You know what they say, friends who become lost together, stay together.
The 25th annual Kingston Canadian Film Festival (KCFF) came to a sentimental close on March 2 with the premiere of Blue Rodeo: Lost Together at the Kingston Grand Theatre. Produced by Cream Productions, the film is more than a documentary. Director Dale Heslip captures a celebration of their 40 years of friendship, heartbreak, and music, taking the audience through their journey to becoming one of Canada’s most beloved bands. Lead singers Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy were among the crowd and, after the film, ed Talia Schlanger on stage for a Q&A.
READ MORE: Kingston Canadian Film Festival celebrates 25th year
Lost Together offers intimate and raw reflections on the band’s journey, capturing vignettes of the triumphs, tensions, and transformations of Blue Rodeo’s sound and career. The documentary won the Audience Award for a feature-length film at the 2024 Whistler Film Festival.
The film highlights the band’s beginnings on Toronto’s Queen Street music scene to the legendary CBGB club in New York, from where they returned to a stirring Toronto, sparked by country-rock pioneer, Handsome Ned. The film also noted the band’s breakout moment when MuchMusic, an iconic Canadian TV channel, featured their song “Try,” inviting them to mainstream success and, as some might say, the big leagues.
Jim Cuddy, ArtSci ’83, and Greg Keelor’s relationship resides at the heart of the film. The two lead singers first crossed paths on a high school football field, though the duo joked how it was more of a confrontation than an introduction.
WATCH MORE: Lost together: A conversation with Blue Rodeo
Cuddy and Keelor’s contrasting yet complimentary artistic sensibilities have been a defining feature of Blue Rodeo, drawing comparisons to the musical genius duo of the Beatles—Lennon and McCartney. “But those guys only lasted six years,” Cuddy joked during the post screening Q&A.
The band’s enduring relationship with Heslip—dating back to his design of their debut album Outskirts (1987)—is evident throughout the film. In interviews, the appear completely at ease, their comfort in front of the camera reflecting years of mutual trust and collaboration.
The documentary portrays how each album serves as a reflection of the band’s life experiences and phases.
From Outskirts (1987) to In Our Nature (2014), Blue Rodeo has gifted listeners with the soundtrack to their lives, capturing the restless energy of youth as well as their honest experiences of life’s trials and tribulations.
Waves of people filed into the sold-out Kingston Grand Theatre the night of the screening. A lively air filled the room with the kind of charged anticipation one experiences before seeing an old friend. The crowd’s chatter quickly faded as Schlanger introduced the film that would close the festival.
When the lights dimmed and the screen came to life with an image of a truck driving down a stretching country road, an austere silence settled over the theatre. Laughter rippled through the room at the familiar banter between Cuddy and Keelor—or should I say Keelor-Cuddy—as the two singers jokingly debated on screen about which name order sounded better.
Bassist Bazil Donovan’s relaxed optimism and former member Bobby Wiseman’s untraditional approach to the keyboard—drumsticks and oranges—added to Blue Rodeo’s overall charm. Through the film’s interviews with Wiseman, he shared his struggle to fulfill his artistic breadth, leading to his eventual exit from the band in 1992.
The audience was surprised to learn the group’s original drummer, Cleave Anderson, left the already-successful band in 1989 to return to his prior obligations as a mailman and raise his children. If that doesn’t speak to the kind of genuine characters that make up Blue Rodeo, I don’t know what does.
But it was during current drummer, Glenn Milchem’s, emotional reflection on their decades-long journey that people were moved to glassy eyes, as faces softened, and the screen’s bright light outlined the audience’s captivated profiles. Milchem expressed his gratitude for the lives the band has been able to touch.
The film’s musical interludes carried the audience through the twists and turns of Blue Rodeo’s story. As footage of past and recent concerts played, the theatre became a humming chorus, with the audience instinctively singing along with the melodies that chartered their own lives.
When the final song played and the lights brought the audience back to the theatre, there was a comforting realization. The sound of Blue Rodeo—one filled with soul and memories from each of our lives—remains as timeless as ever.
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