the Tragically Hip

the Tragically Hip, rock band from Kingston, Ontario, that was the most consistently successful Canadian recording and touring group of the 1990s, filling arenas and headlining festivals while selling more than six million records in a country of approximately 38 million people. Three of their albums, as well as one hits collection, achieved diamond sales status in their native country. They boasted more number one records in Canada than any other domestic group.

Overview

The Tragically Hip’s early music was raw rock and roll that stood out in the musical landscape of the 1980s, drawing from 1970s Rolling Stones and 1980s R.E.M. before existing comfortably alongside other 1990s alternative rock acts. They straddled mainstream and underground styles, with cross-generational appeal.

A key element of their appeal was that singer Gord Downie (b. February 6, 1964, Amherstview, Ontario—d. October 17, 2017, Toronto) was one of the only rock lyricists to explicitly refer to Canadian history and geography, in an abstract rather than a jingoistic manner. Because their biggest success was in their native country, the Tragically Hip is considered as intrinsic to Canadian culture as Bruce Springsteen is to American culture and U2 is to Irish culture. Having sold more than 800,000 records in the United States, the Hip had a respectable American audience that continued to grow until the end, with little to no media help.

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The Tragically Hip formed in 1984 at Queen’s University in Kingston, though drummer Johnny Fay (b. July 6, 1966, Kingston) was still in high school. Other founding members were childhood neighbors and friends Rob Baker (b. April 12, 1962, Kingston) and Gord Sinclair (b. November 19, 1963, Kingston). They took their name from a skit in Monkees band member Mike Nesmith’s 1981 TV special Elephant Parts.

After a brief time as a four-piece band, the Hip added older saxophonist Davis Manning (b. January 16, 1950—d. January 22, 2023, Hope, British Columbia). After Manning left in 1986 he was replaced by Downie’s close friend Paul Langlois (b. August 23, 1964, Ottawa) on rhythm guitar. Three years later the Tragically Hip released their MCA Records debut, Up to Here, and were considered one of the most exciting new rock groups in Canada, winning the Juno Award for most promising group of the year in 1990. Soon the band was headlining traveling festivals in Canada. By the end of the decade, they had become the defining Canadian rock band of their generation.

Shortly after the group finished their 13th studio album, in 2015, Downie was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive terminal brain tumor. Downie decided he wanted to do a final tour with his band, which sold out arenas across Canada. The final show, in the band’s hometown of Kingston, was televised live on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network on August 20, 2016. It was watched by nearly one-third of the Canadian population.

Unusual among multimillion-selling rock bands of any generation or country, for 30 years the Tragically Hip maintained the same five members heard on their debut recording.

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Formation and early hits

The Tragically Hip debuted in November 1984 on the Queen’s University campus in Kingston. Most of the Hip’s first three years were spent covering 1960s rhythm and blues and garage rock: the Monkees, the Pretty Things, Van Morrison’s Them, the Yardbirds, and a number of American rhythm-and-blues performers who had been covered by the Rolling Stones. Local inspiration came from Teenage Head, a punk band from Hamilton, Ontario. The Tragically Hip graduated from playing in campus pubs to the Lakeview Manor, a century-old strip club that mostly hosted touring acts. Original material, largely penned by bassist Sinclair, was only a small part of their repertoire.

In August 1986 a demo tape by the group found its way to Allan Gregg, a political consultant who had just launched a music management company with Jake Gold. Gregg and Gold signed the Hip after seeing just one gig. An eponymous extended-play record (with more tracks than on a single but fewer than on an album) was licensed to RCA Canada and featured the singles “Small Town Bringdown” and “Last American Exit”. Upon its release in January 1988, it immediately started getting played on Canadian commercial radio and on MuchMusic, Canada’s music video channel. In November American MCA representative Bruce Dickinson took a plane to Toronto to see the Hip perform at a radio festival at Massey Hall in Toronto and signed them immediately after a set the next night at the Horseshoe Tavern.

The Tragically Hip then recorded Up to Here in Memphis, Tennessee, with producer Don Smith (who also produced records by Keith Richards and Tom Petty). The album went platinum in six months. Singles “Blow at High Dough” and “New Orleans Is Sinking,” huge hits in Canada, were also top 10 album-oriented-radio (AOR) hits in the U.S., but MTV chose not to play the associated videos. MCA Records did not help the cause: their first press release about the Tragically Hip identified them as “a quartet from Nashville.” Yet “New Orleans Is Sinking” was number one at a Dallas radio station for a then record 13 weeks.

The follow-up album, Road Apples (1991), was again recorded with Smith, this time in New Orleans at a new studio built by fellow Ontarian Daniel Lanois. It too was a smash in Canada and featured the singles “Little Bones,” “Twist My Arm,” and “Three Pistols.” The last refers to the mysterious 1917 death of Group of Seven painter Tom Thomson.

Road Apples marked the first time that Downie wrote all the lyrics, which he insisted on doing going forward. He became known for keeping numerous notebooks on hand from which to draw lyrical inspiration. The band split all songwriting royalties five ways, an unusually egalitarian move for a rock band. They often workshopped new material on stage, usually in the middle of an extended middle section of the Road Apples hit “New Orleans Is Sinking.” That is where their biggest hit, “Ahead by a Century,” developed, among others.

The Hip in the 1990s

The Tragically Hip’s third album, Fully Completely (1992), became a blockbuster hit in Canada. Produced by Chris Tsangarides (who also produced records by Concrete Blonde and Judas Priest), it had a big rock-radio sound and featured hits such as “Fifty-Mission Cap,” about a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player, Bill Barilko, who had gone missing in 1951. Another single, “Courage (For Hugh MacLennan),” was dedicated to the Montreal writer Hugh MacLennan. One of the album’s most beloved songs, “Wheat Kings,” concerns David Milgaard, who had been wrongly convicted of murder and was released from prison shortly before the song’s release. Canadian themes prevailed, which endeared the band even more to their home fan base.

That same fervent fan base was incredulous that the Tragically Hip were not as commercially successful in the U.S. or the United Kingdom. This became part of the band’s mythology, which dogged them until the end. The popular assumption was that they were “too Canadian.” The truth had more to do with record company politics, timing, luck—and the Tragically Hip’s own independence and stubborn streak.

Moreover, Downie did not fit predictable rock-star molds for the era, although his lyrics are in a lineage from Bob Dylan to Patti Smith to R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. Much like their compatriots Rush, the Tragically Hip often created anthemic music that was accompanied by perplexing poetry rich with imagery and nuance, which made the band all the more intriguing.

In the summer of 1993 the Tragically Hip curated and headlined a festival tour across Canada called Another Roadside Attraction (after the Tom Robbins novel). Australian band Midnight Oil, who could headline arenas on their own, played second on the bill. Lanois and other acts, Canadian and international, rounded out the lineup. The Hip wanted Lanois to produce their next album, but he declined. Mark Howard, who had assisted Lanois since 1987, stepped in. The band returned to Lanois’s New Orleans studio to make Day for Night (1994).

Day for Night is a murky, moody, and mysterious record. Comanager Gregg told the band to re-record it; they told him to butt out. It ended up yielding six Canadian singles, including two of the Hip’s most beloved songs, “Grace, Too” and “Nautical Disaster.”

It was those two songs that they performed on Saturday Night Live in March 1995, at the behest of their friend—and fellow Kingstonian—Dan Aykroyd, who had insisted that the Tragically Hip be the musical guest for an episode on which he was a guest. Both songs are mid-tempo, enigmatic, and considered odd choices for the band’s biggest U.S. break to date (“Nautical Disaster” does not have a chorus). Many fans believed that the Hip should have played an earlier hit or an obvious rocker, such as “Blow at High Dough,” to make a better first impression. But the Tragically Hip were never a band to look backward. They didn’t need to. They were selling out hockey arenas all across Canada, and their American audience continued to grow after Robert Plant took them on tour later that year during his reunion with former Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page.

The Hip’s next album, the self-produced Trouble at the Henhouse (1996), featured the single “Ahead by a Century,” their first number one pop hit. The follow-up, Phantom Power (1998), produced by Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, featured “Bobcaygeon,” a ballad named after an Ontario cottage country town, which became another of the Tragically Hip’s most enduring songs. They later filmed a concert movie in the tiny town.

The 2000s and Gord Downie solo

After a remarkable 12 years, interest in the Tragically Hip’s new music began to decline. Their popularity did not: they had no trouble maintaining arena status in Canada. A “jam-band” audience had started to follow them in the U.S. Two records produced by Bob Rock (producer of records by Metallica and the Payola$), World Container (2006) and We Are the Same (2009), pushed the Hip in a more pop direction, including another number one pop single, “In View.”

Downie began a solo career with Canadian indie rockers he admired. His debut album, Coke Machine Glow (2001), attracted an alternative audience almost completely separate from the Tragically Hip’s mainstream crowd. It was met with a divisive critical reception, its supporters comparing it to similar left turns: Springsteen’s Nebraska (1982) or Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night (1975). An accompanying book of poetry, initially bundled with the CD, became one of the best-selling such collections in Canadian history. Downie released five more solo albums during his lifetime, including a full-length collaboration with the Sadies in 2014.

The Tragically Hip’s final album, Man Machine Poem (2016), was produced by Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene and Dave Hamelin of the Stills. It garnered the band’s best reviews in years, if not decades. Drew and Hamelin also produced Downie’s Secret Path (2016) and the posthumous Introduce Yerself (2017).

Final tour

In December 2015 Downie received his diagnosis of glioblastoma, which has a median survival rate of about 15 months upon discovery. Man Machine Poem had just been completed. Having undergone two craniotomies and chemotherapy, Downie was determined to take the band on tour, possibly for the last time. Never before in rock history, anywhere, had the front man of an arena act done this. His own bandmates were terrified of the worst possible scenarios.

The tour went off without a hitch. Though Downie’s normally improvisatory stage presence was curbed, and he displayed signs of physical strain, he was as compelling as ever. Each night the band played two full sets spanning their entire career, a marathon feat for any performer, never mind one with terminal cancer. Before the encores at each show, Downie would stand alone silently on the stage for several minutes, acknowledging the crowd in a moment of shared communion.

For the final show, held in Kingston, Canadians across the country and abroad gathered en masse to watch the CBC broadcast: in homes, in bars, in public places. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in the Kingston arena, along with 6,700 others; meanwhile, 25,000 people gathered nearby in the town square, many having traveled from near and far, some from across North America.

A few weeks after the show, Downie announced the release of Secret Path, a solo album and animated film about an Indigenous boy, Chanie Wenjack, who had died while trying to escape a church-run, government-sanctioned residential school in 1966. After a summer during which thousands of Canadians had waved the national flag at Tragically Hip concerts, Downie said, referring to the ignorance about generations of abuse at residential schools, that “Canada is not Canada. We are not the country we think we are.” This came on the heels of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s issuing a report that changed the conversation on Canada’s treatment of its Indigenous people.

In October 2016 Downie played two live shows with his Secret Path collaborators to promote the album. He recorded three more solo albums before his death a year later.

On the morning of Downie’s death, Trudeau addressed the media. Visibly shaken, the prime minister, who had grown up during the apex of the Tragically Hip’s career, said:

We lost one of the very best of us this morning. Gord was my friend, but Gord was everyone’s friend….Our buddy Gord, who loved this country with everything he had. And not just loved it in a nebulous “Oh, I love Canada” way. He loved every hidden corner, every story, every aspect of this country that he celebrated his whole life. And he wanted to make it better. He knew, as great as we were, we needed to be better than we are. That’s why his last years were devoted to Chanie Wenjack and to reconciliation….We are less as a country without Gord Downie in it.

The carillon bells of Canada’s Parliament Buildings played the song “Bobcaygeon” that day. Inside, legislators observed a moment of silence. Spontaneous vigils happened across the country that evening. A week later more than a thousand people gathered outside Toronto City Hall to sing Tragically Hip songs with a local choir.

The Hip’s final tour was the subject of two films: The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration (2016), which presents the Kingston show that was broadcast live by the CBC, and Long Time Running (2017), a documentary about the tour, made by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier.

The Tragically Hip were admitted into the Order of Canada in 2017. In 2021 they were presented with the Humanitarian Award at the Canadian Juno Awards, where the group reunited for the first time since Downie’s death. With Leslie Feist on vocals, they performed “It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken.” They were introduced by renowned Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.