For over 35 years, Jim Cuddy has written songs that have become indelible in the soundtrack of Canadian lives. With the January 26th release of his fourth solo album, Constellation, he adds ten songs to that extraordinary songbook.
As one of the founding members and creative forces behind Blue Rodeo, Cuddy has received nearly every accolade Canada can bestow upon a musician, from the Order of Canada and induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, to countless JUNO Awards and a Star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. Behind it all is a simple devotion to his craft as a songwriter, which remains Cuddy’s tireless pursuit after more than three decades.
“I’ve always found fascination in the smallest details of human behavior,” says Cuddy of his songwriting. “It has been something that I look at and remember, whether it is the details of an exchange that I witnessed or an exchange that I have. Of course, as you get older there are bigger things that happen in your life that you realize you’ll never totally understand. There never seems to be a loss of things to write about.”
As is the case with all great songwriters, Cuddy’s music has taken on deeper meaning with the passage of time, no small feat considering he has penned some of the most memorable songs in our nation’s canon. What comes across on Constellation is less of a separation between the bitter and the sweet, as is sometimes evident with Blue Rodeo, but rather an emotional honesty that resonates across the album.
This honesty shines through on the title track, “Constellations.”
“’Constellations’ is about a friend of mine who passed away last year. Some friends and I took him up to my farm and we sort of had our last supper. We had a riotous time, we drank a lot of wine, and we had a lot of laughs, and it was all tempered with the fact that we knew that our friend was not going to survive this illness,” says Cuddy.
“We’ve all had to deal with our own bumps and bruises and scarring along the way, and part of this new record is facing that reality,” he says. “But in other ways Constellation is a celebration of coming through it all and feeling grateful for these long-term relationships that have sustained us throughout our lives.”

The Jim Cuddy band plays at The Centre on Friday, March 16 @ 8PM. Order your tickets now, and as an added bonus receive a digital copy of Constellations with your purchase!