The Tragically Hip Podcast Series

One question, asked of every person who built the show. On the last day, the answer goes to the people in the seats.

Every conversation in this series ended the same way. Same question, same words, read off a cheat sheet so jD wouldn't botch it: if this production does what you hope it does, what do the people in the seats walk out of the theatre feeling? He asked the producer. He asked the director, both writers, and the cast. And somewhere along the way it became clear that the people who made It's A Good...

A percussionist who couldn't swing, a chart that changes time signature every bar, and basic tracks cut at the Bathouse in Bath, Ontario.

You know what these songs are supposed to feel like. jD has been carrying 'Courage' around since the fall of 1992, and he walked into this one bracing for jazz hands, a key change nobody asked for, and somebody belting 'Bobcaygeon' from the lip of the stage with their arms out like they were hailing a cab.

Day four of It's A Good Life is the one every fan of The Tragically Hip...

May 3rd, Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. Mary Francis Moore walks jD right up to the wings and stops, because of a rule he didn't know about.

Mary Francis directs "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," and the tour so far has been the design studio, the stage management office, and the green room where the cast can watch the stage between scenes. Then the wings. That's as far as jD goes. (Nobody wants to be the guy who breaks the magic.)

That's day three of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a...

May 1st, opening night in Hamilton. On jD's left, a fan of The Hip who doesn't do musicals. On his right, a woman who's never heard of them.

His buddy David is the first one, and he mentions the musicals thing on the drive in (great timing, David). The second is 82, the mother of a Theatre Aquarius subscriber, and she knows nothing about The Tragically Hip. Nothing. Then intermission. Guess which one of them ends up at the merch table. Two people, same row, opposite ends of the room, and when jD told that story to the...

April 19th, around four o'clock, outside Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. jD is about to sit with the whole creative team, with no idea what's coming.

The first preview is three days out. jD bought a ticket for April 22nd thinking it was the premiere. It wasn't (musicals have previews, it turns out - lesson one of about 400). That's the spirit of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a day, all week, from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series: one fan, uncool and underqualified, let into the rooms where "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken" got...

November 30th, 2012, Minneapolis, cold enough to hurt. Brian from Buffalo was there for 'Take Forever.' The stream tried to play it three times.

It's track nine of eleven on "Now for Plan A," the Gavin Brown record that came out October 2nd, 2012. By the count on the stream, The Tragically Hip played it live eight times, starting months before the record was out, and it didn't crack the 169 songs ranked for the TTHTop40 Countdown. The poll in the Facebook group was kinder: 76% love it or like it, and one brave soul has never heard it. Jeff...

The new 5-part podcast begins this coming Monday, the 19th.

11,300 pennies, a frame five feet by nine, about 250 pounds, and all of it Gord. Penny Gord has hung at the National Music Centre, it travels with Trickle Down now, and somewhere along the way it became the closest thing GEDfest has to a mascot.

The first three episodes covered where GEDfest came from, where it stands, and where it's headed. This one is about who. Keith's word for it is the secret sauce: the ambassadors, supporters, volunteers, and tribute players who turned one Calgary night in memory of Gord Downie into twelve chapters across Canada and into...

August 20th, 2016, Kingston. 'Poets' is twentieth on the set list, right behind 'Something On,' the song Craig from Langley used to skip to.

It opens "Phantom Power," it was the lead single, and it sits at number 23 on the TTHTop40 Countdown. The count on the stream, pulled from Hipbase and setlist.fm, has The Tragically Hip playing it 611 times, from July 2nd, 1998, twelve days before the record came out, to that last night in Kingston. The poll in the Facebook group drew more votes than any the show has run. And the Discovering Downie panel came...

Fifty-eight days out from GEDfest 2026, more than $750,000 already written into cheques, and a first million sitting within reach this October.

That is where this one opens, and then the panel spends the rest of the episode refusing to look backwards. GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, a community celebration of the life and legacy of Gord Downie and the music of The Tragically Hip, and the people running it are not interested in what it has been. They want to talk about what it becomes. Twelve chapters in 2026, the first of them outside Canada, and a board...

April 18th, 1992. The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, nearly six months before "Fully Completely" came out, and 'Radio Show' is fifth on the set list.

Twelve days later it's fifth again, at the Annandale Hotel in Sydney, Australia. Those are the only two Dave from Edmonton found on setlist.fm. Then The Tragically Hip shelved it for twenty-two years, until the 2014 deluxe reissue of "Fully Completely" put it out beside 'So Hard Done By.' It finished 123rd on the TTHTop40 Countdown. The live poll in the Facebook group didn't care: 60 percent love it, 96 percent love it or...

Today the gang gets together to discuss the fifth album in Gord's discography, the haunting, Secret Path

From a 400-person room to a 1,000-person room to twelve chapters in two countries, in nine years, on a formula nobody wrote down.

That is the middle chapter of the GEDfest story, and this is the episode about how it actually happened. GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest. It was born in Calgary shortly after Gord Downie passed away in 2017, and it is now the largest fundraiser in his memory in the country. The jump from one hometown night to a national organization did not happen because somebody drew up a plan. It happened because people kept...

June 6th, 2000. Track six on "Music @ Work" opens on tabla, and the album credits name the player as Mr. Hussein. That's the whole credit.

'The Bastard' sits between 'Stay' and 'The Completists' on the record The Tragically Hip made with Steve Berlin and Mark Vreeken, the one that took the 2001 Juno for Best Rock Album. It was never a single, and Chris from Seattle has a theory about why. It finished 119th of 169 on the TTHTop40 Countdown, and Hipbase and setlist.fm log it live just fourteen times (submitted set lists only, so the real number runs...

1990. The Misty Moon Cabaret in Halifax, MuchMusic cameras rolling, and Gord doesn't dress it up. It's a rock song. Two and a half minutes, and then gone.

'Just As Well' is track five on "Saskadelphia" (May 21, 2021), the six-song surprise that landed on the May long weekend. It was cut in New Orleans during the "Road Apples" sessions, with Don Smith producing and Bruce Barris engineering, and then it sat in the vault for more than thirty years. setlist.fm has ten documented live plays, every one of them in 1990, and nothing after. The live poll in the...

 A Thursday night in October. A narrow bar on 8th Avenue in Calgary. A pile of crumpled fives and tens that added up to $7,000.

That is where GEDfest starts, and this is the episode where the people who were standing in that room tell you how it happened. GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, a celebration of the life and music of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip, and in 2026 it runs in twelve chapters across Canada and into the United States. It began with a handful of guys in a basement in Crestmont learning "Road Apples" f...

July 16th, 2005. Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland. The Tragically Hip played 'Vaccination Scar' for the fifty-ninth time, and never again.

Track four on "In Between Evolution" (June 29th, 2004), the ninth studio record of thirteen, cut at Studio X in Seattle with Adam Kasper producing, and the album landed at number one in Canada in its first week. 'Vaccination Scar' was the first single off it. It finished 66th on the TTHTop40 Countdown, nowhere near the top 40. Then the live poll went up in the Facebook group and came back 64 percent love it, 33 percent like it. jD's read on the...

August 20th, 2016. Kingston. Thirteen songs into the last set The Tragically Hip ever played, and 'Putting Down' made the cut.

Track four on "Music @ Work" (2000), the second of two records Steve Berlin made with the boys, and the one that took home the 2001 Juno for Best Rock Album (per Wikipedia and Discogs, still owed a HipMuseum or This Is Our Life cross-check). It sits at 143 out of 169 on the TTHTop40 Countdown, a deep cut by that measure alone. Then the Facebook group poll came back and the ranking didn't survive contact with the room: like or love...

June 24th, 2006. Historic Fort York, Toronto. Twenty-two songs, and buried at number fourteen is a track The Tragically Hip only ever played nine times.

That is the version we spin. Same night they pulled '38 Years Old' out of the vault for the first time since July of 1995. Nine plays for 'No Threat', per Hipbase and setlist.fm, and one of those nine got audited live on this stream. There was an entry claiming November 15th, 1991. Andrew went after it, Steve pulled the tape down to check, and the correction went in while the mics were still...

June 16th, 2000. The first of only 89 times The Tragically Hip ever played 'Tiger The Lion' live, and the last one is a long way off from there.

Eighty-nine, per Hipbase and setlist.fm. That's the whole run, first to last, June 2000 to a night in November 2009. Fifteen of those as an opener, which makes sense to everybody at the table. Fifteen as an encore, which makes sense to nobody. It never went out as a single. The record it sits second on went two times platinum in Canada and took home the Juno, and it's the second...

Hey, it's jD here. August 20th, 2026. Bath, Ontario. A stone coach house west of Kingston that the band turned into a recording room, where "Phantom Power", "Music @ Work", "We Are The Same", and "Man Machine Poem" were all made. Ten years to the day since the last show. This is the last one. Yer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour ran the length of the Man Machine Poem Tour, city by city, Victoria east to Kingston, and it ends here, in the room where the last record was made. Three fans at the table, and not one of them...

August 20th, 2016. The Rogers K-Rock Centre, Kingston, Ontario. Thirty songs. Three encores, which was not a thing they did. And a country that put down whatever it was holding.

Ten years later, jD asked fifteen people one question. Not what they made of it. Not where it ranks. Just this: where were you.

The answers do not go where you would expect. An airplane hangar outside Olympia, Washington. A garage door in the country north of Superior with fifty people camped in the yard. A smoker in Calgary that had been running since sunrise. A...

August 18, 2016. Ottawa, the second last night, and two fans who were in that building take jD back inside - ten years to the day.

Thursday, August 18, 2016. The Canadian Tire Centre, out past the ring of car dealerships in the west end, and The Tragically Hip had two nights left. Kingston was already a pipe dream by then. For most of the country, Ottawa was the last chance.

Ten years to the day, jD sits down with two fans who were in that room. Shawn from Ottawa, who has been in this community since he was...

September 14th, 2009. Edmonton. The last time The Tragically Hip ever played 'Emperor Penguin', and not one person in that building knew it.

Seventy-two performances. That's the whole run. The first on July 2nd, 1998, a couple of weeks before "Phantom Power" was even in stores, and the last one in Edmonton on the We Are The Same tour before the song went in a drawer for good. Justin pulled that off setlist.fm live on the stream, Hipbase backs it up, and it turned into the thing nobody saw coming, because one of the two guys at the...

August 16, 2016. The Hip arrived in the Hammer, and three fans who were in the building take jD back inside - ten years to the day.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016. FirstOntario Centre in Hamilton, four days out from the end of everything, and The Tragically Hip pulled into a city that watched them play to nobody once and never forgot it.

Ten years to the day, jD sits down with three fans who were there for that room: Gino from Buffalo, Matt from Buffalo, and John from Mississauga. Two of them had never been on a podcast before...

August 14, 2016. The last night The Tragically Hip ever played Toronto, and three fans who were in the building take jD back inside - ten years to the day.

Sunday, August 14, 2016. The Air Canada Centre, the last night of a three-night stand, and the last time The Tragically Hip ever played Toronto. Nobody in the building knew that for certain. Everybody in the building knew it anyway.

Ten years to the day, jD steers into uncharted waters (they never do third ones) with three fans who were there: Dave from Thornhill, Jeff from Buffalo, and Jeff...

August 12, 2016. Night two of three at the Air Canada Centre. The rare record is "In Violet Light", and four fans who were in the building take jD back.

Friday, August 12, 2016. The Air Canada Centre, night two of three - the middle child of the Toronto stand, the night Patrick calls the forgotten one. Which is a strange thing to call a show Steve ranks, out of the 32 Hip shows he saw, as the best one. Not the biggest. Not the saddest. The best.

Ten years to the day, jD sits down with four fans who...

Tragically Hip Day in Toronto. 'The Luxury' out of the gate, a tour debut in the encore, and a family of four in seats a text message unlocked.

Description

August 10th, 2016. The Air Canada Centre - the first of three Toronto nights on the Man Machine Poem Tour, and the day Ernie from Denville, New Jersey woke up in his hotel room, flipped on the news, and heard the mayor declare it Tragically Hip Day before he had even gotten out of bed. He had flown up alone for his first-ever Canadian show, eleven club...

Never a single. Never an opener. Played 164 times anyway. Toots, Tyler, and Chris go looking for the spy novel inside 'Pigeon Camera'.

The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream takes on 'Pigeon Camera', track four on "Fully Completely". Gord introduced it in Hamburg in 1992 as a spy novel and never handed out the decoder ring, so the panel goes looking - the claves and castanets in the mix, the Charlottetown Accord landing the same month as the record, and the boots burned with no contingency plan. Live numbers courtesy of Hipbase and setlist.fm.

...

Three fans - one in the penalty box, one in the last row, one from down the street - relive the night The Hip said goodbye to London.

Description

August 8th, 2016. Budweiser Gardens, London, Ontario - show nine of the Man Machine Poem Tour, and the last night The Tragically Hip would ever play that city. The lights drop, the band walks out, and the first song is 'Opiated'. Wade had more than 40 Hip shows under his belt and had never heard them open with it. Not once. That kind of night.

This...

The review ran with no star rating. Infinite stars out of five. Four fans who were inside the MTS Centre explain why that was the only honest math.

Episode summary

August 5th, 2016. A Friday night, show eight of the Man Machine Poem Tour, and the MTS Centre sits smack in the middle of downtown Winnipeg with no room to breathe. The Tragically Hip open with four straight from "Fully Completely", and the second song is 'Pigeon Camera' - a tour debut nobody in the building saw coming. Ten years on, four fans who were there...

The band took their bow. The house lights came up, and nobody in the Saddledome moved. This is the night the ovation would not stop.

Episode summary

August 3rd, 2016. A Wednesday. Two nights after the first Calgary show, The Tragically Hip walked back into the Scotiabank Saddledome and played the city goodbye. Ten years on, three fans who were in the building pass the night around the table with jD.

Spencer from Calgary is back from the night one episode. This was his third show of the Man Machine Poem Tour and the las...

Episode Description

Number 31 on the countdown. First zoo animal on Prozac. JD is joined by Duxoop from Toledo — broadcasting from the actual birthplace of Gus the polar bear — plus Andrew from Winnipeg and Dave from Montreal to dig into one of the most quietly beloved songs in the Hip catalogue.

The panel gets into the Adam Kasper production that makes In Between Evolution sound the way it does, Rob Baker's untouchable outro solo, the Hip Museum's wonderfully unhinged George W. Bush theory, and the wordplay hiding in plain sight — because it was never what's troubling Gus. I...

'Three Pistols' as an opener. Nobody in the Saddledome saw that coming, least of all the guy who'd spent the whole week camping.

Episode summary

August 1st, 2016. The Scotiabank Saddledome. The Tragically Hip are working eastward, homebound to Kingston, and the Man Machine Poem Tour rolls into Calgary for the first of two nights. Ten years on, three people who were in that building sit down and tell jD what it actually felt like.

Spencer from Calgary was at both Calgary shows, and two days before this one he woke up from an...

Episode Description

Ten years to the day, JD travels back to July 30, 2016 and the second of two Edmonton nights on the Man Machine Poem Tour. He's joined by two Edmontonians who were in the building — Kirsten and Chris — for a conversation about scalped tickets and Ticketmaster nightmares, the last concert ever held in Rexall Place, a set list that dug deeper than anyone expected, and the two encores that sent a city home in pieces.

It's a night of firsts and lasts: 'Scared' heard live for the first time and the last time in the same...

Ten years to the day. Two fans who were at Rexall Place for Edmonton night one tell the story - the presale tricks, the tight circle on stage, and the night the building went to church.

Episode Summary

Edmonton, night one. July 28th, 2016. Rexall Place - months before Rogers Place opened its doors - and The Tragically Hip's first of two nights in Oil Country on the Man Machine Poem Tour. Ten years later, Yer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour sits down with Britain from Wainwright and Dave from Edmonton, two fans who were in...

jD convenes the expert panel to dissect "700 Ft Ceiling," the song that lands like a baseball bat to the face right in the middle of Trouble at the Henhouse.

The conversation starts warm — everyone's summertime Hip pick, from "Membership" to "Morning Moon" to "Summer's Killing Us" — before turning to the puzzle at the centre of the track: what exactly is a 700-foot ceiling? (Aviation term. Lowest layer of broken or overcast cloud sitting 700 feet above ground.)

The panel unpacks Gord's habit of collecting phrases for their sound rather than their meaning, the wintery outdoor-rink imagery, and the...

Ten years to the day. Three fans who were at Rogers Arena for Vancouver night two tell the story - the tickets, the Fiddler's Green goodbye, and the night a one-year-old slept through history.

Episode Summary

Uncharted waters - we never do third ones. Vancouver, night two. July 26th, 2016. Rogers Arena, the third stop on the Man Machine Poem Tour, and the night The Tragically Hip opened with Fully Completely - just like the set-list sleuths predicted. Ten years later, Yer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour gathers three fans who were in the building: C...

Ten years on, jD sits down with three fans who were there the night the Tragically Hip played Vancouver on the Man Machine Poem tour — the second stop of Gord Downie's final run across Canada. Tina, Joe, and Shaun walk through the whole arc of that evening: the scramble for tickets when floor seats and Ticketmaster luck meant everything, the electric-but-apprehensive mood in the building as everyone wondered how Gord would hold up, and the moment his shaking hand during "Three Pistols" turned nerves into relief.

The conversation ranges from the emotional gut-punches — "Grace, Too," "Bobcaygeon," "Tired as F...

Ten years to the day. Three fans who were in the building for opening night in Victoria tell the story - the tickets, the silver suit, and the night the Man Machine Poem Tour began.

Episode Summary

First stop. July 22nd, 2016. The Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre in Victoria, where The Tragically Hip opened the Man Machine Poem Tour and, as jD puts it, tore the place up. Ten years later, Yer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour gathers three fans who were there - Chris from Kelowna, Dave from Campbell River, and Jay from Edmonton - to t...