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(The Funeral) Silver Sun I Will Follow Morning Dove Deep Bay Road Are You Ready Just This Love Ocean Of Sorrow The Briar and the Rose (Tom Waits)

The Wake) Whiskey Before Breakfast (traditional) > Are You Ready For The Country (Neil Young) Doc's Tune (Doc Watson) Somebody Touched Me (traditional) Les Yeux Noirs (traditional) Rage A Good Flying Day (Mike Belitsky) Little Beggarman (traditional) The Four Marys (traditional) Palace Of Gold All The Good Times Are Past And Gone (Bill Monroe) Dark Hollow (traditional) Soldier's Joy (Jimmy Driftwood) Tennessee Stud / Old Joe Clark (traditional) No Landing [Lucknow] Hasn't Hit Me Yet Encore: Stage Door Moon River (Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer) The Connaught Heifers (traditional) Saint Annes's Reel (traditional) One True Love

Greg Keelor - guitars, vocals Bryden Baird - flugelhorn, trumpet Travis Good - guitars, fiddle, backing vox About the album (from Keelor's Telesoul records website) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Blue Rodeo?s Greg Keelor released his second solo CD, Seven Songs For Jim, on Tuesday March 15, 2005. The record has released on Keelor?s own TeleSoul Records, distributed by Warner Music Canada. Seven Songs For Jim is an intimate collection of songs Greg wrote in tribute to his father. In 1997, Keelor recorded his first solo album, Gone, after making a pilgrimage to the Maritimes to find his birth mother. Greg will be playing these songs and more in select cities along with The Sadies? Travis Good and trumpet player Bryden Baird. Each of these very special evenings will consist of two sets. This will be a gorgeous night of music that should not be missed. Saturday March 19 Montreal, PQ The Cabaret Sunday March 20 Wakefield, ON Black Sheep Inn Wednesday March 23 Peterborough, ON Gordon Best Theatre Thursday March 24 Campbellford, ON Aron Theatre Tuesday March 29 Toronto, ON Lee?s Palace "My father died November 23, 2003. This record is the map of my mourning. Most of these songs were started before he died. They helped me to prepare for his death and they kept me close to him after his passing. The day of his funeral was one of those cold and grey overcast November days when the sun looks like a host in the sky. It was a good funeral and a good wake and I thank all family and friends for their love. Silver Sun was started in Philadelphia. We (Blue Rodeo) were on tour and I got a call from St. Michael?s Hospital saying that my father had fallen and that he was in the ICU. I couldn?t get a flight out that night and I remember sitting in the back of the bus with my guitar and wishing more than anything just to be with him. When I got back the next day he was on morphine ? grey and glassy-eyed, not really knowing where he was. In the months preceding his death I would go to the hospital every day. We would sit and watch TV and talk. I was very impressed with his patience. Every day I?d ask ?How are you doing?? and every day he?d smile and say ? ?Not bad ? gettin? by with a push and a shove?. The love and intimacy we shared in this time was very overwhelming. He loved the Virgin Mary and wore a rosary around his neck and every day we would pray. First an ?Our Father? then a ?Hail Mary?. He?d fold his hands on his chest, close his eyes, and whisper ?Hail Mary Full of Grace?. And listening to him ? trying to put my voice with his in prayer - it seemed to me that this man, my father, was in a state of grace, and when he did fade back into the shadow I wanted to go with him, not to die, but to follow that love. I tried to remember when I last loved him so purely and it took me back to the cottage on Bob Lake near Minden, Ontario. He bought it when I was five and I spent every summer up there until I was 19. My mom and I would go up for the summer and he?d come up on weekends and for two weeks in August. And every Friday until I was around 13 or so, I?d walk out along the Deep Bay Road to meet him. It was a time of perfect love ? life had yet to intrude into my world. Every day driving into the hospital I would listen to Ian Tyson?s ?Stories He?d Tell?. I think it?s one of the best songs and recordings I?ve ever heard. It?s a song that he sings about his dad. It is exquisite. Makes me bawl every time. On the same record he sings Johnny Cash?s ?Big River? and that?s probably where Are You Ready came from. The version here is very different from the version on the Blue Rodeo record. The Blue Rodeo version is closer to how it was written. Just This Love is about cleaning out my dad?s apartment ? it was heartbreaking ? he smoked a pack of Export ?A? every day for 25 years in the same apartment. The once-white walls had turned a yellowish green and everything you took down left its outline burned onto the wall. Above the door in his bedroom there was a cross. It was one of those crosses that had one of those radiating suns behind it. The outline it left sort of told the story of his life ? very beautiful. Ocean of Sorrow is my Liza Minnelli tune. I?d love to hear her sing this one up-tempo and snappy ? sad but defiant. It?s just a meditation on my sadness. The Christmas after my father passed was otherworldly. I felt so close to him that I was but a shadow in this world ? I?d go up into my studio and record every day. All day. All night. I loved the long winter nights working on these songs sometimes for days without interruption. I would look out my window to the moon passing thru the winter night, trailed by this very bright star and I thought of them as father and son. It was later explained to me that this star was called the Weaving Star - ?Altair?. The Chinese believed it was the Goddess of weaving. The Goddess was a young and beautiful girl, the daughter of the Sun King who ruled heaven. She fell in love with the young god who took care of the Sun King?s oxen. They were married and lived happily but not forever after. They were so enraptured that they neglected their heavenly jobs. The Sun King grew quite annoyed as the lovers disregarded warning after warning. Exasperated, he lost his temper and punished the neglectful lovers by separating them. He placed the weaving goddess on one side of the Milky Way and the Herdsman (the Star Vega) on the other. The Milky Way in Chinese mythology is a mighty river so wide and fierce that not even a god could cross it. So the lovers are separated ? forever ? except on that once in a rare December night when all the magpies in the world fly up to heaven and hover, forming a bridge with their wings, allowing the young Goddess to be with her beloved. " - it takes forever and a day to cross that bridge over the Milky Way- January 2005

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