play it tomorrow night. Massey Hall. It is sort of..I mean you’re on a stage and you’re thinking everyone has played here. Duke Ellington has played here, you know. I mean I’ve seen Los Lobos play there. I’ve opened for Los Lobos…Yeah, it’s just one of those places where it is really a temple of music, and it’s been around for so long, and it’s survived, fashion changes, and political changes, and everything. It’s still this amazing, magical place to be in. And when we walk in, and set up, it will be another chapter for us, ‘cause this will be the third time playing there for us as a band, and it’s pretty magical.
Thank you to Stephen for making time on his day off. Blackie and the Rodeo Kings play Massey Hall tonight (October 28th) and hit more of Canada. Check if they’re coming to at town near you here.
2022/11/09 – Updated with gallery link.