“Everyone says it’s lyrics that make us all feel so Canadian, but I don’t know if that’s really it,” said Dye. They did that, and then some, for Canadians across the country. So, we’re going to dig deep, and try to make this our best tour yet.” Neither Downie nor his bandmates attended the event, but they broke the news online and issued a press release the following day saying, “This feels like the right thing to do now, for Gord, and for all of us … What we in The Hip receive, each time we play together, is a connection with each other with music and its magic and during the shows, a special connection with all of you, our incredible fans. James Perry from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre said of the charismatic frontman at a press conference outlining the band’s final tour details. “He has returned to his physical, emotional, mental strength well enough now to be able to get back doing what he loves doing,” Dr. Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: I left your house this morning 'Bout a quarter after nine Coulda been the Willie Nelson Coulda been the wine When I left your house this morning It was a little after nine It was in Bobcaygeon, I saw the constellations Reveal themselves, one star at time Drove back to town this morning With working on my mind I thought of maybe quittin' Thought of leavin' it behind Went back to bed this morning And as I'm pullin' down the blind Yeah, the sky was dull and hypothetical And fallin' one cloud at a time- Bobcaygeon Then came May 24, 2016, when the band announced Downie’s diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. READ MORE: Gord Downie calls out to Justin Trudeau during Tragically Hip’s final show of tour You could be a part of one of his songs and never even realize it.” Even the little conversations in life, he’d write those down too. “He always had a little book, writing everything down.
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“He wrote every single day,” she continued. “I think, for him, it was all about the lyrics.” “Gord lived and breathed poetry,” said Dye. It’s pretty clear when you scrutinize The Hip’s lyrics, which can range from solemn and heartfelt to just plain silly, that the beauty of each song has the same aesthetic, coming directly from Downie’s mind. Interestingly, Dye claims that Downie was more about the structuring of the song (the lyrics and the meaning) rather than the music itself. Josie Dye, Toronto DJ and radio host, met Downie around this time, too, when she conducted her first interview with him in 2010. The street next to K-Rock was even renamed The Tragically Hip Way. In 2008, they were the first band to perform at Kingston’s K-Rock Centre (where they ended up wrapping up their Man Machine Poem tour), and in 2013, they were honoured by Canada Post alongside four other Canadian music icons (Rush, The Guess Who and Beau Dommage).
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More group and solo albums followed (you can see a full list below), as did growing fame within Canada. Each produced much beloved songs like Blow at High Dough, New Orleans is Sinking, Little Bones, 38 Years Old and Three Pistols. What followed was widespread acclaim and mainstream success, thanks to 1989’s Up to Here and 1991’s Road Apples the latter reached #1 on the Canadian music charts. Their first EP, the eponymously named The Tragically Hip, was released in 1987.
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The group originally started out touring bars in Ontario playing covers of famous songs, but were quickly offered a record deal by MCA Records after then-president Bruce Dickinson heard them perform at Toronto’s historic Horseshoe Tavern. 6, 1964, he grew up in and around Kingston, forming friendships with the guys who would eventually become his Tragically Hip bandmates. READ MORE: Gord Downie brain cancer research fund raises $265Kīorn Gordon Edgar Downie in Amherstview, Ont., on Feb. Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: First thing we'd climb a tree and maybe then we'd talkOr sit silently and listen to our thoughtsWith illusions of someday casting a golden lightNo dress rehearsal, this is our life- Ahead By a Century CBC, which broadcast and streamed the concert live, reported that 11 million Canadians tuned in to watch or hear the final Man Machine Poem Tour show. Post-treatment, the energetic lead singer was deemed healthy enough to go on a Canada-wide 15-stop summer tour in 2016, which started in Victoria, B.C., and ended in the band’s hometown of Kingston, Ont., on Aug. He was 53.ĭownie revealed in May 2016 that he had terminal cancer, an aggressive, incurable form called glioblastoma. He was diagnosed in December 2015 after suffering a seizure, and then had surgery to remove the bulk of the brain tumour, while six weeks of radiation and chemotherapy reduced it even further. Gord Downie, the lead singer and lyricist of Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, succumbed to brain cancer on Tuesday night.