In honor of Blue Rodeo’s U.S. jaunt happening this week, I’ve decided to celebrate with Blue Rodeo Week. Here’s where we’ve been so far:

Day One: T is for The Days in Between
Day Two: What am I doing here?
Day Three: Five from Greg Keelor
Day Four: Five from Jim Cuddy
Day Five: Six from two + U.S. tour starts this week!
Day Six: Five Days in July

The tour starts tonight! Go! Go! Go!

SEPTEMBER
17 w Ferndale, MI ~ Magic Bag w/ Catfish Mafia
18 th Chicago, IL ~ Martyr’s w/ Micah Walk
19 f Chattanooga, TN ~ Chattahippie Festival
20 sa New York, NY ~ Highline Ballroom w/ The Sadies!

Blue Rodeo Week is drawing to a close, folks. With the passing of Richard Wright from Pink Floyd earlier this week, I got a day behind – felt like it was appropriate to take a day away from general blogging, and let the post about his passing take center stage for the day.

I intended for the final post in Blue Rodeo Week to appear today, the start date for the brief U.S. tour, so you get two Blue Rodeo posts today, which I think you’ll be alright with!

After posting the first Blue Rodeo show that I ever got my hands on, I was planning to post the first “bootleg” I ever got my hands on, an honest-to-goodness soundboard from the Nowhere to Here tour, recorded in Nashville, TN at the Exit/In in 1996.

At the time I got it, all music trading was still happening via snail mail, and Blue Rodeo shows were nearly non-existent. I got a DAT of the Nashville show from the original taper who as I recall, had gone to tape the opening act, and only taped Blue Rodeo, because he knew a friend of his that was a fan. He was about to get rid of the tape, and saw my inquiry online, looking for ANY Blue Rodeo shows.

So I got my hands on a piece of history, which is still the best tape (and I think only tape) I’ve heard from the Nowhere to Here tour. I circulated it a few years later, and people freaked out that such a tape was in existence. I think (I hope this is the case) that I sent a copy of the show to Bazil, who asked me for a copy of that show, and also the Empire show when we met at the Massey Hall show several years later.

That’s not what I am going to post here today.

The Nashville show is relatively well-circulated at this point, so I thought that I would share something that is more of a nugget.

Today’s post comes from the band’s famous series of summertime multi-band shows, the Stardust Picnic (review from 1999 and here’s another one from that same show.) This is a great The Days In Between-era Blue Rodeo show that really covers all of the bases – the hits, a nice version of “Diamond Mine,” and some nice rarely performed album tracks.

The audio comes from a nice webcast (especially for the time period) that was available in archived form on the Blue Rodeo site for several years. At some point, someone captured the audio from the webcast, and shared full quality audio files with the trading community. Here are MP3s of those files, encoded at 320k so that you will hear it in the same quality that I’ve enjoyed.

Blue Rodeo
Live at the Stardust Picnic
Toronto, ON
7/9/00

soundboard audio from webcast

Disc One:

complete zip of disc one

1. Til I Am Myself Again
2. Rose Coloured Glasses
3. Somebody Waits
4. Floating
5. Begging You to Let Me In
6. Lost Together
7. What Am I Doing Here?
8. Lil Ole Wine Drinker Me (Dean Martin) (Bazil Donovan on vocals)
9. Sad Nights
10. Cynthia
11. Trust Yourself

Disc Two:

complete zip of disc two

1. Five Days in May
2. The Days In Between
3. After the Rain
4. Head Over Heels
5. Diamond Mine
6. Is It You?
7. Better Off As We Are
8. Hasn’t Hit Me Yet
9. Introduction
10. It Makes No Difference (The Band) (with other artists including Sarah Harmer, Colin James, Spirit of the West, Richard Bell, Luther Wrong)