1997

MEDIA

SEE Magazine - Cover Story
by Darren Zenko

MEDIA

Greg Keelor has been at or near the top of the Canadian recording scene for 11 or so years. With musical partner Jim Cuddy and their band Blue Rodeo, he's been part of a multimillion-album-selling machine, in the process opening countless doors for other Canadian artists.

But what happens when it all seems to be, on a personal level, crashing down? In the fall of 1995, as Blue Rodeo began recording their most recent album Nowhere to Here, Keelor discovered he'd been adopted and learned of his birth mother's whereabouts. Not long after, during the middle of recording, he suffered a physically devastating fall, aggravating ear problems and triggering a latent diabetes. Despite being in "the Valley of Darkness," as Keelor calls it, he managed in 1996 to not only tour the Blue Rodeo album but also to put together Pine Ridge: An Open Letter To Allan Rock, a compilation album featuring various Canadian artists in support of native activist Leonard Peltier.

After what he calls a mentally and spiritually regenerative retreat to India, Keelor once again entered the studio, this time to record his first solo album Gone. It's a spacious, minimalist work featuring soft, melodious guitars and Keelor's honest, searching voice.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Keelor about some of the events of the long and winding year of 1996. What follows are portions of our equally long and winding discussion.

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Let's start with Pine Ridge. What was the impetus for this album and how did you get involved with the Peltier defense movement?

I met Frank Dreaver, who is the head of the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee, in a steam room in Toronto. When I heard the full story of Leonard Peltier, especially the Canadian connection - that he was illegally extradited with falsified affidavits - I was angered. This anger has always sort of been in me and I'm happy when it finds a voice.

It's no accident when a guy like Frank Dreaver falls into your life. It's sort of overwhelming to see that this struggle has been going on for so long . . . and, at least when I strip it down, it sort of becomes the war between Good and Evil. But when I heard that story, I wanted to do something.

So how did Pine Ridge come about?

I just phoned everybody up and said, "Send me the tape." And Warner (Records) was very supportive. It was at a party, actually. I usually don't go to these industry parties, but I went - put on a suit and went down - because I wanted to ask them if I could record it. And I went up to (Warner Canada president) Stan Kulin and he knew the story, too and said "sure." Well . . . okay . . . great! I went home and phoned everybody and they made their recordings and sent them to me.

What kind of reception has Pine Ridge received? Do you think it's making a difference?

The world that I understand is just a collective prayer of human beings, whatever they are. That I understand and that I know makes a difference, and I know that has influence in the universe. But, as far as the political thing goes, that's always been abstract to me. For Frank, who's an activist, it's good for him; he's got more press and he's telling his story. More people are hearing about it.

When you were doing Pine Ridge, did you know you were going to do Gone, or something like it?

No, I didn't really know I was going to do Gone, then. It was when I was coming home on a plane from India that I sort of knew I was going to do it, on a cartoon sort of level. I had been sitting with this guru and I thought, "Well, I want to get off the wheel," y'know. I wanted to stop spinning on the Dharma wheel. And I thought, "I'd hate to die on this plane and have this lingering solo record in my bag of desires."

It just seemed like fun, because I had written some songs over there. About a year ago, I got this really nice nylon-stringed Martin, a Willie Nelson jobber, at the Halifax Folklore Centre . . . I get sort of romantic about guitar Karma - that it came from the East Coast and the songs that must have been played on it . . . It was an old guitar, mid-'60s, and it's so intimate and so soft. I brought that to India and I wrote a group of songs that were . . . different. I didn't want to record them, I didn't want to add much to them, I just wanted to hear that little guitar.

I love working with the band - after I was done the record, I was happy to go out and play some loud, chaotic rock 'n' roll - but for that particular time it was nice: just the guitar and the voice. And, of course, it doesn't hurt to have Sarah McLachlan playing piano with you.

Yeah, no kidding. How were things in the studio, for the actual recording of the album?

I did it in two sessions, sort of like A and B on the record. I just sort of showed up at Pierre (Marchand)'s, (and) Sarah was doing pre-production on her record. She'd go home for a week or something, so I'd go into the studio. I had asked (McLachlan percussionist) Ashwin (Sood) to drum on the record, hoping Sarah might sort of come along, which turned out to be the case.

So we did about a week and that turned out to be the first half of the record. Then about a month later, we came back with a couple other friends. So the second half of the record has a little more stuff.

Backtracking a little bit, I'm wondering about your time in India. What took you there?

It's always been there . . . it's always been the "Land of the Answer" to me, in my personal mythology. In the books I've read, the movies I've seen, the songs I've heard, it held something for me. I never really knew completely what it was.

But then (during the recording of Blue Rodeo's Nowhere to Here) I fell. I fell from about the height of this ceiling when a ladder slipped out and I landed on my head, then my back and . . . it was very painful. And there's no "accidents" . . . I was making this record and I just wanted to go away.

Also, the night we started recording I had found out my original name was Francis MacIntyre and my birth mother was from Inverness, Cape Breton, and I really wanted to go there. I did not want to be where I was.

That must have been a really freaky time.

It was. Completely freaky. And after the fall, I really entered into the valley of darkness. It was as dark as it gets for me. For a portion of my life at least, I went looking for the face of my self-destruction . . . I moved to New York; I wanted to walk hand-in-hand with my self-destruction. I wanted to see how far I could take that sort of death.

I wanted to drink in the same bar where Dylan Thomas drank his 28 shots then walked out and died, and I wanted to drink in the Chelsea and fall off the bar stools where Leonard Cohen had and where Sid and Nancy had their brutal love affair. I realized I'm not suicidal, I don't have that, but I was certainly ready to go, if they wanted to take me, or if I was just to dissolve or whatever the trick is. I was saying, "Okay . . . let's go."

The nice thing about hurting yourself as badly as I did was that you have to find healers. I found this woman, a craniopsychotherapist named Cathy Block. And (the therapy) was taking me deeper and deeper into my subconscious and all these things were sort of coming up. And at the same time, after the fall, a diabetes started kicking in.

Somehow, my subconscious sort of manifested itself around me in an accelerated way and all these things started to happen around me that were all headed in one direction. And part of that was finding my mother, and the other part was going to see this guru. I guess in a sort of Jungian sense, it's searching for the Perfect Masculine and the Perfect Feminine. This craniopsycho woman had lived with (the guru) for a while and as I was explaining the unraveling of my mind to her, she said "You don't have to worry about it. Just go see the guru and you'll be okay." Finally, I said, "I've got to see him; the time is now." And it was superb.

And how are you now . . . how do you feel?

I feel pretty good. It's funny . . . when I came back, I got on the plane and I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna shut down for a while. I'm gonna stop the Blue Rodeo machine for a while; I'm gonna do this solo record and then I'm just gonna take time off and watch my mind unravel. And since my feet touched the ground, I've not been busier.

But it seems okay, y'know? The Peltier record . . . my record . . . I start a Blue Rodeo record in about a month. I'm doing a little tour of this record at the beginning of February. So it just seems the way it is; I'm not as freaked out as I have been at certain times.