If you’re reading this and you’re not somehow affiliated in a personal way with the Great White North, you may not know what happened on the evening of Saturday, August Twentieth. Well, let me tell you, it was something pretty special…
For those of you who don’t know, The Tragically Hip are one of Canada’s worst best kept secrets. A traditional, good old fashioned rock n’ roll band from Kingston, Ontario, “The Hip” as they are colloquially known (and by that I mean nationally), have been thumping out some amazing music since the eighties. Some of their biggest hits are Little Bones, Ahead by a Century, Music at Work, Locked in the Trunk of a Car, Wheat Kings, and that just scratches the surface. They have been tirelessly creating great music for decades.
You may not have heard of them, and that’s OK. Although they have made many attempts at cracking international markets over the years, they just never quite made a big enough splash beyond our borders. Now that is not to say that they didn’t enjoy success abroad. Everywhere they went, they made fans and friends. And everywhere Hip fans went, THEY made friends and fans. All over the world. Are they Queen? Metallica? New Kids on the Block? Nope. Did they push the boundaries of popular music like Rush or Pink Floyd? No. Will their influence continue for generations to come? I guess we’ll just have to see.
Perhaps their songs were too “Canadian.” Songs about hockey, the ocean, and Tom Thompson were written to be sure, but one thing they did exceedingly well was write songs about characters, set against the backdrop of Canadiana. Bobcaygeon, At The Hundredth Meridian, Nautical Disaster. When lyricist, lead singer, and poet Gordon Downie had a story to tell, he presented his ideas on society and the nature of youth, age, and mortality using a palette of that which he knew best, his home. And we, his fellow men and women, responded to that. His words could be abstract and morbid, tender and beautiful. They spoke to us and we listened.
You can’t exist in Canada without knowing who the Hip are. Like Joni Mitchell, The Guess Who, Anne Murray or Rush, they are among the many who reside at the top tier of music royalty here. We’re not taught them in school, it’s not government mandated; you just can’t turn on rock radio here without hearing them, or talk to anyone born in the last fifty years who doesn’t at least know that they are a band. It’s just a fact of life.
Earlier this year they released their newest album, Man Machine Poem. As it turned out, they then announced that it would not only be their last album, but also their final tour as The Tragically Hip. It would seem that for a length of time during the writing and recording of the album, Gord Downie had been diagnosed and begun treatment for an inoperable and incurable brain tumor. He’s dying. This will be the end of the Tragically Hip.
So they announced their tour, which promptly sold out. The usual ticket scalpers and such came out of the woodwork as people scrambled to see one of their favourite bands live for the last time. There were outpourings of sympathy and support and a charity fund has been set up at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto, which has so far raised $265k dollars to fund brain cancer research, and continues to raise more every day.
And their tour began. Their last show would be in their hometown of Kingston, where it all began. That was August 20th, 2016.
Now that I’ve given you just a glimmer of this band’s import in our country, let me tell you why I’m writing this whole thing down…
Something happened along the tour. A stadium fits only so many people, and the Hip have so many more fans. Not only fans, but just the sheer number of people who acknowledge their existence. I like The Hip, but I am not a “fan.” I have played their music in bands and enjoyed their songs on the radio, but I have never owned a Hip album or seen them in concert. I have never felt any great desire to do either. That’s just the way it is. No big deal. I don’t hate them, I don’t love them. I could say that about a hundred other bands.
Yet something started to rise up within the popular Canadian consciousness. All of a sudden this was IMPORTANT. All of a sudden, it would be the end of something, something that had been there for so long was going to stop. Just end. A fiber in the tapestry of Canadian popular culture was spinning its last. Suddenly, there were a lot of people who didn’t want to be left out. People like me. Not fans, but people who were suddenly keenly aware of a man slowly dying on stage, just a little bit more each night, as he said goodbye to the people and places that he had cared for his whole life. Those who had loved and cared for him in return.
Every night they played he was getting on stage and giving away a piece of himself to thousands of deeply loving strangers, arm and arm with the men he had shared decades of his life with, laughing and fighting, creating and toiling. And then it would all end, and however he chooses to spend every day that he has left after that. Will be very different than the night of their last show together.
I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies of the music business, but at some point, the CBC (or Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for you non-canucks) decided to air the final show. Television, radio and internet. All free. Commercial free, unedited, uncensored. From the first note to the last, without interruption or alteration. No banner ads at the bottom of the screen. I’m sure a lot of people made a lot of money somewhere. I know their ratings and viewership would be through the roof, but it just doesn’t seem that important. They were letting us in. The CBC and the Hip.
What happened next is what moves me to tears every time I think about it. Small towns like mine made plans as well. Bracebridge has a park by the river with an outdoor theatre. My town organised a free screening of the concert for anyone who wanted to bring a blanket and a box of tissue. Our local drive-in theatre did the same. Huntsville (where I was performing in Rocky that night), did the same in their own park.
Bars, pubs, and restaurants started to advertise their plans to do the same all over the country. Of course they would make a lot of money, I’m not that naive, but just think about that for a second. All of a sudden, everyone was moving towards something. Viewing parties were organised in living rooms and basements, businesses were setting aside their regularly scheduled events, communities were creating spaces so that total strangers could come together and share something. A moment in time. The end of an era in Canadian cultural history.
I can honestly say that I have never witnessed anything in my lifetime that compares to the significance of that night in my country’s recent history. I still can’t believe it happened. The Tragically Hip’s last concert became so much bigger than the sum of its parts.
The final numbers came in, and apparently one third of the country watched the concert that night. As I was in The Rocky Horror Show, I recorded it and watched the next day. 11.7 million viewers. Now that’s viewers, so what about all the parks, gymnasiums, bars and pubs where many people gathered to watch one screen? It would seem to me that the numbers might be on the light side. One third. One in three Canadians worldwide saw that show. Think about that.
Whether you like them or not (or have never heard of them), you have to accept, respect and appreciate their saturation within Canadian popular consciousness. They have become a part of our cultural DNA. Buffy St. Marie, Kim Mitchell, David Wilcox, Sarah MacLachlan. There are so many great Canadian musicians out there in the world, but who yet has had this effect on our people as a whole?
When was the last time an artistic event galvanized this country to such an epic extent? I was so proud of my fellow citizens, and proud to be one of them. Not a fan, but I like them, and that’s OK.
Since we were tied up performing Rocky to a near sold out crowd, our guitar player Steve Kubay had the idea of paying our own tribute and acknowledging what had happened that evening. After the curtain call, instead of vamping “Hot Patootie” while the cast left the stage, we requested the curtains be left open and we led the crowd through “New Orleans is Sinking,” one of their oldest and possibly best known songs. Everyone there understood what was happening, even before I dedicated the song to the band. It was an exhilarating moment, and it allowed everyone there who couldn’t attend the screenings to feel like they were somehow a part of it all, even with our steampunk drag and makeup.
I watched the concert the next day. Saw the love in their eyes as the band and crew kissed and hugged before the show started. I saw one of the crew kiss and embrace Gord and tell him to go out there and have fun. They smiled at each other with true happiness, and I’m sure a little sadness.
6,000 fans in the stadium including our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. 22,000 more people outside watching big screens in the streets of Kingston, Ontario. 11.7 million people across Canada and around the world (The Canadian Consulate in Rio was full of Olympians, and beloved hockey commentator and Hip fan Ron MacLean threw to the concert from there).
Great night at #CBCTheHip viewing party at Canadian consulate in Rio. Can’t get more Canadian than this T #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/XCHcWkVbAO
— Doug Dirks (@cbcDougDirks) August 21, 2016
I cried a bit, it’s true. I like the Hip. They played some of my favourites. I sang along. I watched his face as he took so many moments to look his fans in the eye and connect with them. And there were a couple of times where you could tell that he was just taking it all in, the majesty of the moment, his final night on stage with his band of brothers. I don’t know what he was thinking, and I don’t need to. That’s none of my business. Yet I cried as I thought about the life force slowly ebbing out of him. I cried in amazement that he would make these efforts to share his art personally one last time with the people that love him.
I’m sure he was tired, probably beyond exhausted. Yet they came out for a third, unrehearsed encore before leaving the stage for good that night. And I’m sure it was a while before he was able to sleep after that.
I cried at what my country was doing. A third of them, anyways. How did one band, one man, manage to do that for us, to bring us together like that, in such an organic way?
Pearl Jam was playing a concert the same night in Wrigley Field, and they took a moment to salute their friends in Kingston. They didn’t have to. Canada sure wasn’t going to know they had done that until much later. Yet they did.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point and expressed myself as I wanted to. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope this gives you pause for thought, whatever those thoughts might be.
If you like, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding the concert to view for yourself. It’s a good one.
In Gord we Trust.
[ED Note: Thanks, Rob. As editor, I highly recommend checking out Gord’s solo LP, Coke Machine Glow.]