Ian Blurton on the Tragically Hip

A 2017 convo with the Change of Heart bandleader for The Never-Ending Present

Never-Ending Present readers: This Friday, May 9 at the Garrison, there will be an all-star tribute to the Tragically Hip, presented by Elliot Lefko. Look at this insane lineup of heavy-hitters and newcomers:

Lefko did this last year with the music of the Replacements, as a tribute to his old friend Dave Bookman on the fifth anniversary of the radio broadcaster’s death. Bookman was also, of course, a huge Tragically Hip fan—and a fan of the band’s opening acts. Somewhere in a box in my closet I have a comic book detailing Bookman’s adventures with Kingston duo the Inbreds on the Another Roadside Attraction tour of 1995.

(This week’s other live music listings are here.)

Friday night will have a house band backing up most of the singers, the same one from the Replacements show (where it was often commented they were better than the actual Replacements): all-star bassist Anna Ruddick, Beauties guitarist Jud Ruhl, and drummer Jody Brumell.

This time, though, they’re joined by Ian Blurton.

Blurton, of course is the hyper-prolific guitarist, bandleader, songwriter and producer who recently resurrected Change of Heart, the ’80s-’90s band that put him in the Canadian history books. I wrote about their new record here, and reviewed their release show last month here.

Change of Heart were a frequent opening act for the Hip, notably the 1995 Canadian arena tour and the 1997 travelling festival Another Roadside Attraction, as well as American jaunts and one-offs.

I interviewed Blurton in 2017 for The Never-Ending Present; that conversation in full, for paid subscribers, is below.

At my 2018 book launch at the Horseshoe, I asked Blurton and his band at the time, Public Animal, to do what Lefko has asked him to do this week: back up rotating guest singers doing Tragically Hip songs. (In my case, some people also did Gord Downie solo songs.) Sean Dean of the Sadies and sideman-to-the-stars Aaron Goldstein were also part of Public Animal that night.

For my event, I somehow managed to corral Owen Pallett, Michelle McAdorey (Crash Vegas), Mike O’Neill (Inbreds), Jose Contreras (By Divine Right), Tony Dekker (Great Lake Swimmers), Sate, and Nirmala Basnayake (Controller Controller). They all knocked it out of the park. Serena Ryder had to cancel at the last minute. Tom Wilson was going to do “Blow at High Dough” but decided two days before he wanted to read instead.

I ended up doing that last one myself, which was a rock’n’roll dream I didn’t even know I had, let alone one that would come true.

Photo by Bob Ciofli

All of which is to say: seven years after that gig, Ian Blurton is absolutely the right man for the job on Friday.

Gord Downie had maximum respect for Blurton and Change of Heart. Here’s what he told Jason Schneider and myself in a Syracuse hotel room in 2000, while being interviewed for Have Not Been the Same:

MB: When did you become aware of Change Of Heart?

GD: Ian Blurton was on, I think, [CFNY’s nightly 6 p.m. news show] “Live In Toronto.” I had Smile, and I’d listened to it a lot, and it really intimidated me, just from the stereo. There was a lot going on there. Then I heard him on this radio show, and someone asked him, ‘What are you into lately?’ and he said, ‘I like the Tragically Hip, I like the way they do things.’ I thought, fuck, no one’s ever said that, especially a guy like him.

[The Hip is] like the Becker’s of pop music, there’s one on every corner, and here he is, he’s seeing what we’re doing. We’re trying to do things independently within the confines of a major label. It was around the time of the Roadsides and he was noticing that we were trying to work from within. And we did it: we had this much-vaunted creative control that we had. Because, as I maintain, [turning down other festivals] wasn’t about being petulant—‘Nah, we don’t wanna do that!’—it was, ‘We don’t want to do that because we want to do this.’

When [Blurton] recognized that, I was totally like, ‘Thank you!’ I don’t mean it like that changed my opinion of him, because my opinion of him was very high. So, I’d been into his music, and after [hearing] that [interview] it was, okay, now I can meet him because I don’t think he hates me. I don’t know why I say it like that because I don’t assume that one would.

Here’s my May 2017 conversation with Ian Blurton for The Never-Ending Present, about a fateful night in Saskatoon, getting “Hipped” by the audience as an opening act, about Sheryl Crow, and about what Rob Baker and Paul Langlois have in common with Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd of the band Television, what he really thinks of Jake Gold, and watching the final Hip show.