Searching For The Tragically Hip

It’s been almost eight years since I stood in an arena full of Tragically Hip fans, singing my heart out.

On August 20, 2016, nearly 12 million Canadians, almost one-third of the country, watched the final Tragically Hip concert live. People packed bars, threw house parties, watched at community centres, churches, and social clubs. Three thousand Montrealers gathered to watch at a street party on Monkland Ave. in NDG.

I was one of the 6,000 people in the rink in Kingston, Ontario that night, along with my sister, Amy. I had made it to 7 other shows on the final tour, travelling (“crying my way across Canada,” I called it) as far west as Calgary and Winnipeg.

After hearing the news of lead singer Gord Downie’s terminal cancer diagnosis, I got tickets for as many concerts as I could and went across the country to say goodbye. That show in Kingston is a night I’ll never forget, and one I revisit frequently in my mind. Unlike the other “last” shows I attended, this one was, as the CBC called it, a “National Celebration.”

Paul Langlois, Gord Downie, and Gord Sinclair of the Tragically Hip – Clifton Park, NY, November 2012. PHOTO: Dave Kaufman

The entire tour was a tightrope act, hoping that Downie would be well enough to make it to the final show in Kingston. With thoughts of Terry Fox (who had to abandon his cross-country trek as he passed North Bay, Ontario) in my head the entire summer, seeing Gord and the guys cross the finish line made the last show a triumph.

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It was also hotter than a sauna in that arena. Between the heat wave affecting Kingston, the wild crowd, and those TV lights, I have never been warmer at a rock show in my life.

In Maclean’s Magazine, Joseph Boyden wrote that it was so hot at the K-Rock Centre that night that “if you’d walked in mid-concert, it might have seemed you were walking into the mouth of a panting and overheated dog.”

Dave and Amy Kaufman at the final Tragically Hip concert in Kingston, Ontario, August 2016. PHOTO: Dave Kaufman

I miss the Hip.

I miss the anticipation when a new album would come out and be followed by a tour. I miss road trips with my sister and friends to see them at summer festivals. I miss travelling through northeastern cities and towns to see them play in theatres, high school gyms, and out-of-the-way bars.

From the first time I got on an overnight bus to see them open up the Phantom Power tour at the Wetlands Preserve in SoHo (I swear I can hear myself singing along to “Grace, Too” on the bootleg), I knew I was on to something special. Seeing them live, no matter where, was truly my happiest place.

And oh do I miss Gord Downie.

I miss his stage presence, I miss his end-of-song rants, often full of hints of whatever song or poem he was working on for his next project. I miss him speaking out about the things that mattered (man, would his voice be beneficial now). I miss how he would make me feel like he was performing just for me, which is a talent very few performers can pull off. I miss the one-on-one time I spent with him, however short or long it was. But he always said “Hi Dave” and each time I’d inwardly lose my shit, never believing that he actually committed my name to memory.

I’ll forever hold dear my last personal interaction with him, on their tour bus very late one night in Quebec City after they played the Festival d’Été du Quebec in 2015. 

“Man, you can really move,” he told me, saying he watched me dancing during their Parc de la Francophonie show.

Without missing a beat I replied. “Well, Gord,” I said with complete earnestness, “you really move me.”

“Dave. I’m Yers – GD.” Photo of Downie and guitarist Paul Langlois from The Tragically Hip’s Feb. 1999 Molson Centre concert in Montreal. PHOTO: Dave Kaufman

Most of all, I miss how hearing The Hip’s music in concert used to feed my soul. At every single concert I’ve been to since that last Hip show, there’s always been a moment when I find myself lost in the music, watching Mick Jagger or Joel Plaskett or a random singer at a dive bar and wondering, dreaming, wishing that I was at a Hip show. Not wanting to be Captain Bringdown, it’s a feeling I usually keep to myself. But it’s real.

When something brings you so much happiness, you’re bound to feel a massive void when it disappears. 

You yelled in my ear, this music speaks to me

– The Tragically Hip, “Escape is at Hand for the Travellin’ Man”

On a chilly Friday evening last January, François Latulippe — rhythm guitarist for The Gracefully Hip, a Quebec City-based Hip cover band — stood on the stage at the Corona (the corporate name is The Beanfield, but old habits die hard) Theatre in Montreal. The band was playing their final song of the evening, “Long Time Running,” a ballad from the Hip’s 1991 album Road Apples.

“I don’t know if you noticed,” said Latulippe, 48, in a recent conversation, “but during ‘Long Time Running’ I closed my eyes and I was just feeling the moment. I tried to let it sink in and tried to remember it as best I could. And the photographer that was there took the picture that captured it. I remember, it’s exactly the moment that I was, you know, up in the air with Gord.”

I had never heard of The Gracefully Hip, but I was in the audience that night with my crew of Hip-loving friends. We were no more than 50 feet away from Latulippe as he strummed and soaked up the atmosphere. It was a wonderful night both for the group and for a Montreal audience clamouring for a chance to come together around the music of a band that has been the soundtrack to so many of our lives.

It had been a long time since Latulippe and singer Fred Fortin-Tremblay had fronted a Hip cover band called Nautical Disaster that toured Quebec and New Brunswick bars and showrooms in the mid-to-late-1990s. Their return to the stage at the Corona show last January, says Latulippe, was well worth the wait.

Latulippe and Fortin-Tremblay are joined in the Gracefully Hip by bass player Fred Cloutier, drummer Frank Lachance, and lead guitarist Louis Fernandez. It was Lachance who reached out to Latulippe in early 2023.

The Gracefully Hip perform at Montreal’s Corona Theatre, January 2024. PHOTO: Mathieu Chevalier

“He called me and said, ‘Man, you know, we never jammed together back in the day. And I always dreamed of doing a project with you. I want to reform the tribute to the Tragically Hip with you and François Fortin-Tremblay.’”

Lachance then told Latulippe that he also had a connection at Evenko and that the concert promoters were interested in putting on a show with a Hip cover band. He said Evenko was confident that they could pack the Corona Theatre.

“My God,” beamed Latulippe. “I told him ‘I’m in.’ It seemed like a crazy idea at first, but it really came together.”

It was a crazy idea because Latulippe, Fortin, Lachance, and Cloutier had long given up their dreams of being in a band and playing sold-out concerts. Only Fernandez actively works as a professional musician, and he was the only one who wasn’t familiar with the Hip until Latulippe approached him and played him some of the music.

“He didn’t really know the Tragically Hip,” Latulippe said. “He liked four or five songs that he knew from the radio. But when I came to him with this project, and then I made him listen to them, and he said ‘It’s amazing. It’s a blend of all the bands I like.’”

“He’s a really good guitar player,” Latulippe said. “He plays all the time with the big names in Quebec. But we (the rest of the band) haven’t played a concert for twenty-something years. So we had this little concert in Quebec City in a small venue. About 50 people were there. And it was also to get some photos and video to promote the (Corona) concert.” Most importantly, it gave the band the confidence they needed that they could really put on a show that did The Hip justice.

Prior to forming the band, Latulippe scoured YouTube to “do some research on other Hip cover bands that were out there, and to confirm if there is a place for us in the market.” He said that the time spent looking at other bands showed him both what and what not to aspire to.

“I think that there are some bands are just almost parodies,” Latulippe said. “That’s something that I really don’t like.” He mentions Buffalo’s The Strictly Hip as a group that showed how to do it properly, and that this could be a successful endeavour. “They’re from the United States and they play like a hundred shows a year.”

Before seeing The Gracefully Hip, my experience with Tragically Hip cover bands consisted of one stunningly disappointing evening. The same group of friends I was with at the Corona had gone to a bar in the farming town of Lachute last summer to see a band that left the four of us underwhelmed, and a little sad.

“Have they ever even seen the Hip live?” I asked my friend Michelle at one point, probably sounding way too big for my britches.

When the singer politely introduced “At The Hundredth Meridian,” I exclaimed, bordering on angry, “That’s not how you do it! You gotta sell the crowd on it, like a carnival barker.”

“It’s a big black band of evil, circling the globe, through Bangkok, Thailand, Lawrence, Kansas and Brandon, Manitoba,” Gord Downie used to exclaim, nearly screeching to the rapt crowd that they were now at the “HUNDREDTH MER-IH-DEE-UN, WHERE THE GREAT-PLAINS BEEEE-GIN!”

We, however, were on Main St. in Lachute. Those great plains had never felt so far away.

To be clear, Fred Fortin of The Gracefully Hip didn’t do that either. In fact, up until the band broke into “Hundredth” I didn’t realize that the singer (and in fact, the entire band) was Francophone.

The Gracefully Hip and the appreciative crowd at the Corona Theatre, January 2024. PHOTO: Mathieu Chevalier

Fortin captured some of Downie’s physicality but did not come across as trying to impersonate him. As an extremely devoted fan of the Hip, I can’t say how much that is appreciated. To see a Downie impersonator in a metallic suit and feathered hat like some late-era Elvis impersonator on the Vegas Strip is sheer nightmare fodder. I went to that show looking to recapture a feeling. Seeing a cosplay of Gord Downie waving a hanky and fighting with a mic stand would not have achieved that end.

Latulippe told me they very intentionally did not want to copy the Hip. “It’s part of the philosophy we have. We’re all of the idea of not doing it note for note, it’s more of a cover band doing just Tragically Hip songs than a usual tribute that wants to just copy. We don’t dress like them. We don’t want to be exactly on the same (musical) notes. We are a bit heavier, I think. We have more distortion. You know, just, there’s some bands where you don’t have a choice. Like you couldn’t have a tribute to Kiss if they’re not dressed up like Kiss. But if you are doing a Tragically Hip cover band, it’s the vibe that’s important.”

To me, that vibe is what The Gracefully Hip were able to achieve that evening with success. They expressed their passion for the Hip and were able to bring 900 fans along for the ride.

Their love of the music was palpable, and the crowd fed off of it, singing, dancing, and celebrating the music of a band that holds a lot of room in their hearts. From the full balcony to a packed dance floor, there was a lot of love in the building that night.

“It was magic,” said Latulippe. “I was looking at the pictures (from the concert) and some of the pictures were taken from behind the stage. You see all the people in the crowd and I went and zoomed in and so many people had big smiles, not just listening to the concert, but big, big smiles on their faces.”

– The Tragically Hip, “Flamenco”

Bilal Butt, host of the Afternoon Rock Ride on Montreal’s CHOM-FM, was in the audience and came away impressed by the musicianship of the band.

“The recreation of the songs was almost perfect,” he told me one recent evening. “On some songs if you closed your eyes you would think the band (The Hip) was there. But also, it made me realize how much I miss The Hip. I have never seen a tribute to The Hip, and it’s been what, almost eight years since the last concert? I miss the interplay between Gord Downie and the fans. The Hip used to take it to a different level. I really enjoyed The Gracefully Hip, and they performed the songs beautifully, but the show made me really miss the feeling I used to have at a Hip show.”

The Strictly Hip at the Waterhouse in Saranac, NY, February, 2024. PHOTO: Dave Kaufman

“To have 300 people in a room all agreeing on something in 2024 is a beautiful thing.” Jeremy Hoyle, lead singer of Hip cover band The Strictly Hip exclaimed to the Waterhole, a Saranac Lake, NY bar.

It was close to midnight, and nearing the end of The Strictly Hip’s final set of the evening.

I drove the 2 hours from Montreal with my buddy Paul, another die-hard Hip fan with whom I first saw the Hip back in high school, and nearly a dozen times since then. Paul was also with me at the bar in Lachute, and at the Gracefully Hip.

It was carnival week in Saranac Lake, and it was cramped and hot in the bar. The familiar smell of now-legal weed wafted in through the open windows near the stage. Men in hockey jerseys sang and danced; a woman in a skeleton costume rhythmically danced in circles to the music at the front of the room. People shouted “Hip, Hip Hip” between songs.

Hoyle sounds just like Downie, but I never got the feeling he was trying to be him. What I felt in that room was a love of the music, with Hoyle, as maestro, urging the crowd to “sing loud and play air guitar” and celebrate the songs of The Tragically Hip, together.

“I often think of the audience at our shows like a congregation more than concert-goers,” Hoyle told me over the phone, a week after the show. “There’s a reverence for the music, and we know it can be campy if it’s not done right. We’re doing our best to do it right, and to make you feel proud of the music.”

For fans of the Hip’s deep cuts, this show was a treat. I heard songs that I only ever expect to hear when I play them in my car. When would one ever hear the 9-minute “The Depression Suite” short of seeing the Hip on their 2009 We Are The Same tour? Phantom Power’s “Membership,” Trouble At The Henhouse’s “Don’t Wake Daddy,” even the unreleased “Montreal,” a song about the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, were played.

Jeremy Hoyle “gets” it, and has the voice and passion to share the music in a way that felt practically evangelical. He tells me he feels a great responsibility to the songs, to the fans, and most especially to honour the legacy of his favourite band.

“When people come up to me after a show, it’s rarely to say ‘You guys are great!’ But instead it’s ‘Thank you. Thank you for keeping the music alive.’ It’s like I’m holding a crystal ball containing everyone’s emotions and attachments to the band and I just don’t want to drop it.”

The Tragically Hip’s Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois, and Gord Downie perform in Calgary, AB on their final tour, August 2016. PHOTO: Dave Kaufman

When Paul Langlois became The Tragically Hip’s rhythm guitarist, the band had written very few of their own songs. 

“We played a lot of covers when we started out, Stones b-sides (“Off The Hook,” “2000 Light Years From Home”) and other things,” he told me in a recent conversation from his home in Kingston.

A quick look at a set list from 1985 shows them playing “Treat Her Right,” “Sweet Jane,” “Susie Q,” and “Baby Please Don’t Go,” to name just a few.

“This was until (bass player) Gord Sinclair convinced us that writing our own songs was the key to bringing us more success. When we started we’d close our shows with (Them’s) “Gloria” or (The Yardbirds) “Train Kept a Rollin’.” But when we wrote “All Canadian Surf Club,” we started to close more often with that.”

When The Hip started to break big in Canada, several cover bands began to appear on the Ontario touring scene. Langlois told me he “found it hard to understand in the early days, and was initially weirded out.” He says he changed his mind in 2018 when he “gradually came out of the fog” after the death of Downie in October 2017.

Along with being bandmates for over 30 years, Langlois and Downie were best friends, too.

“Now I think it’s cool to picture a room full of people singing along to our songs,” he said. “It’s very flattering.” When sent a link of some songs from the Gracefully Hip concert, he replied by email that “This is very cool to me, a Quebec Hip cover band. They sound great too, especially those guitars (but I’m biased that way!).”

Langlois says he keeps tabs on the Strictly Hip on social media and is impressed by their faithfulness to the music.

“I have a lot of respect for The Strictly Hip and follow what they do. And they seem to have a great respect for the music.”

Langlois now tours with his own eponymously named band and released his third solo album last year. You can count on him to play three or four Hip songs at each show.

And I’ve seen Hip bassist Gord Sinclair live, who occasionally performs with Canadian rockers The Trews. He also plays Hip songs at his shows.

At first, Langlois felt uneasy fronting a band. For 30-plus years, the eyes of the audience were on Downie. Singing the main vocals on “Grace, Too” or “Wheat Kings” wasn’t natural for him, but he now says he feels differently.

“Every time I sing a Hip song with The Paul Langlois Band I feel more and more comfortable. And, I feel like I’m doing my part to keep the music alive.”

You were far more unifying than you know

— The Tragically Hip, “Toronto #4”

A fan-made sign at the final Hip show in Hamilton, ON, August 2016. PHOTO: Dave Kaufman

There was a moment years ago at a Hip show that’s etched in my mind.

In 2012, A friend and I drove from Montreal to Hamilton to see the final concert at Ivor Wynne Stadium, the decrepit now former home of the CFL’s Tiger-Cats. While I much preferred to see them in smaller confines, there was something special about seeing them in a part of the country where the Hip were so big that they could play in a football stadium.

It was an excellent set list, and anytime that “Fiddler’s Green” was played you considered yourself lucky to be there. But, it’s the version of “Wheat Kings” from that night that stayed with me.

I’ve heard this song live dozens of times. I remember the first time, in Highgate, Vt. on the Another Roadside Attraction tour in 1997, with Ashley MacIssac joining on his fiddle.

That night, however, the song was different. On the second verse of the song, Paul Langlois stood up to his mic and sang. The crowd cheered, as it did for Paul whenever he’d sing. But normally Paul would sing harmonies or backing vocals. Very rarely, if ever, was he thrust into the spotlight, let alone in a cavernous stadium.

Several years ago I asked Langlois about that moment. He told me that Downie had casually asked him before the show if he’d mind singing the verse. There was no rhyme or reason, Langlois told me. I don’t know if they did it prior, and not sure if it happened again. But in that moment, it served the song. And showcased Langlois’ ability to sing it. 

The song’s final verse, sung by Downie, concludes with the line “They add, ‘You can’t be fond of living in the past, ’Cause if you are, then there’s no way that you’re gonna last.’”

Today, Langlois fronts his own band, writes his own songs, and sings all the verses on Wheat Kings.

I think Gord Downie would be thrilled that their songs continue to be sung by so many.