Good Bye, and Thank You, Gord Downie

On the cruises. Memorial Auditorium. At Higher Ground. The Flynn Theatre. Another Roadside Attraction(s). So many other outdoor shows. Montreal's Molson Centre (or whatever they were calling it that year)... whether they were in front of a couple hundred, or tens of thousands, the Tragically Hip were ferocious and real, a hydra-headed yet singular, rocking beast fronted by The Performer, The Man, The Singer, the friend we lost this week, Gord Downie.

Johnny, Rob, Paul, Gord Sinclair and Gord were the essence of a rock band, most of them high school friends, who made music together, who followed their musical dreams, who became the most beloved band in their country! The Hip were a band that jammed and improvised, yet wasn't really a "jam band". The Hip's music was a little too focused and muscular to be "jammy". And Gord Downie's lyrics soared way above the average rocker's ruminations - esoteric and inter-referential, he wrote small short stories in verse, set to driving rock. The music moved your body but it also made you think.

Over the years, I've been lucky enough to have interviewed each member of the band. Got a sense they were a very democratic band, all for one, everybody pitching in and doing their part, a functional team behind the scenes as well as onstage. And they're nice people. I'm proud to have championed their music from the first time I heard them, saw them, live on that Ferry on Lake Champlain.

There weren't many comparable frontmen to Gord Downie. A mesmerizing performer, he inhabited the songs, lived them, or maybe they inhabited him, took him over. He sometimes seemed a man possessed by the music, by the muse. After that first show, as we came ashore, we struggled to find anyone to compare Gord to... closest we came was Jim Morrison. THAT kind of charisma. That sort of surrender to the performance. Gord wasn't like Jim, they just both sort of had "it".

Now he's gone. The world is lessened by his loss. But the music still lives on. We can listen to the recordings, the albums. We can watch videos of his live performances. We can remember just how talented he was. And we can miss him, and all he gave to us. Thank you, Gord.

Gord Downie leaves a serious legacy, especially in Canadian Music. The Hip never had the success they deserved in The States, but in Canada, they ruled. Thousands of young Canadian musicians were inspired by the example of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip. Gord and The Hip gave so many artists the encouragement to go for it and do their thing. We'll hear a little bit of Gord in future tunes for years to come.

I write something like this to celebrate Gord & his life and his work, but also to try to process the loss. It's still pretty fresh, so I'm not quite sure how to wrap this up. I guess it would just be to say Thank you, again, Gord, for all your gifts, the beautiful moments of music, sublime, rockin', cosmic, and carnal, the spectrum of human life in song. Thank you for painting the word pictures and singing the songs. You made a difference.