In three videos: Tragically Hip's Gordon Downie evolves with band
TORONTO –The Tragically Hip’s lead singer Gordon Downie walks into a dressing room deep inside Toronto’s fabled Massey Hall and instantly things become notably intense.
While obviously a warm and friendly man, Downie still gives off an air of otherness, as if he’s spent a fair amount of time contemplating things that never occurred to you.
For a quarter century fronting the Tragically Hip, Downie’s fierce intellect has served him well, aiding him in the creation of a collection of song lyrics blending stream of consciousness observations, a lithe, rhythmic feel for language, and an ability to observe and report in a dialect that is both wholly unique and emotionally disarming.
His work, if you’ve delved into it and dwelled there a while, is abundantly impressive.
If all of this is on your mind when you sit down across the table from Downie, and then you realize that he is listening to everything you say intently while staring you directly in the eyes –it’s easy to feel intimidated.
As soon as he speaks, though, you realize you’ve gotten yourself all worked up for nothing. Downie takes the Hip and his place within its community incredibly seriously, but this has not led in any way to a sense of self-importance on his part.
Concert Preview
The Tragically Hip
8 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Artpark, 450 S. Fourth St., Lewiston. Lawn seats available for Friday show.
Despite having earned the significance in Canada that U2 has in Ireland; despite having constructed an international audience brick by brick, selling millions of records in the process; despite induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and a collective mantelpiece housing more than a dozen Juno awards –despite all of this, Downie and the rest of the Tragically Hip are far from content to rest on their laurels. They’ve still got work to do.
“We move slowly, we move as a group, and we’re really only trying to push the margins out a bit,” Downie says. “If that can be our only goal…we’re not trying to reinvent, or be something else, but just making sure we’re pushing the margins out, exploring the dynamics of what it is that we do.”
Prior to the Hip’s four-day tour stop at Artpark in Lewiston, which begins Tuesday, Downie discussed with The Buffalo News his thoughts on the band’s new album, a new member, an evolving sound and the influence of his four young children on his songwriting.
Tragically Hip Revealed, Part 1
Success comes quickly
Formed in 1983 in Kingston, Ont., the Hip arrived fully actualized. The band had then and still has today a visceral blend of Rolling Stones-like guitar interplay and a supple rhythm section, both of which contrast in a marked fashion with Downie’s literate observations, emotive, low tenor and tendency toward free-form, near-surrealistic improvisation on stage.
All five members –Downie, guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay –have been there from the beginning.
Success at home came rather quickly, and with it, the emergence of a restless creative spirit that meant no two Hip albums were the same. That this musical wanderlust was not off-putting to the band’s ever-expanding audience can probably be credited to the consistency of voice each album presented.
By the mid-’90s, the Hip was a stadium band at home, equally adored in border towns like Buffalo, and responsible for the building of an intensely devout cult audience around the world. The group continued to challenge itself and its audience with each subsequent release. The Tragically Hip could have then settled into its status comfortably.
Why, then, have the band’s last two albums –the 2006 release “World Container,” and its follow-up, the new “We Are the Same” –virtually redefined the Hip’s sound with deepened hues of both the musical and emotional variety, and in essence, refused to cash in on well-earned past glories?
“The metaphor I’ve used,” says Downie, “is ‘World Container’ set the table, and ‘We Are the Same’ is the meal.”
With “We Are the Same,” the band continues its relationship with Bob Rock, producer of “World Container” and previously renowned for his work with Metallica.
“The first time you work with someone, there’s a lot of blind faith involved. The second time, you take the ‘blind’ part out of it,” Downie says. “So I have absolute faith in Bob. He has something that we lack, which is singular vision.
The Tragically Hip Revealed, Part 2
“When I say that we don’t premeditate much, that doesn’t make us a heck of a band or anything –we’re a democracy, a collective, and I’ve heard it said that any art created by a collective is mere blind luck, when it’s successful. ... When you’re in the studio, it really is about decision after decision, jumping from lily pad to lily pad, as one decision begets five more. And if you’re not really making those decisions, if you’re avoiding them in favor of absolute consensus, then you’re not really challenging yourself, and hence, you’re missing opportunities.
“Bob has the singular vision, as a person, a musician, a writer, an engineer, a producer –you can absolutely put your trust in him.”
The Hip did just that, and emerged from the studio with an unqualified masterpiece, the band’s most lush, ornate, detailed and deeply musical effort to date. Found among the album’s broad expanse is the sound of a group of committed musicians pushing the envelope and finding palpable joy in the act of redefining.
“The Depression Suite,” a mini-epic that melds three separate pieces of music and lyrics together in service of an evocative, cinematic hybrid, is emblematic of the ethos presented by “We Are the Same.” But many of the album’s revelations are of the more subtle variety –an understated and effective string arrangement here, a delightfully unexpected fluegelhorn figure there, a heart-rending vocal harmony arriving to herald a musical stretch toward the heavens.
“We Are the Same” is the kind of album that demands repeated, close study. It asks for your attention.
Are we the same?
The album’s title itself seems both defiant and hopeful, an argument for the existence of human solidarity where empirical evidence strongly suggests otherwise.
“I’m still sort of exploring what it means,” says Downie of the album’s title. “I’m still finding that it can mean something on a few levels. I like ‘hopeful and defiant.’ It’s also perhaps something you might say to a rioting crowd to calm them down; it’s the thing we’re all hoping to hear – ‘We are the same, you and I.’ But it’s also something that you don’t want to hear at all: ‘No, we’re not the same!’ ”
Downie describes the album as being “full of conversations between two people. And in all of those conversations, that’s what somebody is trying to say, and that’s what somebody is trying to hear: ‘We are the same. It’s going to be OK.’ ”
The Tragically Hip Revealed, Part 3
As always, Downie’s lyrics are more evocative than explicit in their intention, in their choice of imagery, in the often languid, dreamlike atmospheres they summon. It’s to the band’s credit that lyric and musical bed so lithely intermingle and complement each other.
Married with four children ranging in age from 3 to 13, Downie appears to enjoy digging around in the twilight world of his childhood memories, which have provided him with some of his most enduring, transcendent images. Is he, on occasion, channeling childhood?
“Sure. It’s in there, certainly. The great thing about being a parent is that you get a second chance at learning. A second chance, period –to improve yourself, to change, to modify the idea of yourself, who it is that you project, what you want to project. Because these kids are watching, and they’re watching closely.
“I’ve learned an awful lot from my kids. They are a constant source of entertainment –a tragi-comedy every half-hour. Tears, laughter, every single day. And it’s all real. So if you’re a writer bent on noticing things, and trying to find connections between things, from even the most mundane and cliche to the so-called profound –well, then you’ll pay attention to these things. Only a fool thinks he can do it alone.”
Stretching the canvas
The added colors in the Hip’s palate, as represented by “We Are the Same’s” new adventures in tone, tune and texture, have made the musicians reconsider their approach to the concert stage. For the first time, the band has taken a new member into the fold for a tour –keyboardist/ vocalist Jim Bryson. The Ottawa native is handling string and piano
parts for the new material, and according to Downie, helping the group find new approaches to older songs.
The new dynamic on stage is reflected in the Hip’s modified approach – throughout the tour, the band is dividing its shows into two sets, allowing for more variety in song selection, and a broader canvas for the painting. More time on stage has urged the band to draw liberally from all phases and eras of its work. The new mix has given life to songs that have been played often over the years.
But at the heart of the show is the “We Are the Same” material.
“The songs are trying to be of comfort. And maybe they’re failing, maybe they’re succeeding. But at least they’re trying.”
And even though Downie has been fronting the Tragically Hip for more than a quarter century, he admits that he still approaches the concert stage from a philosophical standpoint, a mode of thought that centers around the concept of living in the moment. Though ego and confidence are projected in Downie’s unique stage presence, he says he tries to get out of the way of the music, letting its essence shine through.
“Every night before I go on stage, I just repeat to myself, ‘Sing the words, serve the song…sing the words, serve the song,’ ” says Downie. “This is my goal. The rest is fine, as long as I’m doing that first.”
Looking back on the considerable body of the Hip’s previous work, Downie is again both humble and philosophical:
“You know, I really want to get these words out [during the concerts]. I’ve written a lot of them over the years, and I welcome the opportunity to rediscover them myself, and reconnect with them, to see if they work against the backdrop of these times we’re in right now.”
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