When Canada's most beloved band set out to conquer the USA.
On Further Review: The Tragically Hip - Live at the Roxy
Canada's most beloved band never quite conquered the USA, but an archival live recording from three decades ago shows that nothing was going to stop them from trying…
About a week and a half ago, I reviewed The Tragically Hip’s Live at the Roxy, a complete live show recorded in Los Angeles in 1991.
Weeks before The Tragically Hip took their final bow with a historic farewell performance in August of 2016, Los Lobos saxophonist Steve Berlin was asked to “eulogize” the band for the Canadian publication Maclean’s. Berlin, who produced two of the Ontario quintet’s mid-career albums, offered that he couldn’t think of a U.S. act that’s struck as deep of a nerve in the American consciousness as The Hip did in their native Canada. Even Springsteen, Berlin mused, doesn’t work as a parallel. North of the border, meanwhile, Canadian giants like Neil Young and Rush haven’t resonated in quite the same way, either. In fact, Rush’s manager once said as much to Tragically Hip drummer Johnny Fay.
You can read the whole review here, as well as listen to my new mix on Spotify:
I would also highly recommend Pitchfork’s review of late Hip frontman Gord Downie’s 2016 solo album Secret Path (stream the whole film down below). I pitched them on writing that review myself, but on reading the piece they went with, I was actually happy they hadn’t assigned it to me because there’s no way I would’ve come close to the job that contributor Brad Nelson did. I’m not one for performative modesty, but I have no issue giving credit where due. And when I see an album get the best possible treatment in print, I don’t care if I’m not the one who wrote it — I’m just happy to see that there’s now a take on the record that does the music justice and puts it in its proper context.
Not to mention that the response to my new review has been quite positive. Fans on the Tragically Hip reddit page have been enthusiastic, and this reaction felt especially gratifying:
As it turns out, I saw The Tragically Hip live on July 4th, 2015 in Canandaigua, a town located in Western New York’s Finger Lakes region, about 25 minutes south of Rochester. It was the fourth and final time I ever saw them live, and probably the time I enjoyed seeing them most.
The venue, CMAC (which I thought stood for Canandaigua Music and Arts Center but has a much clunkier corporate handle) is easily one of the most pleasant concert settings I’ve ever experienced. It’s a “shell”-style indoor-outdoor open-air amphitheater with excellent acoustics and lawn seating that faces Canandaigua Lake, which lies ever so slightly out of view if you’re way up in the back, but the scenery is still lovely on a summer night.
I was quite surprised that late Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie didn’t say anything about playing in the States on Independence Day, considering how much he enjoyed referencing American locations and lore in his lyrics (Buffalo, New Orleans, Nashville, Ry Cooder, Willie Nelson, Kurt Cobain, etc), and considering how much history the band has in this area.
The attendance was really thin. I remember wondering if there were even 1,000 people there — and that was after they dropped the ticket price to 10 bucks — but I attributed that to the fact that it was a holiday. I’d seen the band in Rochester proper in 2009 and 2012, and both of those shows had a way better turnout.
A year after that show, Downie’s brain cancer diagnosis was made public, and Downie died the year after that, in October of 2017.
I’ve always held The Hip in my mind as being parallel to Blue Oyster Cult in that they’re both very difficult to pin down and describe for people who aren’t familiar. With both bands, you can point to certain songs off their first handful of albums as quintessential examples of their sound, but as their records got more varied, it became harder and harder to encompass what their range. With each group, there are certain points where you would think you’re listening to several different bands on the same album, so it’s hard to narrow them down to even 10 songs. There are times, I feel, where the variety verges on incoherent, but that doesn’t detract from how much appreciation I have for each band on the whole.
I hope you’ll check out my mix above, and I would urge you to dive into the clips below.
<3 SRK