The Tragically Hip Podcast Series

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 that sat down five years ago and wrote out what this thing stands for before it got big enough to lose the plot. Keith Dyck's model for the whole enterprise is Terry Fox. Same idea, different hero, different setting - a rock show instead of a run. He is clear-eyed about the gap, too. The Terry Fox Run has raised something north of $850 million since it started. GEDfest is about to cross its first million. He would like the first one under the belt before…

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 like it, and one holdout tolerates it. If you've never heard it, you're in good company. One panelist met it a few months ago. Then the lyric sheet comes out. It opens with somebody holding in a lungful while their father walks by, it stops to watch the election and the trial, and it ends on one word. We. Francois from Quebec City thinks Gord left the door open on purpose. Dave from Montreal has a radio guy's read, and it involves King of the…

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 walking up and asking how they could help. Julie Johnson was in the audience on night one while Keith was on the drum stool, which means she saw something he could not see from up there. A woman came up to her in that tiny bar and started talking about a Canadian art gallery and all the images The Tragically Hip put into people's heads, and whether there was room for that next year. That was the first sign. There have been a lot of them since. This episode is Julie,…

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 higher). Then the live poll in the Facebook group came back 36 percent love it, 46 percent like it, and 13 percent tolerate it, one of the highest tolerate numbers the show has seen. The panel spins a 2000 recording out of Cleveland, Gord singing his heart out, and Chris hears Godzilla in the rhythm section. Then the lyric sheet comes out. Crepuscular rays. Winged elephants. Purple Italians. A fire-and-brimstone preacher shouting about Philadelphia. One panelist…

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 Facebook group came back 46 percent love it and 44 percent like it, plus 3 percent asking what in the hell 'Just As Well' even is. jD's gut says that 3 percent might be a single vote. The panel isn't buying the ten. Patrick from Newmarket has the 1990 tour itinerary out of the "This Is Our Life" book in his head, and Glenn from Melbourne can't see a song they were workshopping on stage stopping at ten nights. Then comes the harder question: where did this one…

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" front to back, and one sentence from Don Martin that changed everything: the only way we could play this live is if we had a charity. Trickle Down is the band at the centre of it, and their origin is not a music story, it is a birthday story. Don picked up a Squier starter kit in his mid-forties with a $300 work bonus burning a hole in his pocket. A 50th birthday jam. Then a 60th birthday jam ten years later, with a singer who had a great voice and never once learned the words. Keith Dick…

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 leftover one percent: that's the margin of error, not three actual humans. Which brings up the thing the panel cannot get past. Fifty-nine live plays, and forty-two of them were show openers. The band walked out and led with this song more nights than not. On the record, it sits fourth. jD calls that a missed opportunity and wants to put the question to the band directly. Jeff from Newmarket has a baseball-lineup theory. Brian…

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 landing somewhere in the 80s or 90s percent, by the panel's own count. Justin's read: run the original poll again with a fan base twice the size it was when it ran, and 143 doesn't happen. It's a callback week too. This same song turned up at Historic Fort York on June 24th, 2006, four songs ahead of 'No Threat,' the track this show covered last week (per setlist.fm). The lyrics get worked over three different ways before anybody lands close to the same…

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 hot. 'No Threat' opens "Yer Favourites", the November 2005 double disc where fans voted on every track except the two nobody had heard yet. This one, and 'The New Maybe' closing disc two. Adam Kasper made both, the same man who made "In Between Evolution" the year before. Track one is the brand new song. Track two is 'Grace, Too'. Kevin has a word for that sequencing decision, and the word is bold. It landed at 85 on the TTHTop40 Countdown, between 'Daredevil' and…

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 of the two Steve Berlin made with the boys. 'Tiger The Lion' landed at number 65 on the TTHTop40 Countdown and not one person in this room is at peace with that. Then there's the poll. Just over half the Facebook group came back with love it, which the panel did not see coming, and close to eight in ten landed at like it or better. For a track this strange, sitting where it sits, that's a number worth chewing on. Somebody in the comments wanted an option between love it and like it. Jeff has…

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 tells August 20th the same way. One was on the floor. One was in the square with 25,000 people. One was on his couch in Brockville with a bottle of wine and a good reason. 🎸 𝗪𝗛𝗢'𝗦 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘 Shamus from Brockville is a teacher whose marriage is punctuated by The Hip turning up uninvited. A wedding present in 1997 from a friend running sound on Another Roadside Attraction put him somewhere he was not supposed to be, then somewhere better. A door held open at a highway rest stop in 2002 put…

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 lakeside deck in upstate New York with a bottle of Macallan 12 on it and a great blue heron that keeps turning up in the shape of an album cover. An arena in Chicago where a man from Detroit stood in a Gord Downie shirt underneath a Tigers jersey, missing the whole thing on purpose, waiting to find out whether two sentences he had typed five days earlier had reached anybody. They had. That is all yer getting. Who's Here Adam from Tampa had never seen The Hip play a note and…

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 sixteen. And Justin from Bridport, who you know from Discovering Downie, and who only got to Ottawa because a stranger with long hair heard "Yer Favourites" playing over the PA at a dirt track in Vermont. Two ticket stories, and neither one lands where you would guess. Shawn's shows up in his inbox, out of a presale nobody has ever really talked about in public, and there is something waiting in the will call envelope that nobody warned him about. Justin's shows up from a man whose name he did not have…

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 table tonight is Shawn from Edmonton. He was at that show. He found out on mic. We're on a Thursday this week, which is the end of the Thursday experiment. Back to Wednesdays next week. It was nice while we had it. 'Emperor Penguin' landed at number 32 on the TTHTop40 Countdown and neither panelist is at peace with it. One of them would have guessed somewhere around 65. The other would have shoved it higher. Nobody splits the difference. So there's that. Then we spin a live version…

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 in their lives. One of them never made it through the doors. The songs first, because the songs are always first. Gino takes 'Poets', the last one of the main set, the one where Gord stopped and told the room about The Hip's first Hamilton gig - a club, zero people, and an owner who told them nobody gets paid until every song gets sung. So they played another hour to an empty room. Ten years and a lifetime later, Gord looked out at a full arena and, the way Gino heard it, said something…

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 from Belleville. The news first, because the news is always first. Jeff from Buffalo came in from a morning run, read the email, and handed his wife the phone because he could not say the words. Dave was getting into his car at Yonge and Eglinton when his whole body sank (and one friend in the group chat skipped the first paragraph and celebrated the new tour - leave it to friends). Jeff from Belleville read it in the front foyer, flashed hot, and told his kids the…

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 were in the building - Brian from Buffalo, Steve from Toronto, Patrick from Newmarket, and Katrusia from Hamilton. (He was there too. He'll get into that another time.) Brian opens with something he says he has never told anyone - not on the Hipbase, not even his wife. He heard the rumour about Gord months before the announcement, and spent that winter connecting dots he did not want to connect. Katrusia heard the news on CBC, which felt fitting. Patrick read the email in a newsroom, surrounded by people 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 nights deep. The city was already celebrating. Then the lights come up and it is 'The Luxury'. Ernie had waited eleven shows to hear it. Jeff from Vaughan, following this band since 1992, can count the times he has heard it live on one hand. Two songs later comes 'Fiddler's Green', and Scott from Huntsville is looking at grown men crying as far as he can see, understanding exactly how the night is going to go. Third song in. They could do whatever they wanted. The roads in are half the story. Everybody got…

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. Next week the shuffle stays on the record: 'Emperor Penguin'. New panel, new poll, the whole nine yards. Enter the Yer Hipstories finale at the Bathhouse (email by August 15): jd@tthpods.com Listen: home.tthpods.com The Gathering in Kingston, August 20-23: jd@tthpods.com GEDfest Toronto tickets, October 17: facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ Support: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40 Community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: instagram.com/tthpods Newsletter: subscribe.tthpods.com…

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 one is a full table - three Hipstories from three corners of the map. Dave from St. Louis made the 13-hour drive one week after hernia surgery, found two tickets through a fellow fan on the Facebook forum after a StubHub snafu, called ahead about a wheelchair, and walked out with penalty box seats 15 rows from the stage. Treated, in his words, like royalty. Dan from Buffalo rode in with his brother Matt - the same brother who took him to his first Hip show at the Aud in 1995 - on the way to London, Hamilton, and…

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 pass the night around the table with jD. Nicole from Winnipeg raised three daughters on this music and lived her whole life in Thunder Bay before Winnipeg claimed her. She loaded two teenagers into the car and drove eight hours west so her girls could finally see the band she had been singing to them since the car seat. Somewhere in the causeway, the opening notes of 'At the Hundredth Meridian' hit, and the cranky seventeen-year-old looked at her mother and got it. Kim from Cambridge has 41…

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 last time he saw the band live, and he spent it with Alan and Chantel, old friends from ten years of Hitmen games and Saddledome nights. His friend Al's text said it best: heavy but celebratory, like we all knew what was happening but we chose to live in the moment. Julie from Calgary hadn't seen The Hip since 1997. The tickets were a first date anniversary present. She and Keith from Calgary went with her parents, still dating, married the next year, and 'Ahead by a Century' was the wedding song.…

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. It's what's troubling us. Fair warning: this one gets emotional. Duxoop tells us what the lyrics did to him last year from a nursing home wheelchair, and Dave tells us about his friend Al — nickname Gus — and the cover band he's fronting at Al's memorial this Friday. Then the whole thing derails beautifully into a full inventory of every animal in the Hip discography. Explicit language. Recorded live on YouTube. On the Panel JD — host…

'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 afternoon nap, found face-value seats for Edmonton five hours before downbeat, and drove up the highway without packing a bag. Paul from Lethbridge talked himself out of the on-sale entirely, spent a fortnight regretting it, then bought behind-the-stage seats on the secondary market and has never regretted that. Steve from Toronto is a cancer survivor. He brought his fiancee to her first proper Hip show and found two old friends sitting directly in front of him. They talk about the email…

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 breath, a room full of strangers crying through 'Courage,' and a final 'Bobcaygeon' with the whole barn lit up. Fair warning — the waterworks come up more than once. Around the Table JD — host, Your Hipster's Reflections from the Final Tour Kirsten (Edmonton) — roughly 20 Hip shows deep; attended both Edmonton nights and Calgary night one. First saw the band on the third Another Roadside Attraction tour. Chris (Edmonton) — about half a dozen shows, going back to an Up to…

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 the building. Amber from Meadow Lake joins long enough to drop the ticket story of the series - her seniors' exercise class watching her land eighth row on the floor through the Tales From The Hip fan club presale, in tears - before the connection gremlins claim her. We hope to hear the rest of it someday. The road to tickets is half the fun. Dave is the lapsed fan brought all the way back - off the bus during the Bob Rock years, pulled in by 'In a World Possessed by the Human…

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 Lou Reed-flat melody that barely distinguishes verse from chorus. Things get spicy on placement. Tracy calls it filler and skips it. Mikk and Jamie agree the song detonates a gorgeous opening run — "Gift Shop," "Springtime in Vienna," "Ahead by a Century," "Don't Wake Daddy," "Flamenco" — and kicks off what Jamie dubs the album's weird second half alongside "Butts Wigglin'" and "Coconut Cream." The Kids in the Hall…

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: Craig from Langley, Tina from Prince George, and Jay from BC - currently in Ottawa, so probably working for CSIS. We're careful what we say. The ticket stories run the full range. Craig and three coworkers all hit Ticketmaster at 10 a.m. sharp and every one of them scored - no bots, no drama. Tina borrowed a friend's Amex presale code, landed 13th row at the back, then got a phone call: Ryan was trading her his row seven, side of stage seats, because…

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 Fuck," and "At Transformation" — to the craft behind the show: the band huddling close around Gord like a bar band again, the retrospective set lists that pulled from nearly half their catalog, and the stripped-down staging that only fully landed watching the final concert on TV. Along the way there's talk of secondary-market ticket gouging and dynamic pricing, the pride of a country coming together over a…

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 take it from soup to nuts: hearing the news, chasing the tickets, and living the night. The ticket stories alone are worth the price of admission. Dave had seen The Hip 19 times and never sweated a ticket - until dynamic pricing and the bots turned this on-sale into the most stressful of his life. Chris dumb-lucked into fabulous seats through a venue voucher he had to drive to Victoria to redeem - and ended up on CBC, Global, CTV, and CNNalong the way, posting his mileage…

A side-two burner with a secret third verse? The panel digs into the 1988 Horseshoe debut and discovers 'Every Time You Go' was once a song called 'Holding Out'. Episode Summary The wheel said 'Every Time You Go', and the wheel does not lie. This week, The Tragically Hip On Shuffle takes on the side-two rocker from "Up to Here" (1989) - played live 61 times between July 15th, 1988 and June 25th, 2004, three of them as encores, and ranked #93 of 169 on the fan countdown, sandwiched between 'Heaven Is a Better Place Today' and 'When the Weight Comes Down'. jD gathers Andrew from Winnipeg, Adam from South Tampa, and Daryl from Belleville to debate, discuss, and dissect it. The listening party spins the demo from the "Up to Here" box set - a skeleton with muscle, as jD puts it, alive but not quite finished. Then comes the find of the night: both Daryl and Adam independently dug up the song's live debut at the Horseshoe Tavern, July 15th, 1988, where Gord Downie introduces it as 'Holding Out', dedicates it to…

A song this beloved, played live only 31 times? The panel unpacks the mystery, the mischief, and the cat at the centre of 'The Darkest One'. Episode Summary The wheel landed on a big one. This week, The Tragically Hip On Shuffle pulls 'The Darkest One' - track three and the third single from "In Violet Light" (June 11th, 2002), and number 30 on the Tragically Hip Top 40 countdown. jD gathers Kirk from Chino, Sean from Toronto, and Duxoop from Toledo around the table to debate, discuss, and dissect it. The tale of the tape raises the episode's central puzzle: first played live December 31st, 2001, last played August 1st, 2003, and just 31 performances all-time. Why did a single this strong vanish from the setlists? The panel has theories - Gord Downie's punishing high notes, his one-of-a-kind delivery timing, and the karaoke bravery both would demand. There's a listen to a formidable live version from Vancouver, September 20th, 2002, a close read of the lyrics (a darling sky, not a darkening one - and the…

The shuffle lands on *'Bobcaygeon'* - a love song built on a race riot, and the track one fan ties to losing Gord Downie. --- "This is the song I think of when I think about coming to terms with the fact that Gord Downie was going to die." Dave from Montreal --- Episode Summary The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream is back after a week off, and the shuffle lands on *'Bobcaygeon'*, the acoustic-leaning centrepiece of "Phantom Power" and one of the most beloved songs in the entire **Tragically Hip** catalogue. The panel - **Chris from Seattle**, **Greg from the Kootenays**, and **Dave from Montreal** - takes it apart from every angle. They dig into the constellation imagery, the buried 1933 Christie Pitts riot the lyric nods to, the much-debated "Aryan twang" line, and the way **Gord Downie** humanizes a cop caught in the middle of it all. First impressions split the room between love at first listen and slow-burn grower. From there the conversation moves through the song's placement between *'Save the…

One night in El Paso, the cops go into the crowd - and somehow, 32 years later, we're still unpacking what that means. This week on The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream, the shuffle landed on 'Yawning or Snarling' from "Day for Night" - and it pulled 76% Love It in the community poll. Add in the Like Its and you're sitting at 95%. Not bad for track four on a record that doesn't exactly hand you easy entry points. jD was joined by the most international panel the show has ever assembled: Andy from St. Thomas, Glynn from Melbourne, and Thomas from Oxford - who tuned in at 1 a.m. on his birthday, which is exactly the kind of dedication this community runs on. The conversation went deep. Bass as MVP. The panning of that slide guitar in headphones. The way Gord built entire worlds by changing two words between verses - glaring to throbbing, day to night - and what that does to the light in El Paso, literally and otherwise. Glynn brought a photographer's eye to 'the bladder of light' and the science of bat…

The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream: Country Day One random shuffle lands on the last song on "We Are the Same," and the panel ends up arguing about Bob Rock, Canada Day, and whether Gord wrote a love letter to his producer. Episode Summary On this week's The Tragically Hip On Shuffle live stream, jD and the panel pull 'Country Day', the closing track from 2009's "We Are the Same," and dig into one of the most debated records in the catalogue. The conversation circles the Bob Rock production question first: the smooth backing vocals, the strings, the sense that the band got pushed to the edges of their own album. From there it opens up into three competing readings of the song itself. One hears a straight-up love story. One builds a detailed Indigenous and Canada Day interpretation, rooted in life beside the Alderville First Nation. One reads the whole thing as a coded note from Gord Downie to Bob Rock, threaded through to 'Something More' on "Lustre Parfait." Along the way the group gets into Gord's…

The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream: Wheat Kings A campfire singalong that's secretly about a wrongful conviction, a cassette thrown out a car window, and a tiny Eiffel Tower in Saskatchewan. EPISODE SUMMARY This week on The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream, the wheel landed on 'Wheat Kings', and I had a couple of Andrews riding shotgun to break it down. This is the song the whole country sings around a campfire without ever clocking that it's about David Milgaard, wrongfully convicted of the murder of Gail Miller and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Andrew from Winnipeg brought the timeline receipts (Kim Campbell, the CBC, the wild detail that Milgaard walked free in April 1992, months before "Fully Completely" even dropped) plus a story about his mom chucking the cassette out the car window somewhere in the Alberta mountains. Andrew from Tampa brought the live recording from The Fillmore, October 24, 2000, and the case for 'Wheat Kings' as a pure summertime staple. We get into the…

This week on The Tragically Hip On Shuffle, we cracked open 'Coffee Girl' - the fourth track and second single off "We Are the Same" (2009), produced by Bob Rock. On the TTHTop40 Countdown, it clocks in at number 53. It's been played live 78 times, last appearing on the final tour on July 30, 2016. Joining me for this one were two members of west coast tribute act Gift Shop - Craig from Langley and Ian from Maple Ridge - plus returning guest Tim from Columbus, host of the Dig Me Out Podcast. Two-fifths of Gift Shop, for the record. You can't reduce that fraction without going to decimal points, and you just can't do that. What we got into: The pre-release Bathhouse recording - recorded April 6, 2009, the day before the album dropped - was our jumping-off point, and it unlocked a lot. Organ instead of trumpet. A looser, jammier feel. Multiple gaffes and weirdness. And somehow, the bones of the song were all already there. From there the conversation ranged wide. Tim came in with a clear-eyed critique - the…

The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream: 'Let's Stay Engaged' The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream: 'Let's Stay Engaged' jD, Alan from Federal Way, and Justin from Bridport unpack 'Let's Stay Engaged' from "Trouble at the Hen House" - and the band's new live album announcement. Episode Summary The shuffle lands on 'Let's Stay Engaged', track 10 from The Tragically Hip's 1996 record "Trouble at the Hen House" - a non-single that lived almost exclusively as an encore (19 of 25 live plays). jD welcomes Alan from Federal Way and Justin from Bridport for a wide-ranging live stream that travels well past the song itself. The panel opens on favourite last tracks across the discography, with Alan championing 'Country Day' and Justin making the case for 'Machine' as the band's final gift. The conversation moves through the Hip Handbook - the newly-launched free fan resource at thehiphandbook.tthpods.com - and into a wider question about why American audiences took so long to catch on. Alan, a…

podList 7: The Classics - Shownotes podList 7: The Classics - 18 Hip Covers from 1987 Through "Day for Night" podList 7 is here. 18 tribute artists tackle The Tragically Hip's earliest era - from the 1987 EP through "Day for Night." Summary: The seventh installment of podList drops with a focus on the foundational years of The Tragically Hip's catalogue - the 1987 self-titled EP through 1994's "Day for Night." 18 tribute acts and solo artists from across the Hip cover community contributed tracks, spanning deep cuts and signature songs alike. The lineup includes Jay Hubbard on 'Little Bones,' Duxoop Douglas on 'Courage,' The Gracefully Hip on 'Grace, Too,' Forever Hip on '38 Years Old,' and Tragically Al closing things out with 'Opiated.' Two tracks each appear for 'Nautical Disaster' and 'Fiddler's Green' - a happy accident of the open submission format that lets listeners hear how different artists approach the same source material. podList exists because tribute bands and solo Hip interpreters keep the…

A Forest Of Whispering Speakers - The Book Two writers. Ten years of trust. One Tragically Hip catalogue. Episode two is the story of how the book got written without flattening the band. Episode Summary A Forest Of Whispering Speakers is the oral history of the Theatre Aquarius world premiere of It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken, the new musical built on the music of The Tragically Hip. Act II: The Book is the writers' room episode — how an exile's journey gets shaped into a story, and how Hip songs become the emotional grammar of that story without ever turning it into a band biography or a jukebox musical. Host jD sits down with co-writers Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, with producer Michael Rubinoff and Tragically Hip manager Jake Gold stepping in to frame the bigger picture. The episode opens at a campfire in Prince Edward County in 2015, traces the ten-year partnership that built King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild at Soulpepper, and lands on the two different doors each writer walked through…

podList SIX – A Fan-Made Hip Mixtape From the Deep Cuts Up Welcome to podList SIX, the sixth annual fan-powered Tragically Hip mixtape — lovingly curated, courageously sequenced, and now spun into podcast gold. Each year, listeners submit tracks based on a theme. This year’s twist? No Top 40 allowed. That’s right: every single pick comes from songs ranked #169 to #41 in The Tragically Hip Top Forty Countdown. This isn’t just a playlist — it’s a podList. One part mixtape, one part podcast. A celebration of the underdog tracks, the deep cuts, the personal anthems that never quite cracked the upper charts but still crack your heart wide open. TRACK LISTING: ‘Gift Shop’ (feat. Justin St. Louis) – In View Thomas de Bock – Save the Planet “Tragically” Al Lunt – The Luxury ‘Fight in the Dog’ – Don’t Wake Daddy ‘Evil Tom Hanks’ – Are We Family Jeff Tucker – The Rules Kirk Lane – A Beautiful Thing Shaun Robertson – Pretend ‘Little Bones’ – Twist My Arm ‘Blue Jean Skier’ – Putting Down ‘Gift Shop’ (Solo track redux) –…

The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream: Looking For A Place To Happen A Halifax 2015 live cut, a 40-person Off Ramp show in 1991, and a panel that pulls the deep American Hipstory out of "Fully Completely." Episode Overview This week on The Tragically Hip On Shuffle, host jD spins 'Looking For A Place To Happen' - track two from the 1992 Chris Tsangarides-produced "Fully Completely." It is the sequencer's burden to live between 'Courage' and 'At The Hundredth Meridian,' and the panel is here to figure out what it's hauling. The roundtable is a North American one this time. Dave from Montreal joins jD alongside two lifelong friends and bandmates, Greg from Tacoma and Chris from Seattle, who have been playing music together since 1981 and watching The Tragically Hip every chance they got. Greg's first Hip show was a 40-person night at The Off Ramp in 1991, opening for The Sundays, where Gord opened 'Looking For A Place To Happen' with a frogman-for-the-cops story instead of a killer-whale-tank one. Chris…

Get ready for a blast from the fucking past! We’re revisiting the first five years of podList episodes and bringing them back to the feed—your chance to re-live the magic of TTH fan covers, back-to-back. We’re talking incredible fucking renditions of classic tracks by The Tragically Hip tracks brought to life by listeners just like you. So there’s that. Each year, devoted Hip fans from all walks of life have picked up their guitars, banjos, pianos, and yes, even synthasysers to reimagine The Hip’s legendary catalog. It’s a celebration of artistry, community, and the music that unites us. So there’s that. And don’t forget, podList SIX is just around the corner on May 26th. But first, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Listen, enjoy, and maybe even start practicing—your song could be featured next! Track Listing: The Stranger - Maria King Lofty Pines - Tragically Al Trick Rider - Darrin Cappe Vancouver Divorce - Craig/ jD Yer Ashore - Kirk Lane Crater - Craig/Justin Canada Geese - Lifte Gone - Gerald McGrath…

The panel digs into a quiet, jammy deep cut from "In Violet Light" - and finds a father-daughter scene, a Bahamas-recorded slow burn, and one of the most conversational lyrics in the catalogue. Episode Overview This week on The Tragically Hip On Shuffle, host jD pulls 'Throwing Off Glass' - track six from the 2002 Hugh Padgham-produced "In Violet Light." Joining the virtual campfire are returning panelists Adam from Tampa, Andrew from Winnipeg, and Tyler from Etobicoke, who bring opening picks for favourite last song on a Hip album: 'Opiated,' 'The New Maybe,' and a tie between 'Impossibility' and 'Machine.' The conversation lands on a song that rewards a closer listen. The panel reads it as Gord in the car with his daughter, watching stoop-shouldered teens on a corner, trading new vocabulary back and forth - exquisite, iridescent, barbarous threats. Andrew points out the song feels jammed into existence rather than written, with the title phrase landing like a riff Gord caught on the fly. Adam zeroes in on…

Get ready for a blast from the fucking past! We’re revisiting the first five years of podList episodes and bringing them back to the feed—your chance to re-live the magic of TTH fan covers, back-to-back. We’re talking incredible fucking renditions of classic tracks by The Tragically Hip tracks brought to life by listeners just like you. So there’s that. Each year, devoted Hip fans from all walks of life have picked up their guitars, banjos, pianos, and yes, even synthasysers to reimagine The Hip’s legendary catalog. It’s a celebration of artistry, community, and the music that unites us. So there’s that. And don’t forget, podList SIX is just around the corner on May 26th. But first, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Listen, enjoy, and maybe even start practicing—your song could be featured next! Track Listing: In View - Shemus Gunn Morning Moon - Uzbekistani Denzel Lake Fever - Fandom Power It Can't Be Nashville Every Night - Tristan Armstrong Silver Jet - Smug Rooster The Last Recluse - Beej It's a Good…

A Forest Of Whispering Speakers - The Idea A new musical featuring the music of The Tragically Hip is about to open in Hamilton. Episode one is the story of how it got there - from one phone call to a world premiere. Episode summary A Forest Of Whispering Speakers is the brand new podcast from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series, charting the world premiere of "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken" at Theatre Aquarius. The musical is built on the music of The Tragically Hip and tells the story of an exiled Iraqi journalist building a new life in Kingston, Ontario. Act I: The Idea is the origin episode - the cold-call, the pitch, the band Zoom, the moment a single CBC story unlocked the whole concept. Host jD sits down with manager Jake Gold and producer Michael Rubinoff ("Come From Away") to trace how a Tragically Hip musical went from a polite email to a full production. Along the way, three lifelong theatre fans - Jen Towndrow, Armand Baksh-Zarate, and Autumn Tuffin-McDonald - help frame what makes a jukebox…

Join Greg and Jamie as they celebrate the wonderful world of the Tragically Hip. This episode is fully & completely composed of fan submissions. Listen to your favourite Hip tracks in a whole new way! Evil Tom Hanks - Montreal Fifty Mission - When the Weight Comes Down Craig Rogers & Yvette Drews - Now For Plan A Totally Hip - The Luxury Roadside Attraction - Ouch Shamus Gunn - Get Back Again Field of Porters - Gus: The Polar Bear from Central Park Mark & Norah - Flamenco Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Greg and Jamie as they celebrate the wonderful world of the Tragically Hip. This episode is fully & completely composed of fan submissions. Listen to your favourite Hip tracks in a whole new way! Grace, Too - Tim Porterfield In View - Shemus Gunn Looking for a Place to Happen - 50 Mission Lake Fever - Rico Borrego Ahead By A Century - Broadtree Scared - Cory Smith/Steve Cameron Poeti - Luca Taddia It Can’t Be Nashville Every Night - Tristan Armstrong Fully Completely - Craig Dougan Bobcaygeon - Kevin Foster Apartment Song - Jordan Venn Daredevil - Craig Rogers Chagrin Falls - The Strictly Hip Fiddler’s Green - The Tristones Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

All the best of the season from Greg & Jamie! Enjoy the work of Hip tribute bands and fans alike. Thugs - Myles Erickson Something On - Rico Borrego Every Time You Go - The Tragically Hits Little Bones - Simply Hip Poets - Shamus Gunn Wheat Kings - Adam Ruzzo The Stanger - Maria King Emperor Penguin - Jamie Dew & Jason Kirby Scared - Craig & Mark Rogers Trick Rider - Darrin Cappe Ahead by a Century - Pineo Loeb Thompson Girl - Roadside Attraction Grace, Too - Fifty Mission Fiddler's Green - Dean Hutchings The Depression Suite - The Strictly Hip Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Fully & Completely: Redux Man Machine Poem The last record. "Man Machine Poem" arrived in June 2016 wrapped in the worst news imaginable - and somehow it was still everything. Episode Summary: jD and Greg LeGros sit under a pear tree - bees and all - for the final entry in Fully & Completely's full Tragically Hip discography run. The album in question is "Man Machine Poem", the Hip's fourteenth and last studio record, released June 17th, 2016. Produced by Kevin Drew and Dave Hamelin, it arrived weeks after the band announced Gord Downie's glioblastoma diagnosis - though almost everything on it was written before that news broke. What jD and Greg dig into here is not just a final album. It's a listen to a band that sounds revitalized. That sounds, somehow, free. Track by track they work through all ten songs - 'Man', 'In a World Possessed by the Human Mind', 'What Blue', 'In Sarnia', 'Here, in the Dark', 'Great Soul', 'Tired as Fuck', 'Hot Mic', 'Ocean Next', and 'Machine' - unpacking the lyrical weight, the…