It has been a whirlwind couple of years for Canadian music giant Jim Cuddy—well, more like 40 years. The year 2024 marked the 40th anniversary of his band Blue Rodeo, his induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame with Blue Rodeo collaborator Greg Keelor, and, most importantly, his 40th wedding anniversary to his wife, actor Rena Polley. If that wasn’t enough, in December 2025, he celebrated another milestone birthday: 70.
While Jim Cuddy grew up in a household where there was music—both his mother and grandmother were talented singers (his dad was a Second World War pilot)—music was not a path he was either encouraged or discouraged from pursuing.
“I grew up in a very typical way, and it took me a long time to find what I wanted to do and the people I wanted to be with. And that had a lot to do with creativity and music, and I surrounded myself with people who had similar interests.”
One of those people was Greg Keelor. They met in high school in Toronto and have been thick as thieves ever since.
The energy and connection between them is palpable on stage—they are just completing their 40th-anniversary tour and were recently in Victoria, B.C.
Jim says the two share a sarcastic sense of humour. “We have to be careful sometimes, as others may not appreciate our acerbic tongues.”
As they grew up, both dabbled in other sectors. Jim had a painting company, and he and Greg had an eaves-cleaning company. He even considered law school at one point. However, “when you look back at the way things unfolded in my life and the lives of the people around me, had anything happened more quickly or had there not been the detours of other work, I don’t think my life would’ve been the same,” Jim explains.
The music collaboration between Greg and Jim started early. They had a band together before Blue Rodeo (called the Hi-Fi’s), then in 1984, they took the Queen Street West bar scene in Toronto by storm as Blue Rodeo. The rest of Canada soon followed.
Today, their list of accolades is long: twelve JUNOs, seven SOCAN awards, a star on the Walk of Fame in Toronto, induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement—Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts. But for Jim, being inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2024 with Keelor was particularly meaningful.
“The Songwriters accolade is a great thrill, and I don’t think that’s anything Greg and I would ever have imagined. The other honours are shared with all the Blue Rodeo community, but this one is truly for something that matters a lot to Greg and me personally. I mean, we’ve been songwriters longer than we’ve been in a band, and it’s something we push each other to do better, so this one strikes pretty deep. I’m deeply grateful. It’s a very personal sense of accomplishment that I have from this award.”
It was not a straight line to success.
“I remember when our first album came out and we were beckoned by a representative from the record label, who told us they had only sold 5,000 records and if things didn’t get better, we were going to be dropped. Greg and I actually thought 5,000 was a lot back then!” laughs Jim Cuddy.
And then there was Try. “I figured it was a song people liked because we would get asked to play it twice in a night in the bars. It wasn’t our first-released song, but when it did hit the airwaves, it soared. Night after night on the radio show 7@7, Try made the list. Then we were offered more gigs, and we just did what we loved: playing music. The next morning I would go back to work. It was just this crazy thing. We didn’t turn into pop stars overnight.”
At the time, he was making prop sets for TV commercials. “I had been making movie sets, but the time commitment was too great and cut into music time, so I moved to commercials and quite enjoyed it.”
“When I heard Try in the grocery store, I knew we had made it.”
Jim is contemplative about their success.
“One of our most important lessons has been to listen to ourselves. Greg and I have always been best when we have just simply listened to ourselves. There was so much noise: ‘do this, do that,’ ‘go back up for six months,’ or ‘you’re going to burn out—you are performing too much.’ We just listened to our own compass. I’m glad that Greg and I struggled for a long time because the music we made at the beginning of our careers is not the kind of music we would have wanted to have sustained. It took us a long time to get over wanting to be part of ‘what was current in our time’ and just do something that we really liked, which was roots music.”
While Keelor and Cuddy are key members of Blue Rodeo, they also give each other space to create their own music. Cuddy recently released his sixth solo album last year, All the World Fades Away.
“I have to write short stories that I can draw from my own experience and my imagination. Obviously, they are not memoirs, but short stories. I go tour them, then I hear how people relate to them, and then the meaning or the perspective of the song broadens a lot. I think it is great to have people add their own memories or their own experiences to our music.”
Apart from a sugar addiction, he leads a relatively disciplined life, and one full of gratitude.
He donates to many causes, supports charities that provide instruments and music programs to schools, works on Indigenous causes, and supports regional environmental preservation, to name just a few.
He is an all-around kind and generous person and a devoted family man. He and Rena have three children (two sons and a daughter, all now adults).
It may have been a few years ago (his children are all grown up and in their 30s!), but becoming a father changed him.
“There was this new portal in my mind that opened up and remains to this day. I’m fearful for their well-being, and that’s carried on true throughout their lives.”
Not surprisingly, Jim is a very proud Canadian. Even with the pressure to relocate to the United States, he and Greg were never lured. While they had a stint in New York, Canada was always home.
“They wanted us to head down there, but it was never appealing to us. We had lived in New York for a while but came home. In Canada, we found a whole different level of community, and being part of a community of musicians that started in Toronto and then spread across the country, then with fans—it always meant something to us.”
In fact, he says the best compliment he has ever received involved being Canadian. “They were putting a gate between two houses near me, and this huge guy recognised me as I wandered around. He came over to me and said, ‘You are a great Canadian.’ It’s one thing to be known for your music and the band, but I feel like it is another stage or level when people feel proud that you are from their country. That’s pretty moving.”
What does he look forward to in this time of his life? He and his wife are learning to speak French. “I am working really hard at it. I consider it an obligation as a Canadian in a bilingual country to try to learn to speak the language.”
And being Canadian, he spends his spare time playing hockey and making music with his sons.
Not surprisingly, he is a big reader.
“I read a lot, and some of it comes from the left side of the bed. My wife will tell me I have to read something. And I still love to read Timothy Taylor, a Vancouver author. I defended one of his books on Canada Reads.”
As for the future?
“We have a family, and I look forward to watching what happens in my children’s lives. My wife and I have a lot to look forward to, but we have to be conscious to slow things down too, to just appreciate the moment. We were reflecting recently about this very fact.”
“At my age, I realize that the things I look forward to come and go very quickly, and I want to be very conscious, to absorb it all and be aware when they’re happening.” And of course, he will be creating good tunes and entertaining loyal fans everywhere.
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