The Never-Ending Playlist 6: Peers and producers

This book is not just about the Hip; it’s also about everyone they toured with, everyone they worked with, and their contemporaries who inspired them. Here’s a look at their extended circle of friends, most of whom are quoted or discussed in the book.

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1. “Nothing a Go-Go,” By Divine Right. If there’s one lyric that summarizes this band, it’s “I love being alive.” Bandleader and bon vivant José Contreras has corralled a small army of supporting players to be in his band over at least the last 25 years, including Brian Borcherdt (Holy Fuck, Dusted), Brendan Canning (Broken Social Scene) and Leslie Feist. The latter two were in the band when Downie picked the band to open the Phantom Power tour. Contreras rush released the completion of the album featuring this song, Bless This Mess, to have it out in time for the 1999 tour. By Divine Right were also the opening act the night the Hip became the first band to headline Toronto’s Air Canada Centre; technically, that makes BDR the first band to ever play that hockey arena.

2. “Baby Ran,” 54.40. This Vancouver act had a five-year head start on the Hip, and racked up just as many hits over approximately the same time period. This was their breakthrough single, from their major-label debut, and it’s a song the Hip themselves covered once, at a radio session.

3. “Place That’s Insane,” Northern Pikes. Legend has it that this Saskatoon band wrote this song about the Lakeview Manor in Kingston, the city’s venue of choice for most touring bands. The Hip were the only local band popular enough to fill it. Gord Sinclair met his first wife here when she was a waitress.

4. “Jammin’ Me,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. When MCA Records’ Bruce Dickinson signed the Hip, he asked them who they might like as a producer. The band wasn’t sure. He asked them what recent records they admired. Gord Sinclair mentioned Tom Petty. That, combined with what he knew was the Hip’s love of anything Rolling Stones-related, led to Dickinson suggesting Don Smith, who’d engineered most Petty records of the 1980s, as well as Keith Richards’s first solo album. “Don who?” asked Sinclair. Don Smith ended up producing both Up to Here and Road Apples.

5. “Backward Town,” Grapes of Wrath. This Kelowna band was part of a trio of Western Canadian acts, along with 54.40 and Northern Pikes, who paved the way for the Hip’s take on roots rock to hit the mainstream. This is one of the greatest small-town anti-anthems ever written.

6. “Year in Song,” Mary Margaret O’Hara. One could write an entire book on the magical enigma that is O’Hara, whose 1988 album Miss America took four years to make and has never had a proper follow-up. Like anyone who’s heard it, Downie was a huge fan, and would sometimes quote her melodies and lyrics in the middle of the Hip’s live shows. With the Rheostatics, he sang her song “To Cry About” for a CBC Radio session. More than anyone else, O’Hara’s entire being embodies the concept of “the never-ending present.”

7. “Sky,” Crash Vegas. This band’s debut album, Red Earth, came out mere months after Up to Here, and the two acts shared many stages before the Hip invited them on the inaugural Another Roadside Attraction tour in 1993. Co-founded by Greg Keelor and Michelle McAdorey (Keelor left before the debut came out), the band also featured guitarist Colin Cripps, who became a close friend of the Hip. One of the most underrated bands of this entire scene, Crash Vegas suffered a series of record label problems that saw their three albums go out of print for more than 20 years. Cripps now plays in Blue Rodeo, and McAdorey broke a long silence with an excellent 2015 album, In Her Future.

8. “Maybe It’s Just Not Good Enough,” Skydiggers. This Toronto group was a frequent Hip opening act in 1988-90 as both bands travelled up and down the 401. Guitarist Josh Finlayson became Downie’s first close friend when the Hip singer moved to Toronto; singer Andy Maize’s wife, Andrea Nann, sparked Downie’s interest in modern dance in the early 2000s. Maize also played trumpet on Coke Machine Glow, and Finlayson was the only member of the Country of Miracles to also play in the Secret Path band.

9. “When Something Stands for Nothing,” Headstones. Singer Hugh Dillon went to KCVI with the Hip: he sold them drugs, regularly threatened to beat up Paul Langlois, and then took off to England with Finny McConnell of the Filters. Shortly after Dillon started the Headstones, Downie booked them to play his wedding reception at the Horseshoe. Langlois and Dillon eventually reconciled and became so close that the Hip guitarist started a record label in 2005, Ching Music, for the sole purpose of putting out a Dillon solo album. Dillon had a very successful second career as an actor, and the reformed Headstones put out some of the best music of his career.

10. “Hard to Laugh, ” The Pursuit of Happiness. Guitarist Kris Abbott knew the Hip from her days playing in Kingston cover bands in the mid-’80s. When she joined this band of transplanted Western Canadians in Toronto, they were Canada’s Great Rock Hope right before the Hip began their unstoppable ascent. The two bands played together often; TPOH opened the Hip’s first huge hometown show at Fort Henry.

11. “Cracked,” the Watchmen. This Winnipeg band shared management with the Hip, and were a frequent opening act in 1992-93 before blossoming into one of the biggest Canadian rock bands of the era. The debut was produced by Chris Wardman, who also did the Up to Here demos that landed the Hip a deal.

12. “Fuck the System,” Sons of Freedom. This Vancouver band opened a few shows for the Hip before the band invited them to open the first leg of the Fully Completely tour in the fall of 1992; if anyone but the Hip was headlining those shows, this band would have blown them off the stage. Downie certainly felt threatened; years later, he told me Sons of Freedom forced the Hip to step up their game. I think this band is one of the main influences on the shift in sound between Road Apples and Fully Completely.

13. “Bound for Vegas,” Art Bergmann. This Vancouver punk legend had already had a productive career (“Let’s Go to Hawaii”) before his late-’80s solo records made him even more fans, drawn to his sardonic songwriting. This song contains one of the greatest lyrics of all time: “I’m a never-was trying to be a has-been, a has-been on the comeback trail.” Bermann opened a few shows for the Hip around the time of Road Apples, including three shows at Toronto’s Concert Hall where the crowd tried to Hip him off the stage. “Your heroes will be on soon,” he sneered.

14. “Forgotten Years,” Midnight Oil. Jake Gold and Allan Gregg booked this Australian band on the Another Roadside Attraction tour in 1993 because a) they were widely regarded as one of the best live rock bands on the planet and b) because having the Hip headline over them would be making a huge statement to the rest of the world. Downie’s environmentalism was sparked by witnessing the passion of singer Peter Garrett, who invited him to the Clayoquot Sound protests. This band’s breakthrough single was 1988’s “Beds Are Burning,” a highly unlikely pop song about Indigenous land rights; one can draw a direct line between that and the impact Downie would have with Secret Path almost 30 years later.

15. “Smoke & Ashes,” 13 Engines. This Toronto band featured drummer Grant Ethier, in whose basement a teenage Gord Downie first stepped to a microphone. Downie later joined Ethier’s high school band, the Slinks, and when their paths crossed years later, 13 Engines were invited on several dates for 1993’s Another Roadside Attraction.

16. “Joey,” Concrete Blonde. The Hip only played one gig with Concrete Blonde that I’m aware of: those two acts and The Pursuit of Happiness all played a July 4 gig in Washington, D.C. in 1990 (why two Canadian bands would be booked for the occasion is a mystery; Gang of Four was also on the bill, which makes it even weirder). Downie was enamoured with the way Johnette Napolitano’s voice sounded on this, Concrete Blonde’s only top 40 hit, and the Hip henceforth hired the album’s producer, Chris Tsangarides, to make Fully Completely.

17. “Lotta Love to Give,” Daniel Lanois. Rumour has it that the Hip approached Lanois to produce both Fully Completely and Day For Night, and that he turned them down twice. He did, however, accept their invitation to play the inaugural Another Roadside Attraction. That went well. What didn’t go so well was in 1994 at a Canada Day show in Barrie, where Lanois insisted on going on right before the Hip—and was mercilessly booed and pelted with projectiles, an event that became a low point in the Hip’s history.

18. “Calling All Angels” Jane Siberry and k.d. lang. Siberry’s 1993 masterpiece When I Was a Boy was a favourite of Downie’s; that album’s opening track, “Temple,” appears in the middle of “Nautical Disaster” on 1997’s Live Between Us. Unfortunately, When I Was a Boy is not on any streaming services, but this song is because it appeared on the soundtrack to Wim Wenders’s Until the End of the World.

19. “Red,” treble charger. The greatest Canadian grunge ballad of the ’90s? This Toronto band was an indie sensation who helped propel Hamilton’s Sonic Unyon label to the big leagues, before it jumped to a major label. What most people didn’t know is that Bill Priddle, the singer/guitarist behind this song, was much older than the rest of the scene that spawned treble charger—he was Downie’s age, and the two were friends from their days at Queen’s. Priddle also shows up on the breakthrough Broken Social Scene record, You Forgot It In People. Small world, Canada.

20. “Good Fortune,” Weeping Tile. Sarah Harmer’s older sisters were close friends of the Hip during their Queen’s days, and they’d chaperone the young 16-year-old music fan around Ontario to see them. Harmer formed Weeping Tile in the early ’90s; the lineup that recorded the first full-length featured her sister Mary. Weeping Tile was discovered by manager Patrick Sambrook when they opened for his client Bag of Hammers (featuring future CBC host Gill Deacon); Sambrook became the Hip’s manager in the mid-2000s. Weeping Tile never achieved the audience they richly deserved, but Harmer’s first solo album, 2000’s You Were Here, proved to be massively popular. We’ll hear more from her later.

21. “Trigger,” Change of Heart. One of the Hip’s most frequent opening acts in the mid-’90s, including the 1997 ARA tour, this band led by Ian Blurton was one of the most ferocious live acts of the time, no matter who else was in the band at the time. Their recently reissued 1992 album Smile is a classic of the era. They took their share of abuse from Hip fans, and spat it right back in their faces, much to the delight of Downie in particular.

22. “Someone Who’s Cool,” the Odds. This beloved Vancouver power-pop band was more audience-friendly than Change of Heart, which is why they were the middle of the three-band bill on the Hip’s 1994 tour. The Hip hired the Odds’ Steven Drake to mix Trouble at the Henhouse and Music @ Work; Downie also hired him to helm Coke Machine Glow. The Odds’ other singer/guitarist, Craig Northey, helped Rob Baker bring his solo project, Strippers Union, to life.

23. “Tell the Truth,” the Inbreds. This Kingston duo were asked to open for the Hip after drummer Dave Ullrich passed Downie a paper bag with a CD and a T-shirt; Downie wore the shirt a few days later on stage, the first time the Hip headlined Maple Leaf Gardens. The Inbreds were the first band on the bill on the 1995 ARA.

24. “Stove,” Eric’s Trip. This lo-fi punk and psychedelic folk band from Moncton was probably the least likely opening band for the Tragically Hip, but Downie even name-checked the album this song comes from, Love Tara, in 1994’s “Put It Off.” They were second on the bill, after the Inbreds, on the 1995 ARA. Bassist Julie Doiron went on to become one of Downie’s most trusted collaborators.

25. “Saskatchewan,” Rheostatics. Downie told me that in the early ’90s, when he was trying to find a way to write about his country, that the Rheostatics and specifically this song were hugely influential. No surprise, as this song is about one of Downie’s favourite topics: death by water. The Rheostatics opened the Hip’s 1996 tour and were on the 1995 ARA; guitarist/singer Dave Bidini wrote about those experiences (and many others) in his 1998 book On a Cold Road. Drummer Dave Clark was a key part of Downie’s Country of Miracles.

26. “Sick of Myself,” Matthew Sweet. This and Sweet’s earlier hit, “Girlfriend,” are undeniably two of the greatest rock singles of the decade. He was on the middle of the bill on the 1995 ARA tour.

27. “Brenda Stubbert,” Ashley MacIsaac. One of the most improbable pop success stories of the ’90s, this controversial Cape Breton fiddler had a huge hit with his 1995 album Hi How Are You Today, which fused traditional fiddle music, heavy rock and hip-hop. The Hip booked him on the 1997 ARA, where he delighted/shocked audiences by doing rather revealing high kicks in his kilt. He’d also join the Hip on “Wheat Kings.”

28. “Political,” Spirit of the West. This beloved Vancouver band toured with the Hip a few times, including the 1995 ARA and several American swings. Seeing how there’s a lot of Scottish and Irish ancestry among the Hip members, perhaps it’s no small wonder that they were always drawn to Celtic acts (including their close friends in the Mahones). Spirit of the West were much more than a genre band, however, both for their lyrical acumen and for having an incredibly charismatic frontman in John Mann. Tragedy struck Mann shortly before Downie’s own, when the singer was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s; a documentary about Mann’s battle, Spirit Unforgettable, is highly recommended.

29. “The Ghosts of Cable Street,” the Men They Couldn’t Hang. This British band, contemporaries of the Pogues, never played with the Hip, but Downie does name-check them in “Bobcaygeon.” They likely played the Horseshoe Tavern’s “checkerboard floors” at some point; perhaps Downie saw them there. Why he chose to describe their vocals as an “Aryan twang”—an unfortunate association, to say the least—is a mystery. No one would accuse this band of being neo-Nazis; this song celebrates a legendary anti-fascist rally in London in 1936.

30. “Lebanon, Tennessee,” Ron Sexsmith. This St. Catharines songwriter and massive Lightfoot fan toiled in obscurity in Toronto for years—playing with drummer Don Kerr, later of the Rheostatics and who played on Coke Machine Glow—before landing a major-label deal in the mid-’90s and becoming a songwriters’ songwriter. Downie was (obviously) a fan. He invited Sexsmith over to his house to pick his brain and ask him about certain songs, including this one; the Hip singer’s writing took a notably more melodic turn afterwards. Sexsmith toured with the band on the 1997 ARA; he and Sheryl Crow performed duets on Badfinger’s “No Matter What” and Elvis Presley’s “Love Me.”

31. “If It Makes You Happy,” Sheryl Crow. No doubt Crow and the Hip had a few conversations about their shared love of the Rolling Stones after she signed on as co-headliner on the 1997 ARA. She was coming off her self-titled, self-produced second album, which includes this song; packed with hits, even the deep cuts on it are stellar, and her live show was/is top-notch.

32. “Monday,” Wilco. This Chicago band’s second album, 1996’s Being There, topped many critics’ year-end lists; small wonder, as it’s a sprawling double album that falls apart and pulls itself back together again, spanning fractured art-rock ballads, country weepers and raging rockers, many of which question what it means to be in a band in the first place. Wilco were flying high on the 1997 ARA—literally, as Jeff Tweedy admitted in his (excellent) 2018 memoir: he cites easy access to pharmaceutical drugs in Canada for pushing his dependency on painkillers into a full-fledged addiction.

33. “Mas Y Mas,” Los Lobos. Waaaaay back when the young Tragically Hip still had a saxophone player in the band, they covered “Don’t Worry Baby” from this band’s major-label debut. In the mid-’90s, they were enjoying a mid-career revival on the strength of three albums made with producer Mitchell Froom (Kiko, Colossal Head, This Time). Los Lobos were on the 1997 ARA, which is where the Hip asked their saxophonist, Steve Berlin, to produce Phantom Power; he also did Music @ Work.

34. “The Good in Everyone,” Sloan. This Halifax band turned down opening slots for the Hip early in their career; they thought the Hip was too “old guard” (by only about five years) and wanted to chart their own path. “I get it,” Downie told me. “We turned down a tour opening for Rush. I know why it’s not cool.” Sloan did, however, open for the Hip on some European dates in 2000. Sloan drummer Andrew Scott wrote about Downie’s death in the 2018 song “44 Teenagers.”

35. “Brother Down,” Sam Roberts. This Montreal bandleader reckons that his group probably opened for the Hip more than any other act, starting with the 2002 In Violet Light tour, and he’s likely correct. The two acts shared management for a while. Many Hip fans who stuck with the band through the 2000s are also huge Sam Roberts fans. Roberts was one of my favourite interviews for the book: the man is an absolutely mensch, and he’s an incredibly articulate and analytical thinker who speaks in complete paragraphs.

36. “Silver Road,” Sarah Harmer. The Hip backed her up on this song, but not on this version from 2004’s All of Our Names; the original appears on the Men With Brooms soundtrack (not available on streaming services). The only other time she joined her old friends was when she sang backup vocals on two tracks from 2012’s Now For Plan A (helmed by All of Our Names co-producer Gavin Brown). Harmer also performed a heartbreaking tribute to Downie in 2018 when she sang “Introduce Yerself” at the Juno Awards, with Kevin Hearn on piano.

37. “Work Out Fine,” Joel Plaskett Emergency. Plaskett’s first band, Thrush Hermit, didn’t cross paths with the Hip, but they did record their final album, Clayton Park, with Dale Morningstar of the Country of Miracles. When Plaskett declared the Emergency in 2001 with Down at the Khyber, his brand of Canadiana had him instantly began being hailed as a natural heir to Downie’s legacy. The man himself was intrigued, and Plaskett opened for the Hip on their 2004 tour.

38. “Aside,” the Weakerthans. When I interviewed Downie for an Eye Weekly article in 2000, we both raved about Left and Leaving, the second album by the Weakerthans. Downie said that he read the lyric sheet—which reads as prose in the liner notes—before he listened to the music, and was fascinated not only by the writing and the imagery but the meter. In the summer of 2001, I was MCing at the Hillside Festival in Guelph and introduced the Weakerthans on the main stage. I told songwriter John K. Samson on stage what a huge fan Downie was, and he started blushing incredulously. Three years later, the Hip showed up at the Juno Awards—which they’d largely avoided during their entire career—to accept entry into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. The show was in Winnipeg that year. In the middle of “Fully Completely,” Downie started singing this lyric from Samson’s “Aside”: “I’m leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense / And I’m losing all those stupid games that I swore I’d never play / But it almost feels okay.” Interesting choice.

39. “Dirty Business,” the Constantines. Along with the Weakerthans and Joel Plaskett, the Constantines were part of a rock rebirth on the Canadian scene in the early 2000s. The record label started by their friends, Three Gut Records, inspired Kevin Drew’s Arts and Crafts labels and others. The Constantines were nothing if not believers in rock’n’roll redemption, inviting audiences to testify at every show. They opened for the Hip several times in 2004.

40. “Loved on Look,” the Sadies. This Toronto band were and are a favourite of other musicians, drawn to the Sadies’ ability to switch between classic country, rock’n’roll, folk, psychedelia and punk. They’ve backed up everyone from Neko Case and Jon Spencer to Buffy Sainte-Marie to Neil Young; Greg Keelor, who sings a guest lead on this Elvis cover, is a frequent collaborator, and in 2014 Downie released his long-gestating collaborative album with them. More Sadies material was recorded in the last year of his life, which has yet to be released.

41. “No More,” Julie Doiron. Doiron is one of the busiest musicians in Canada, not just with her own solo work but in a series of collaborations, including Downie’s Country of Miracles. Her 2007 solo album Woke Myself Up marked a return to her working relationship with Rick White of Eric’s Trip, and it landed her on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist that year.

42. “Whispers of the Waves,” Buck 65 feat. Gord Downie. Despite being a wordsmith, Downie didn’t interact much with hip-hop—at least not publicly. Though steeped in hip-hop, Buck 65’s music crosses a lot of genres, particularly his somewhat Tom Waits-ish 2003 album Talkin’ Honky Blues, which likely got Downie’s attention. He opened for the Hip in 2006, and this collaboration appeared in 2011. Buck 65’s day job is as host of CBC Music’s afternoon Drive program, where he performs under his given name, Rich Terfry.

43. “Sleeping Sickness,” City and Colour feat. Gord Downie. Dallas Green came of age in the hardcore punk/metal scene as co-frontman of Alexisonfire; City and Colour was his acoustic side project, which became a full-time concern after Alexis broke up and this duet with Downie became a hit. They performed it live together several times, including at the Junos.

44. “The Bad in Each Other,” Feist. The Tragically Hip first met Leslie Feist when she was playing lead guitar in By Divine Right on their 1999 tour together. Shortly after that, she joined the Guelph band Royal City; Downie showed up at a loft gig they played in New York City. When she released her very first solo album—Monarch, the one that practically nobody heard—Downie was a big supporter. This track, featuring the Constantines’ Bry Webb on backing vocals, appears on her Polaris Music Prize-winning 2012 album Metals. In 2017, when she was at the Junos in Ottawa performing a tribute to Leonard Cohen, she ran into Langlois and Baker, who were there to collect hardware for the album they made with her close friend, Kevin Drew. “You guys gave me this arena,” she told them. “You taught me how to do this.”

45. “Book Club,” Arkells. When this Hamilton band first started touring with the Hip in 2012, they studied the masters very closely. Seven years later, they are the obvious heirs to the Hip’s title as the country’s pre-eminent arena rockers who also happen to be complete mensches who do everything the right way, for the right reasons.

46. “Bounce,” Danko Jones. Co-written and produced by the band’s drummer at the time, Gavin Brown, this became the Toronto rock band’s first radio hit—unfortunately, it came out just a bit before the rock revival of the 2000s and they were not able to ride that wave. They did, however, do very well in Scandinavia. Brown went on to be a million-selling producer (Billy Talent, Three Days Grace), and helmed the Hip’s Now For Plan A.

47. “The Art of Patrons,” Fucked Up feat. Gord Downie. This art-y Toronto hardcore band came up in a scene virulently opposed to mainstream CanCon royalty, and yet screamer Damian Abraham found himself surprisingly disarmed when he met Downie via Dallas Green and they became penpals (well, over email). Downie then guested on this song, and performed it with them live at the Field Trip festival; his own set that day with the Sadies saw him covering Fucked Up’s “Generation.” I used the lyric “It’s the privilege of mass delusion” as the epigram at the beginning of the Secret Path chapter.

48. “KC Accidental,” Broken Social Scene. When BSS’s 2002 album You Forgot It In People became an international sensation via online word of mouth, it set the stage for Canadian music in the next decade, including the ascent of Arcade Fire (with whom Downie had discussed collaboration, but never came to fruition). This band’s Kevin Drew became Downie’s primary collaborator in the final years of his life, first on Secret Path, then on the Hip’s Man Machine Poem, and finally on Introduce Yerself and other as-yet-unreleased material.

49. “Floating,” Kevin Hearn. Downie knew the Barenaked Ladies’ keyboardist for his work with the Rheostatics, and hired him to play on the first Coke Machine Glow session. In the last year of Downie’s life, when he wanted to perform Secret Path live, he hired Hearn as musical director—a role Hearn had played for Lou Reed in the last several years of that legend’s life. (Hearn also enlisted Downie to sing Reed’s “How Do You Think It Feels” at a posthumous tribute in 2014.) This song, co-written with Reed, is from Hearn’s 2014 album Days in Frames, an album Downie told Hearn that he listened to daily when it came out. The song features the last guitar solo Reed ever recorded, performed in his hospital bed.

50. “Canada Dry,” Barenaked Ladies. The day after Downie died, Hearn was playing with Barenaked Ladies at the same Halifax venue where Downie gave his last-ever live performance, 11 months ago to the day. They played “Chancellor” and “Ahead By a Century” as a tribute that night, and wrote lovely this song for their 2017 album Fake Nudes, about how “listening to Gordie is making me cry.”