Need to know

What: Blue Rodeo, with the Dustin Bentall Outfit

When: Friday, March 12; and Saturday, March 13. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Show starts at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Hamilton Place

Tickets: $38.50 and $48.50, plus fees. Available at Copps Coliseum box office, by phone at 905-527-7666 or ticketmaster.ca

If you walk into a local pub on a Friday or Saturday night, chances are good there'll be some band in the corner playing a Blue Rodeo song. Probably, Hasn't Hit Me Yet. That's a popular one. So is Five Days in May and, if it's late in the evening, Lost Together. Definitely, Lost Together. It becomes a beer drinkers' chant at 1:30 a.m.

These songs were hits in the '90s, but they seem to grow in popularity with each passing year, in some cases cross generations.

It makes you wonder what Greg Keelor -- the venerable co-founder of the band -- feels like when he steps into a pub and hears someone hammering out one of his songs.

"It has happened to me a couple of times. It's nice," says Keelor in an interview from his home north of Toronto. "But my favourite is the first time you step into an elevator and they're playing Blue Rodeo.

"Yeah, that's a treat. Or a shopping market or something like that. Those are great moments."

Hmmm. This isn't the sort of thing you'd expect from Keelor. He's supposed to represent the darker, brooding side of the band. He's prone to wild fits of psychedelia on his guitar. Keelor's sounding more like Jim Cuddy, the guy who sings and writes all those tender love songs.

"Uh ... Greg ... are you being facetious?"

"No, I'm serious," the white-bearded Keelor replies, almost in earnest. "It's sort of a yardstick of 'Oh, god, we've made it.'"

Keelor likes going back to those psychedelic '60s for inspiration when he starts working on new songs for a new album.

On Blue Rodeo's most recent CD -- The Things We Left Behind -- Keelor went back to some old records by Fairport Convention, the English folk rock group led by guitarist Richard Thompson and vocalist Sandy Denny.

To help match the Fairport Convention-style high harmonies, Keelor brought in Wayne Petti, lead singer of alt-country band Cuff the Duke. Blue Rodeo had toured with Cuff the Duke two years ago and Keelor was familiar with Petti's vocal range.

"I just knew that Wayne and Jim (Cuddy)'s voices would sound perfect together," Keelor explains. "And so it's added a real expansion to the harmonies, especially in the high stuff."

Although Keelor was aiming for a Fairport Convention sound on tracks such as Million Miles and Wasted, they ended up sounding closer to early songs by The Who. "We didn't notice until later," Keelor says. "Million Miles for me was my Fairport Convention song, but it ended up sounding like The Who.

"The Who. I saw them in '72 at the (Maple Leaf) Gardens. They were fantastic."

The new album has earned Blue Rodeo -- which performs at Hamilton Place Friday and Saturday -- a Juno nomination as Group of the Year. They band will also perform at the nationally televised Juno award show April 18 in St. John's, NL. Performing on a national stage has become old hat to Blue Rodeo. In November, the band provided the halftime entertainment for the Grey Cup game in Calgary.

As a youth growing up in Montreal, Keelor was a fan of the Alouettes, the team that won last year's Grey Cup.

Despite the frigid Calgary temperatures, Keelor said he enjoyed performing at the Grey Cup.

"It's the big game, but it's so down to earth," Keelor says. "It was really a pleasant sort of scene. Our stage was just a couple of little roll-in things with plywood on it, a little P.A. Nothin' more. No lights, nothin,' just roll it out and there we are. I really liked that."

The Blue Rodeo show that comes to Hamilton Place this weekend will be a little more elaborate. Besides the core five members -- Cuddy, Keelor, bassist Bazil Donovan, multi-instrumentalist Bob Egan and drummer Glenn Milchem -- the band will include Anne Lindsay on violin, Amy Laing on cello and Hamilton native Julie Fader on flute and backing vocals. As well, Petti is touring with the band to help out on those high vocal harmonies.

The revolving keyboard door is being occupied this tour by Toronto sideman Mike Boguski, who was called in to The Things We Left Behind sessions to replace Bob Packwood. Boguski did much of the keyboard work on the album, some of it outstanding.

"(Packwood) and Jim sort of locked horns a bit," Keelor says. "He's a pretty sensitive guy -- Bob, not Jim. And they just had this fight one day and he couldn't get over it. It was during a recording session. He walked out of the studio and we never saw him again ... I expected him to show up that day. I thought he was going to walk around the block and that would be it. But he just went home, packed his bags and went to Washington State ...

"Now we've got this guy Mike Boguski and he did just a stellar job. He's from the Dakota scene, the bar in Toronto, he plays with a lot of the Dakota bands."

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331