One time Blue Rodeo played a bill with the Everly Brothers. It was 1989 at the Football Stadium in Ottawa that the Roughriders called home. It was a summer picnic type dealio. We must have played a zillion shows like that throughout Canada, hard to believe I was in my 20s and had the kind of access to the stage only a performer gets. That I could have sat at the feet of the Everly Brothers, the heros of many of my heros. Instead, I was sitting in the concrete dressing room with the vegetable plate, uninterested in an ancient act from the 50s. They say youth is wasted on the young. Last week, prior to Charlie Watts taking over the world, Don Everly died and I went back and studied some of their work. I am a humungous fan of all things Warren Zevon and he played in the Everly Brothers band, though that day in Ottawa, it was just Phil and Don – all the more embarrassing that I was a dolt not bothering to savour each second of this show, veyzmere. So, I started hopping around listening to Don and Phil’s back catalogue and their solo records. Phil’s has one with strange dumb album art, a man with a springer spaniel head, I’m guessing he was saying that’s who he really is. The first song was spooky because it was a hit when I was a kid but I never considered the lyric before, “sometimes, all I need is the air that I breath and to love you…” The Hollies had the hit but I realized while listening to it, why so many people marvelled at the Everly Brother’s voices, sort of like the best possible drug experience to close your eyes and listen to this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"