Interview: Devin Cuddy Cuts a Rug with “Kitchen Knife”
By now, it’s public knowledge that up and coming Canadian blues-country songsmith Devin Cuddy is the son of Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy. In 
this country, that relationship essentially makes him royalty.
In 2012, The Devin Cuddy Band emerged with their debut full-length, Volume One, an album that impressed enough to land a JUNO nomination for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year (Group). At the very least, this album did enough to prove to Cuddy that his interest in old school musical influences could still fly in the modern era.
His second album, Kitchen Knife (which came out yesterday through Cameron House Records), represents an evolution for Cuddy as both a writer and a performer.
“To me, the songs are a little more personal than on my last record. I’ve had a couple of them for a long time, so it was nice to see them come to life,” explains Cuddy in conversation with Riffyou.com. “The song writing feels a little closer to home.
“My writing evolved from distant observations to observations about myself,” he continues. “For me, I write a lot from the third person and think about things from the outside. So, some of the songs are personal but fabricated, and there are pieces of other peoples’ lives placed into them.”
The album approach was also different for Cuddy this time around. With Volume One, the band recorded live-off-the-floor with the tracks already rather prepared and understood. With Kitchen Knife, Cuddy brought the songs to the band – Nichol Robertson (guitar), Zack Sutton (drums), and Devon Richardson (bass) – once they were in the studio, leading to more arrangement work being done in the room and, in the end, a bigger sound.
Helping this process along was Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor, who invited Cuddy and the band to his Lost Cause home studio to record the album. Keelor, who has been a family friend and hit album-maker for decades, wore the producer’s cap.
“It was good,” says Cuddy of the experience. “When you have a producer that you don’t know, there’s this element of shyness/positive fear. Immediately, all of that stuff was gone because of the familiarity. [Keelor] wasn’t aggressive – he was extremely helpful and he knows not only how to make records, but he knows about his studio. He knows what equipment sounds good, where.”
Adds Cuddy: “[He has] such knowledge of making records. I never really tapped into because he is a family friend.”
Although it’s been stated that Cuddy isn’t interested in riding coattails, he does know a great opportunity when it knocks.
Early last year, his band joined Blue Rodeo on an extensive Canadian tour, serving as the support act. After many of these larger stage shows, Cuddy and his band would roll into a smaller club in the same city for a post-show gig in a tinier, more familiar setting.
This experience had a two-pronged affect – it educated Cuddy on how to get better when there are bigger lights above you, and that people also still enjoy live music after 11pm.
“Playing to big crowds was good for our career – we won over a lot of new fans,” recalls Cuddy. “It was also great for our playing because we learned how to be on a big stage. Stuff like moving, filling up space and putting on a show weren’t things we had learned in the club gig scene. We learned that from watching [Blue Rodeo] and asking them about it. They have so much knowledge that helped us along. We grew in all ways. It was a big kick in the ass for us.
“It was just an idea that we had,” he relays when discussing the after-show gigs. “After the first few shows, we realized that people wanted to [come out] for those. A show would end at 11 o’clock on a Friday night in Halifax, and a ton of people would want to come out and have a good time. I was happy and surprised by it, to be honest.”
The official album release party for The Devin Cuddy Band’s Kitchen Knife happens on August 8 at The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, ON.
-Adam Grant
-Photo by Jessie Sipione
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