Skydiggers restless to get back in front of Winnipeg crowd

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This article was published 21/08/2024 (749 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thirty years ago, give or take, the Skydiggers opened for fellow Toronto roots-rockers Blue Rodeo at the first concert at the newly reopened Walker Theatre.

It was 1992, and they were touring their 1990 self-titled debut, which spawned three singles, including one of the most honest love songs of all time, I Will Give You Everything; it includes the lyric “The next time that you leave, I will not follow you/I will not chase you down.”

“That song has been very good to us,” says Josh Finlayson, who plays guitar and writes songs for the band.

“It’s great to be playing it so many years later, and people enjoying it, but also enjoying playing it and sharing it. That’s definitely been an amazing gift.”

Now, 19 albums and EPs later, the Skydiggers and Blue Rodeo are returning to the same venue Thursday to kick off the latest instalment of the Burt Block Party — a four-day outdoor music fest held outside the downtown theatre.

In that time, the Walker became the Burton Cummings Theatre, hosting hundreds of touring musicians, and the Skydiggers, which had been built around a trio — Finlayson and lead singers Andy Maize and Peter Cash — persisted as the duo of Finlayson and Maize, with other musicians coming and going, including the late singer-songwriter Paul MacLeod and more recently Jessy Bell Smith.

“Paul was such a great kick in the ass for us because he was such a great player, such a great singer, he really raised the level of everything in the band, so we miss Paul,” Finlayson says of the Kitchener, Ont., multi-instrumentalist, who died in 2016.

“I think about him all the time. Paul had a terrific sense of humour — we had lots of laughs together. You spend a lot of time travelling as a band and there’s a lot of down time and there’s a lot of time you need to fill, and he was a good guy to have around.”

The four Burt Block Party shows include a who’s-who of Canadiana, including Hamilton rockers Arkells, Toronto alt-rock band July Talk and Windsor, Ont., blues act the Blue Stones, as well as Winnipeg trio the Haileys on Friday and the Headstones, I Mother Earth and Sloan on Saturday. The weekend wraps up Sunday with a retro rock lineup of Tom Cochrane, Streetheart and Sass Jordan.

And while the Skydiggers released two six-song EPs last year, they know fans are coming to hear them play the classics, such as A Penny More from 1992’s Restless or Just Over This Mountain, the title track from their third album, released in 1993.

“I think the shows are really about the audience,” said Finlayson, who also toured with the late Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie on his solo projects.

“New recordings, new songs that we write are more about us. Its always good to do some new material for a band — it keeps you feeling relevant — but as you bring in new members over the course of the years, they inject something into the old songs, they bring a new vitality to them.”

As a musician and music fan, Finlayson understands that concerts are about striking a balance between old and new.

“I think people are there because a song like I Will Give You Everything represents certain memories and certain points of time in their lives. That is their connection with the music and I think it’s important to honour that,” he says.

The Skydiggers have more than their fair share of Winnipeg concerts to look back on. They were in the middle of their set at the West End Cultural Centre in 1995 when the over-capacity crowd caused one of the structural beams in the floor to crack. The crowd was asked to dance less exuberantly and then the show was stopped.

But Finlayson has another connection to the city: his father was born and raised in Winnipeg.

“My dad went to Gordon Bell (High School) and when we were kids, if we heard the news, it could be about anyone, say Muhammad Ali, and we’d say, ‘Dad do you know Muhammad Ali?’ because he’d go to work and we didn’t know what he did or where he was going. And he’d always tell us, ‘Oh yeah, I know Muhammad Ali; we went to school together at Gordon Bell in Winnipeg,’” Finlayson says.

While the Skydiggers’ latest music was forged during the extra time and space the pandemic forced on performers, Finlayson is looking forward to being in front a crowd again.

“It’s that communion, that gathering of people — that’s just an energy that is unique and it’s there for the night, for that moment that you share and then it’s gone,” he says.

“There’s nothing like that for the audience and for the band — you can’t replicate it. It’s unique to that moment. And that’s a cool thing.”

Joining Skydiggers and Blue Rodeo Thursday will be Winnipeg’s Indian City — whose Juno-nominated 2023 album Code Red features a cameo from Blue Rodeo frontman Jim Cuddy — and local folk-soul singer Ila Barker.

ariel.gordon@freepress.mb.ca