Red riding in the old ‘hood

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/04/2002 (8829 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IN some future encyclopedia of Canadian music, the chapter about rock and politics will include names such as Bruce Cockburn, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Propagandhi, Bob Wiseman and The Parachute Club.

Tom Cochrane probably won’t make the cut, owing largely to the fact the Manitoba-born musician is best known for feel-good pop singles like Life Is A Highway or flag-waving slabs of Canadiana such as Big League.

It’s too bad, because the Lynn Lake native’s earlier work with Red Rider deserves closer scrutiny. Back in the early ’80s, while most Canadian rock bands were plastering themselves with hairspray and trying to sound like Foreigner or Loverboy, Red Rider managed to record commercially successful guitar rock and have something to say.

In 1983, the Toronto band based an entire record, Neruda, on the life and times of the Nobel Prize-winning Marxist poet of the same name. Earlier singles White Hot (about gunrunners in Africa) and Lunatic Fringe (about political extremism in general) also departed from the vacuous hard-rock formula so prevalent during the early Reagan era.

Almost 20 years later, Cochrane has come full circle. His solo record deal with EMI Music Canada has lapsed, allowing time to revisit his old material at a handful of Red Rider reunion concerts.

Tomorrow night at the Walker Theatre, Cochrane takes the stage with the other main musician in Red Rider, singer/guitarist Ken Greer. There isn’t much hype about the event: It’s a radio station promotion, which means you can’t get into the Walker unless you’ve won tickets from 92 CITI FM.

Nevertheless, there’s something significant and satisfying about seeing “Tom Cochrane & Red Rider” back up on the playbill.

“I always wanted to write songs that would stand the test of time,” the 48-year-old musician says, speaking over a cell phone during a drive from his Oakville, Ont. home to his cottage-country studio near Parry Sound.

“Big League is an important song to me, because it’s a true story. But something like Lunatic Fringe is even more important, unfortunately, because it still rings true. Just look at the past year.”

This is no self-aggrandizement from a classic rocker eager to revisit his glorious past. The lyrics for Lunatic Fringe, originally written in 1980, read like a post-9/11 address to al-Qaida terrorists:

“We know you’ve got to blame someone/ For your own confusion/ But we’re on guard this time/ Against your Final Solution.”

After an absence of 10 years, Cochrane and Greer reunited about 18 months ago. Their reformed Red Rider, which previously played dates in Ottawa and Montreal, includes two longtime Cochrane backup musicians, keyboardist John Webster and Winnipeg bassist Spider Sinnaeve.

Drummer Randall Stoll and guitarist Jamie Oakes round out the six-piece, which will likely record as Tom Cochrane & Red Rider within the next year or two. “I’m 80 per cent sure of that,” says the bandleader. “I feel more excited about playing now than I have since I was 16. It’s almost cathartic.”

Musicians who’ve recently severed ties to a big record label are supposed to say things like that. But Tom Cochrane is too genuine to be that calculating.

Even after 30 years in the Toronto area, his skin has never hardened. He remains a sensitive, straight-talking Prairie boy who recalls his Manitoba roots with pride.

“I was the eighth person born in Lynn Lake. (Cartoonist) Lynn Johnston of For Better Or For Worse was ahead of me,” he says, recalling the history of northern Manitoba mining town that sprang into existence in 1952-53 after most of its residents moved 265 kilometres north from Sherridon.

Although his family moved to Ontario when he was four, Cochrane still considers himself a Manitoban. He spends two or three weeks each summer in the Whiteshell cottage country near Lac du Bonnet, occasionally flying his float plane.

He’s also sad about the plight of Lynn Lake, one of Manitoba’s fastest-shrinking communities. According to last year’s census, the northern town lost almost a third of its residents from 1996 to 2001, as the population dropped from 1,038 to 699.

“It was an incredibly erudite little town,” he says, referring to the highly educated mix of engineers and miners that populated Lynn Lake during his childhood. “It was a great place to live. You didn’t worry about the kids being outside on their own — you worried about wolves and bears.”

More than four decades later, Cochrane retains his appreciation for the outdoors. Getting into the wilderness is the only thing that makes city life bearable, he says.

That, more than anything else, sounds like the words of a Manitoban. Tomorrow night, those radio-station contest winners should make him feel right at home.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca