What to know
- The Devin Cuddy Band plays Hugh’s Room at 296 Broadview Ave. on Nov. 14 at 8 p.m.; doors open at 7 p.m.
- The band will perform Livin’ Hard Ain’t Easy in full and in album order for the first time.
- The April 2026 album features 10 songs rooted in Cuddy’s experiences travelling and performing across Canada.
- Cuddy says the Canada-focused record was written before the recent tariff and sovereignty tensions with the U.S.
- The singer also revealed to NOW that he and his partner recently welcomed their first child, a daughter named Faye.
Devin Cuddy is wearing a “Canada” hoodie, has a beer in his hand and is giving the thumbs up on the cover of his band’s latest album, Livin’ Hard Ain’t Easy, which is “made for and about Canadians,” he says, but was written long before Trump’s bizarre attacks on Canada. So while there are songs like “Two Hosers” and the title track about “[travelling] this whole country with my friends,” there are none about tariffs, Lake Ontario or the 51st state.
The rollicking honky-tonk of an album — with a few heartfelt ballads — was recorded in just four days with co-producer Tim Vesely. Next Saturday (Nov. 14), The Devin Cuddy Band will play it front to back for the first time. The show is at Hugh’s Room (296 Broadview Ave.) at 8 p.m. (doors at 7 p.m.), in its new home, a converted church. Tickets are available here.
The Juno-nominated singer and pianist, son of Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, released his debut album, Volume One, in 2012, followed by his 2014 album Kitchen Knife and 2023’s Dear Jane. The show at Hugh’s Room is The Devin Cuddy Band’s first at the new location in Toronto’s east end, but he has performed a songwriters’ circle there and attended shows.
Cuddy talked to Now about the upcoming show, the latest album, and mentioned that he just became a father last month.
At the new Hugh’s Room location, the audience has to pay attention. There’s no standing and gabbing at the back of the room. It’s even weird for them to have their phones out filming.
We want to cater the show a little bit to that. We play a lot of bars and clubs, so when we decided to do this show, I wanted to make sure that we were going to present something that was tuned to that room. I think doing the record in order and telling the stories as we go will be our nod to the space and the environment that they’re really trying to push at Hugh’s Room. The old room was like that as well; this one maybe a little more so.
Do you like that kind of environment?
We like both. I like to think that we are equipped for both types of audience, both engaged and hostile. We’re approaching the show like that, which is fun to know what to expect and then to cater to that for lack of a better term. It allows us to do some different stuff. And we’re excited about that. We’re going to play the record in order, which we haven’t done that yet. Even for the record release, we mixed them in with our show. So, we’re going to do that for the first set. And then the second set, we’re going to play some stuff that we haven’t played in a long time and a couple of covers. So it’ll be a two-part show. And I’ll tell stories along the way and explain the songs.
Because you cut Livin’ Hard Ain’t Easy so quickly, have the songs morphed the more you play them live?
A little, but not as much as it has for other records, especially our first record. A lot of those songs are very different now when we play them live. But this record, I wrote them in the style of the way we play live. I wanted the record to sound like our live show, so I wrote the songs with that in mind. So I think that they didn’t transform as much because I approached them from that angle. And we were playing them a little bit before. We did a lot more work on having them ready to go when we went into the studio than we usually do.
When did you start writing it?
I had some of the songs for a very long time, but a little over a year ago, I started writing what I needed to fill it out and thinking about it as a whole record, as opposed to just writing one song here and there.
Because it’s about Canada, which is very timely right now.
I was writing it before the tariff stuff.
Do you think if you wrote it now, it’d be a different album?
It would be hard not to address that stuff. We tour almost exclusively in Canada, and that’s my experience as a musician and traveler. No matter how hard you try, you really only can write what you know. So I was accepting of that and wanted that to be what the record was about. And then all this other stuff happened.
What rhymes with tariff?
The follow-up record can be more about that, or it might be a tired subject by then. We’ll see.
I imagine the hoser song goes over really well live.
The hoser one, big time. People really respond to that and the idea of embracing that imagery, not just because we’re in a time of identity crisis or something. Something is going on in the Canadian national identity. I think it’s partly that. And people like the nostalgic term, which obviously harkens back to [SCTV’s] Bob and Doug [McKenzie]. And there’s lots of other examples. I think the Trailer Park Boys are ultimately hosers, although they didn’t use that word as much. But there’s a throughline in Canadian culture from east to west and that term can embody all of it.
And all the songs with Canadian references from College Street to Winnipeg.
It’s about traveling across Canada. So there’s a Winnipeg one. There’s a St. John’s, Newfoundland reference. It’s just about being on the road and the distances between places in Canada.
Do you like being on the road more than recording?
Yeah, I do. I enjoy the performance part of the job more, maybe, than the woodshedding writing. And I enjoy writing; I like recording and I like being done recording and I like taking the songs that we recorded with us on the road and taking them to different places. I’ve been going to all these places across Canada now for quite a while. So, there’s stuff I like to do; there’s people I like to see, and that really heightens the enjoyment of traveling. You have your favourite restaurant or coffee shop or your friends in this city and town and it makes it much more enjoyable.
He sneezes a few times in a row.
Bless you. Are you getting sick?
My partner and I had a kid two weeks ago, so I guess I could be getting sick. Our little baby daughter, Faye, was born 17 days ago.
That’s amazing. Congratulations. Your first?
It’s our first. And that’ll be an added feature of the show will be my new outlook on life.
That will be your next album: Lullabies.
That’s right. One step closer to a kid’s record.
That will be hard touring, though.
Luckily, I came from a family that has experience with that. So, it’s a little less daunting for me. And I can always turn to my parents. And my partner’s father traveled a lot, too. So hopefully it will go as well, if not better than that.
