The Tragically Hip
rock band | formed 1983
Formed inKingstong, Ontario, Canada
Biographyby Jason McBride
The Tragically Hip began life as Canada’s best bar band, a hard-working rock act whose frat-boy fan base and blues-and-punk-inflected songs only hinted at their more literary ambitions. With time, their hair would get shorter (mostly), their tunes more original and resonant and frontman Gord Downie more compellingly eccentric. It’s no overstatement to say that just about every Canadian now knows at least one Hip song, whether that song is a swampy early hit like “New Orleans Is Sinking” or a later, more lyrical classic like “Bobcaygeon.” The enduring charm of the Hip oeuvre has led to a 30-plus-year-career, 15 albums, 14 JUNOS and eight million records sold worldwide.
IN DEPTH
They’ve been called Canada’s Most Popular Band and while that claim may be disputed, there’s no denying that they are the most Canadian of Canada’s most popular bands. A partial list of Tragically Hip lyrical subject matter could be the basis for a citizenship test: Bill Barilko, Terry Fox, Bobcaygeon, Hugh MacLennan, Tom Thomson, the Montreal Massacre, Trudeau, David Milgaard, Jacques Cartier, Attawapiskat. What has made the Hip so iconic, however, is not so much this nationalistic name-checking but the fact that the references are effortlessly, even defiantly, embedded in songs of infectious energy, indelible imagery and frenzy-inducing catchiness.
The Hip emerged from Kingston, Ontario, in the early ’80s. A college town that was, for many years, home to Canada’s largest prison community, the city has produced a number of notable musicians—Sarah Harmer and The Headstones’ Hugh Dillon, to name just two. None, however, have had the impact of the Hip. A configuration of like-minded Queen’s University and Kingston Collegiate students, the band moved quickly toward developing its own sound and songs, finding inspiration for its sludgy, swaggering anthems in Van Morrison and The Doors. An uncommonly close-knit, hard-working five-piece, the Hip toured relentlessly before signing a worldwide deal with MCA in 1986. They released the hit singles “Blow at High Dough” and “New Orleans Is Sinking” in 1989, and recorded three albums in four years. The last of those, 1991’s Road Apples, recorded in New Orleans, was the group’s first #1 record in Canada and has since been certified platinum eight times. The Hip won a JUNO for Entertainer of the Year, an honour reflecting the arenas they would soon sell out and the boundless enthusiasm and loyalty of the audiences that filled those venues. On stage, frontman Gord Downie, by turns manic and moody, was at once your favourite English teacher, weirdest uncle and best barstool buddy. On the Hip’s website, a section called “The Hip Story Project” allows fans to post mash notes to the band. The hundreds of stories there (often about the first time the writer saw them live) are a testament to the band’s unique ability to conjure intimacy at even the largest and most raucous shows.
Success south of the border would prove more elusive. Opening for Robert Plant and the Rolling Stones, and a performance on Saturday Night Live (all in 1995), had little effect on the Hip’s relatively meagre stateside record sales. (The highest they ever charted in the U.S. was 129 on the Billboard 200 with their 2012 record, Now For Plan A.) Rolling Stone included them on a list of “20 Hugely Popular Musicians Who Haven’t Gotten Famous in America (Yet)” while also saying “they’ve been called Canada’s R.E.M. but up there, many see R.E.M. as America’s Tragically Hip.”
But if American adulation didn’t quite come, it also became beside the point. The Hip continued to release albums of increasing complexity, experimentation and popularity. They started their own massive touring music festival, Another Roadside Attraction, which featured bands like the Rheostatics, Wilco and Midnight Oil and sold out across the country. Downie put out a solo record and a book of poetry, both titled Coke Machine Glow, in 2001. Their beloved hometown (where most of the band still resides) gave the Hip the keys to the city and named a street in their honour. In 2013, Canada Post put the band on a stamp. Canada would forever, it seemed, return the affection that Downie had so beautifully, so elaborately, put into song. He summed up the country’s inspirational power in a conversation with the CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos, hinting also at the capacious, inclusive appeal of his own band’s oeuvre: “It’s a beautiful country, a big country, a free country, and it’s a place where you can decide what you think the country is. And for that reason, it’s full of ideas.”
The Tragically Hip began life as Canada’s best bar band, a hard-working rock act whose frat-boy fan base and blues-and-punk-inflected songs only hinted at their more literary ambitions. With time, their hair would get shorter (mostly), their tunes more original and resonant and frontman Gord Downie more compellingly eccentric. It’s no overstatement to say that just about every Canadian now knows at least one Hip song, whether that song is a swampy early hit like “New Orleans Is Sinking” or a later, more lyrical classic like “Bobcaygeon.” The enduring charm of the Hip oeuvre has led to a 30-plus-year-career, 15 albums, 14 JUNOS and eight million records sold worldwide.
IN DEPTH
They’ve been called Canada’s Most Popular Band and while that claim may be disputed, there’s no denying that they are the most Canadian of Canada’s most popular bands. A partial list of Tragically Hip lyrical subject matter could be the basis for a citizenship test: Bill Barilko, Terry Fox, Bobcaygeon, Hugh MacLennan, Tom Thomson, the Montreal Massacre, Trudeau, David Milgaard, Jacques Cartier, Attawapiskat. What has made the Hip so iconic, however, is not so much this nationalistic name-checking but the fact that the references are effortlessly, even defiantly, embedded in songs of infectious energy, indelible imagery and frenzy-inducing catchiness.
The Hip emerged from Kingston, Ontario, in the early ’80s. A college town that was, for many years, home to Canada’s largest prison community, the city has produced a number of notable musicians—Sarah Harmer and The Headstones’ Hugh Dillon, to name just two. None, however, have had the impact of the Hip. A configuration of like-minded Queen’s University and Kingston Collegiate students, the band moved quickly toward developing its own sound and songs, finding inspiration for its sludgy, swaggering anthems in Van Morrison and The Doors. An uncommonly close-knit, hard-working five-piece, the Hip toured relentlessly before signing a worldwide deal with MCA in 1986. They released the hit singles “Blow at High Dough” and “New Orleans Is Sinking” in 1989, and recorded three albums in four years. The last of those, 1991’s Road Apples, recorded in New Orleans, was the group’s first #1 record in Canada and has since been certified platinum eight times. The Hip won a JUNO for Entertainer of the Year, an honour reflecting the arenas they would soon sell out and the boundless enthusiasm and loyalty of the audiences that filled those venues. On stage, frontman Gord Downie, by turns manic and moody, was at once your favourite English teacher, weirdest uncle and best barstool buddy. On the Hip’s website, a section called “The Hip Story Project” allows fans to post mash notes to the band. The hundreds of stories there (often about the first time the writer saw them live) are a testament to the band’s unique ability to conjure intimacy at even the largest and most raucous shows.
Success south of the border would prove more elusive. Opening for Robert Plant and the Rolling Stones, and a performance on Saturday Night Live (all in 1995), had little effect on the Hip’s relatively meagre stateside record sales. (The highest they ever charted in the U.S. was 129 on the Billboard 200 with their 2012 record, Now For Plan A.) Rolling Stone included them on a list of “20 Hugely Popular Musicians Who Haven’t Gotten Famous in America (Yet)” while also saying “they’ve been called Canada’s R.E.M. but up there, many see R.E.M. as America’s Tragically Hip.”
But if American adulation didn’t quite come, it also became beside the point. The Hip continued to release albums of increasing complexity, experimentation and popularity. They started their own massive touring music festival, Another Roadside Attraction, which featured bands like the Rheostatics, Wilco and Midnight Oil and sold out across the country. Downie put out a solo record and a book of poetry, both titled Coke Machine Glow, in 2001. Their beloved hometown (where most of the band still resides) gave the Hip the keys to the city and named a street in their honour. In 2013, Canada Post put the band on a stamp. Canada would forever, it seemed, return the affection that Downie had so beautifully, so elaborately, put into song. He summed up the country’s inspirational power in a conversation with the CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos, hinting also at the capacious, inclusive appeal of his own band’s oeuvre: “It’s a beautiful country, a big country, a free country, and it’s a place where you can decide what you think the country is. And for that reason, it’s full of ideas.”
