MEDIA

MEDIA

Perhaps it's understandable that the Canadian music business has recently been rife with rumors that Toronto's Blue Rodeo was headed for the last round-up.

Certainly, there have been lots of indicators.

  Blue Rodeo recently played a career-retrospective show at their hometown's fabled Maple Leaf Gardens.

Co-leader Greg Keelor has just compiled a star-studded album dedicated to the cause of imprisoned Native rights activist Leonard Peltier, entitled Pine Ridge: An Open Letter To Allan Rock/Songs For Leonard Peltier.

  Keelor is also working on a solo album with an ominous title, Gone. His partner Jim Cuddy is planning his own solo album, too. So what does the future hold for Blue Rodeo?

  "You never know what's gonna happen. There could be some blow-out tomorrow, and this could be the end," concedes Keelor during promotional rounds to support the Peltier project. There are tentative plans for a new Blue Rodeo LP once Keelor's solo work is complete, but he says working outside the band has been therapeutic.

  "It is nice to make a recording with other people, without the sort of Blue Rodeo circus ... It is not just music. It is like, friends and family and cooks and roadies and drug dealers. It is a scene. And the music, it often seems secondary. The (Blue Rodeo) record is there to generate the money to get this party going."   Pine Ridge is designed to generate money and awareness for a very different cause. Peltier is an Ojibway-Sioux activist who, 20 years ago, was accused of murdering two FBI agents at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. In 1975, he fled to Canada, but the next year, our country handed him over to American authorities, based on affidavits which, by widespread consensus, were based on lies. The international community has called for Peltier's release, and one-time opponent (and former Ottawa Sun editor) Peter Worthington has since revised his views, calling Peltier's imprisonment a "grotesque vendetta by the FBI."

  Officially, Canada has done nothing, although Justice Minister Allan Rock has promised to give the Peltier file the once-over. Keelor hopes the album, with excellent new songs from Sarah McLachlan, The Tragically Hip, Ashley MacIsaac, The Skydiggers, Michael Ondaatje and others, will force Rock to take a stand on Peltier.

  "I think of the record as a collective prayer, somehow changing the momentum of injustice that has been holding this man. It is a prayer to the great spirit, or whatever metaphor you want to use to describe it," says Keelor.

  "I didn't think the record should be full of self-righteous vitriol. I said (to the contributors), just think of him sitting in his cell. I think that's what the record should be, too. The reality is this guy has been in jail for 20 years, so how can we caress him somehow."