Remembering Gord Downie
February 6, 1964 - October 17, 2017
Comedian Bruce McCulloch recently tweeted the photo above of himself with Gord Downie in their younger days on what would’ve been the late, great Tragically Hip singer’s 60th birthday.
#GordDownie My beautiful brother would have been 60 today. I miss him every day. I toast to him every year...
I happen to have written a concert review of the night Downie turned 51 for the now-defunct Vancouver Courier and so replied with a link to it. To my pleasant surprise, McCulloch read and liked it. A digital stamp of approval from one of the Kids in the Hall was a bit of a dopamine hit for a comedy nerd like me, someone old enough to remember them in their early nineties heyday and who was surprised as anyone the stuffy old CBC allowed these subversive comedy geniuses to run amok on their then-important Friday night time-slot.
So I’m reposting it below for posterity and also because my embryonic Substack status could use a bit of padding. Plus I don’t have an editor to say no.
I actually once had a brief encounter with Downie. I was working as a stagehand at the time when the Hip passed through my hometown of Saint John, NB on the Trouble at the Henhouse tour and was working alone backstage uncoiling cables when he suddenly strolled past. Our eyes met and I gave him a respectful nod. He gave me one back.
This isn’t much of a story as far as brushes with celebrity go — not nearly as entertaining as the time I got drunk and stoned with Christian Slater in a small-town bar and we took my dog for a walk afterward — but the small gesture always stayed with me. I’ve since interviewed a number of high-profile people as a former reporter, many of whom didn’t have anything close to that basic level of humility or respect for those of lower status.
I was also fortunate enough to see him play in a small intimate venue in Whistler when he was touring solo, a far different experience from the hockey arenas the Hip used to fill.
Here’s the review from nine years ago. I think it still holds up.
The Tragically Hip play Fully Completely fully, completely
Gord Downie turned 51 years old on a rainy Friday in Vancouver doing what he does best – bellowing poetry while dancing spastically in front of a packed hockey rink.
Perhaps as a birthday present to himself, he took a night off from playing the Hip's signature hit “New Orleans is Sinking.”
The Tragically Hip don't have a new album to promote on their latest North American tour, which instead sees the familiar fivesome playing the tracks from their biggest album, 1992's Fully Completely, in sequential order. They also opted not to bring along an opening act, which is probably for the best. Dave Bidini wrote a great book partly about the often frustrating experience he had with his band, the Rheostatics, as the openers during the Trouble at the Henhouse tour, when Hip fans often made it abundantly clear they only had ears for the headliners.
At the risk of sounding like a total hipster, I was into the Hip before it was cool. My older sister had gone off to university in Kingston, Ont. – the band's (still) home stomping grounds – and she sent me a copy of an up-and-coming local bar band's self-titled EP that was played on heavy rotation. So it was fun to see the rest of Canada (if only Canada) eventually come around to them through Up To Here, Road Apples and Fully Completely – widely considered to be the band's high-water mark. The album was also uniquely, unapologetically Canadian, featuring singles with CanCon concerns such as the October Crisis, lionized novelist Hugh MacLennan, a missing Maple Leaf and where exactly the Great Plains begin. Fully Completely offered a hard-hitting, homegrown alternative to alt rock at a time when grunge ruled the airwaves, and Canadians loved it.
Downie sensibly decided against wearing a Boston Bruins jersey like the one he sported in the video for “Courage” when the band played in the Canucks' barn last night, opting instead for a plain white button-down and leather pants. The Hip hit the stage to Day for Night's plodding, moody “Grace, Too” before segueing into the high-energy “Music at Work” followed by “A Beautiful Thing” from 2002's In Violet Light. Judging by the set list from their gig in Victoria two nights earlier, the band plans to mix in other songs from their lengthy career as they head back east before getting to the meat-and-potatoes of the show with Fully Completely in its entirety.
The band were in fine form, with Downie doing his patented Asperger's-on-Ecstasy shtick behind rumbling, layered bass and guitars powered by Paul Langlois, Rob Baker and Gord Sinclair on top of athletic drumming from Johnny Fay. As always, Downie was the centre of attention while band members rarely acknowledged the audience – who ranged in age from teens to boomers – or even each other's presence. The sole bit of non-frontman audience interaction came when Baker, who spent most of the evening hiding behind his Cousin Itt wall of hair, chucked back an empty plastic bottle some idiot had thrown onstage.
But if their hearts are perhaps no longer in it after more than three decades playing together or if Downie tires of having to perform in character, it certainly didn't show in the intensity put into the music. There was a nice moment during the encore when the band played the softer “Scared” with the crowd singing along. Downie put a big emphasis on the line “It's been a pleasure doing business with you.”
Judging by the crowd's reaction, the feeling is very much mutual.