cufftheduke.ca

Sometimes it pays to have good friends. Or, if you’re Toronto’s Cuff the Duke, good friends who are also Canadian rock legends. Last year, Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor approached the band and invited them to record some songs with him.

“He came to us and said, ‘Let’s just record for fun,'” says singer-guitarist Wayne Petti. “We did it in the summer and then came back to him and said we wanted to record an album.”

Keelor was on board, and Cuff the Duke recorded part of Way Down Here, the band’s fourth studio release, in August 2008 and the rest in the winter of 2009.

“We recorded at Greg’s farm in Middle of Nowhere, Ontario, in the middle of January,” Petti says. “There was a big fireplace in his house, and we would stand around the fire in the morning and play songs before recording them.”

The album took just 11 days to record and mix, something Petti says that the band had never done in such a short time.

“We would just play songs, then pick one and record it,” he says. “In that way, the recording process was very spontaneous, which we all really loved doing.”

The relationship between Keelor, Petti, and the rest of Cuff the Duke has since grown into a full-fledged musical collaboration. Following the completion of Way Down Here, Keelor invited Petti to sing on Blue Rodeo’s most recent album The Things We Left Behind, and join the band on their 2010 tour, which he describes as a “surreal” experience.

“They’re playing arena shows, so at the beginning it was kind of intimidating,” says Petti. “But I got used to it. They all took me under their wing, and we hit it off really well.”

The rest of Cuff the Duke joined the tour in mid-2010, and Petti will continue to tour with Blue Rodeo in November, in between dates with Cuff the Duke on the East Coast leg of their tour schedule with fellow Canadian musician Christina Martin.

Originally from Oshawa, Ontario, the band is a fixture of Toronto’s well-established independent musical community and no stranger to the road, having crossed the country more than 15 times. Even though they’re gaining recognition outside the local Toronto scene, it’s easy to forget how long they’ve been around. To illustrate this, Petti points to the band’s first release, 2002’s Life Stories for Minimum Wage.

“Our first album was released on the same day as [Broken Social Scene’s second release] You Forgot It In People, so we got to be really wrapped up in that scene,” he says. “It was an exciting time to be a musician, and they really blew it open for a while on an international scale.”

Cuff the Duke’s music has changed and evolved over the years, and Way Down Here is another clear shift in attitude for the band, something that has translated into a different performance style on tour.

“We tried to keep the live shows spontaneous, like our recording process,” Petti says. “This tour is stripped-down, with a more acoustic sound. It’s very bare-boned.”

So far, the acoustic style of performing has been a hit with audiences across the West Coast, and Petti looks forward to bringing the new sound to the east. Following the East Coast leg, the band will head back into the studio with Keelor to record another album that Petti says will sound different than previous releases. Petti will also be recording and producing a solo album incorporating lo-fi production.

Despite Cuff the Duke’s growth in popularity inside and outside of Canada (Way Down Here was released on a U.S. label in April 2010), Petti says the band is staying grounded.

“We try not to over-analyze our lives and work,” he says. “If you start getting into that world and thinking about how successful or not successful you are, you’re going to get bummed out. We just stay in the moment and remind ourselves that there are so many bands out there that are just starting out and would love to be doing what we’re doing.”

Cuff the Duke and Christina Martin will play Le Divan Orange on October 17.