We just started to operate as a single mind when we were playing together jamming, backing him up. “So you could anticipate what someone else in the band was going to do. He might just take a left turn or sing new lyrics or start a new story, and you’d just play intuitively off of each other and we became very good at that.
“And playing with him onstage, you didn’t know what was going to happen. “We were in competing bands in high school and from the first time I saw him it was like, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s got it! He’s got something interesting.’ “He was awesome from the get-go,” says Baker. Smith’s encouragement was an important factor in the band’s young life: Downie was coming into his own as a lyricist and a performer, and fans, largely via radio, MuchMusic and club shows, were discovering such unique classics as “Blow at High Dough,” “New Orleans Is Sinking” and “38 Years Old.”īy the time “Road Apples” was released, Hip fever was beginning to really take hold in Canada, adding such faves as “Little Bones,” “Twist My Arm” and “Cordelia” to their ascent, establishing them as a must-see concert act as both albums pulled in multi-platinum sales and eventually surpassed one million each in Canada.ĭownie’s unusual performance style not only thrilled fans but also kept the band on its toes. I love the way you play in this band and my job is to capture that and make it sound as real and as authentic as I can.’ He never tried to change us.” I love these songs and I love the way you sound. “I thought he was going to come in and push us around in the studio: ‘Do this, don’t play that, change the sound of your amp,’ and it was none of that. “Don was rock royalty for us and, like rock royalty, he’s a weird, strange-feathered beast who is an idiosyncratic weird dude,” says Baker. They were also trying to impress producer Don Smith (known for his work with Keith Richards), who worked with them on “Up to Here.”
“We’d see how it went and what needed to be done to it to fire up the audience.” We’d write a song in the dressing room or at sound check, and then we’d play it that night. “We were all very conscious of the sophomore curse and so we spent a lot of time writing. The lapse of retention surrounding the sessions can be forgiven: the duo says life at the time was very much a blur due to incessant touring in Canada and the U.S., as the Hip promoted its successful Canadian debut album “Up to Here” with energetic gigs and wrote “Road Apples” whenever they could spare a minute.īaker says the band would often write songs and perform them later that night, such was the pace as they worked to ensure that they didn’t fall into the worrisome “sophomore album jinx.” “So I was more than surprised it just flew out of the speakers and I was like, ‘Wow, how did this not get on “Road Apples”?’ It was way more rocking than I was expecting. I just thought, well, I haven’t heard these songs in a long time, they didn’t make the record. I waited a couple of days to play it, to be honest. “We got sent them - maybe four of them out of the six - the end of last summer. There are a couple that I don’t even remember doing.” “Some of these songs we hadn’t heard in 30 years. “It’s like going to a therapist and recovering memories you didn’t know you had,” says Baker.
#FEIST TRAGICALLY HIP HOW TO#
He’s always been a teacher to me for how to fight for the true view in a song and inhabit them with conviction.Both Baker and Langlois said “Saskadelphia” rekindled some forgotten memories - even about the music they recorded. After his initial diagnosis, she released a cover of The Tragically Hip hit track “Flamenco” and described her connection to Downie in an email to the New York Times, writing, “My feelings are big for Gord, as they have been since I first met him 20 years ago.
Feist had been a steadfast supporter of Downie through the years, especially after his cancer diagnosis in 2016. Later in the day another Canadian, Leslie Feist, took her sadness to Soundcloud, releasing an emotional cover of Downie’s song “The Stranger,” from his 2016 solo record The Secret Path. There will never be another one like you, Gord. Words of condolence poured from the public, with everyone from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Canadian-born comedian Seth Rogen expressing their grief. Early Wednesday, news of the death of Gord Downie, the 53-year-old frontman of Canadian rock vets The Tragically Hip, shook Canada and the world beyond.
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