One question, asked of every person who built the show. On the last day, the answer goes to the people in the seats.

Every conversation in this series ended the same way. Same question, same words, read off a cheat sheet so jD wouldn't botch it: if this production does what you hope it does, what do the people in the seats walk out of the theatre feeling? He asked the producer. He asked the director, both writers, and the cast. And somewhere along the way it became clear that the people who made It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken can't really answer it (not from up on the stage). They can hope. Then the lights go down, and it's out of their hands and into yours.

So Day 5 of 5 hands the mic over. The company tells you what they were hoping for. Fans of The Tragically Hip tell you what they walked in with - excitement, nerves, a healthy suspicion of anybody who messes with an arrangement, and, in one case, two packs of tissues. Then opening night from the other side of the curtain, where it turns out everybody was sweating. Then the walk out. Then the whole thing heads home to Kingston.

On Monday, jD promised to stay Uncool and Underqualified to the bitter end. This is the bitter end.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Talia Schlanger didn't answer the question. She brought a numbered list.
• A co-writer who got through every preview just fine, then came apart on opening night - and what a friend told him at intermission.
• The one rule Karim Butt gave himself fifteen minutes before curtain, guitar in hand.
• Why 700 people can't all lie to you at once.
• A joke both writers hate that the crowd can't stop laughing at.
• A self-described live guy, wary of anybody messing with a song by The Hip, on what they did to 'Bobcaygeon'.
• A fan who walked in with the whole show figured out, and how that went.
• Brett Christopher of the Thousand Islands Playhouse on the moment Kingston is going to feel like nowhere else.
• The last word goes to the person this whole thing started with.

THE COMPANY

• Michael Rubinoff, producer
• Mary Francis Moore, director
• Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, co-writers
• Talia Schlanger (Kate), Ali Momen (Waleed), Karim Butt (Sam), Tahirih Vejdani (Didi), and Rebecca Auerbach (Abigail)
• Brett Christopher, Managing Artistic Director, Thousand Islands Playhouse
• And the fans in the lobby, Jeff from Belleville, Leslie from Toronto, and Sarah from Buffalo among them

"It's a seed that we could hopefully plant inside of people, and they will have the choice to water it and to make it a tree." - Ahmed Moneka, co-writer

Big thanks to the cast, the writers, and the creative team, to Theatre Aquarius and the Thousand Islands Playhouse, and to every fan who let a guy with a microphone ask how they felt (most of them weren't strangers by the end). The people on the stage can only hope. A full house in the dark tells them whether it worked, all at once. That closes the run of It's A Good Life on The Tragically Hip Podcast Series. Kingston, it's yer turn.

KINGSTON - OCTOBER 22 TO NOVEMBER 8

The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken to the Kingston Grand Theatre. Opening night is sold out. The cast recording is out now, if you want the songs stuck in your head on the drive home.

Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026

THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN

You rank the records. The show starts January 4, 8pm, on YouTube. Ballots close November 30.

Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7

THE TIP JAR

Five episodes in five days. Editing is hard. Buy jD a coffee.

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MORE IT'S A GOOD LIFE

Setting the Scene, The Players, The Craft, and The Music

All episodes: redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474

#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #TheHip #HipFans #TTHPods #CanadianMusic

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A percussionist who couldn't swing, a chart that changes time signature every bar, and basic tracks cut at the Bathouse in Bath, Ontario.

You know what these songs are supposed to feel like. jD has been carrying 'Courage' around since the fall of 1992, and he walked into this one bracing for jazz hands, a key change nobody asked for, and somebody belting 'Bobcaygeon' from the lip of the stage with their arms out like they were hailing a cab.

Day four of It's A Good Life is the one every fan of The Tragically Hip walked in nervous about. The music. Trust was yesterday. Courage and hope come back today, and all three have to hold. So jD went and found the people who held the songs in their hands: the music supervisor, the musical director, the man who wrote the Middle Eastern music, and the producer who made two records with The Hip and then made the original cast recording. One of them saw the band in Calgary in the eighties, back when he was playing bars there himself. None of them came at this lightly.

Gord Downie's phrasing is hard to write down. Steve Berlin says there's no such thing as swing in Arabic music. And 'Gift Shop' just goes - no verse, chorus, bridge to hang on to. This is how a theatre band learned to play them anyway.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Bob Foster (orchestrations and music supervision) on the only way to treat this catalogue, and the nights he went down to the basement with a guitar and came back up with something.

• Richard Evans (music director) on notating Gord's melodies by ear, and why a singer who doesn't sound like anybody else is so hard to put on paper.

• Levon Ichkhanian (music coordinator and composer of the Middle Eastern music) on horizontal versus vertical, and why nobody can explain Middle Eastern music in five minutes.

• Steve Berlin on cutting the basic tracks at the Bathouse, finishing the vocals and the Arabic parts in Toronto, and the counting trick that got a percussionist swinging.

• A chart for 'As I Wind Down the Pines' that Steve says he couldn't read at all, and his story of how that song came together in the first place.

• Why 'Grace, Too' runs long on the record, and a session somebody was in and out of in about ten minutes.

• 'Fireworks', and a little nugget lifted from the way Gord used to close it out live.

• Jesse LaVercombe (co-writer) on the song he'd put up against any end-of-Act-One number in contemporary musical theatre.

• Jake Gold, manager of The Tragically Hip, on what the crowd almost did at 'Ahead by a Century', and Rebecca Auerbach (Abigail) on a standing ovation nobody saw coming.

• Levon at a CD table after an outdoor festival in Waterloo, and a couple who heard something through their balcony doors.

• Opening night, and the producer who went back the next night knowing exactly what was coming.

Also in the room: producer Michael Rubinoff, Ali Momen (Waleed), Talia Schlanger (Kate), and Sameer Cash (Fadi).

IN THEIR WORDS

"If you don't respect The Hip's music and want to do it for that reason, then just don't do it." - Bob Foster

"Everything through the lens of gratitude." - Levon Ichkhanian

Thanks to Bob, Richard, Levon, and Steve for handing over the songs and every story that came attached to them. jD came in braced for the worst and owns up, at the end, to exactly what he had wrong. Tomorrow: Curtain Up, in Kingston, in front of the people who know these songs best.

IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN - KINGSTON

The Thousand Islands Playhouse production, with songs by The Hip, runs at the Kingston Grand Theatre from October 22 to November 8, 2026. Opening night is sold out.

Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026

THE ORIGINAL CAST RECORDING

Produced by Steve Berlin, out the same day the curtain goes up in Kingston.

THE TIP JAR

Four days of this in one week. Editing is hard. Buy jD a coffee and help keep the battery charged.

buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

MORE IT'S A GOOD LIFE

Setting the Scene: LINK NEEDED

The Players: LINK NEEDED

The Craft: LINK NEEDED

It's A Good Life is part of The Tragically Hip Podcast Series.

Facebook group: community.tthpods.com | Instagram: @tthpods | YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods | Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com

#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHPods #CanadianRock #HipHeads

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May 3rd, Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. Mary Francis Moore walks jD right up to the wings and stops, because of a rule he didn't know about.

Mary Francis directs "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," and the tour so far has been the design studio, the stage management office, and the green room where the cast can watch the stage between scenes. Then the wings. That's as far as jD goes. (Nobody wants to be the guy who breaks the magic.)

That's day three of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a day, all week, from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series. Yesterday was the cast. The Craft is everybody you don't see - the director, the choreographer, the guy who built the world on the stage, and the guy who lights it. jD went in braced for gear talk, cues, rigging, and words he'd have to look up later (he still couldn't tell you what a fly gallery does, and Mary Francis showed him one). There's a little of that. Mostly there's one word, from almost everyone he talked to. Trust.

Scott Penner had to hand in his set drawings with half a script and no ending, working from a brief for "something specifically ambiguous." Then one photograph turned up in a pile of 90s street art and photo collages, and it got two words from across the table. Jason Hand spends the first third of rehearsals not thinking about lighting at all, then goes looking for the colour of a sandstorm. Marc Kimelman films himself dancing to every song, works from one idea of Gord Downie's, and once got himself to the front row of a music video shoot for The Hip and kept thinking up questions until they called cut. Jesse LaVercombe calls himself a fountain of bad ideas, and he has the receipts: a script of about 75 pages, and a document of cuts that runs to 546.

Then the room itself. A final song swapped out days before the first preview, and how the new one was ready by Sunday. A rehearsal that was one show at ten o'clock and a different show by lunch. A producer who will tell you exactly how he is during tech (not at his best, his words). And for every fan who gets nervous about The Tragically Hip in a musical at all, somebody on the team who walked in on day one feeling the same way, and what he'd say to you now.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Mary Francis Moore on more than a decade of shorthand with Bob Foster, and meeting Marc for the first time.

• Michael Rubinoff and Mary Francis on saying no to each other, and why the best idea wins.

• The song Marc calls his hardest to choreograph, and why it's a fever dream.

• Ahmed Moneka on checking in with Ali Momen along the way, and Ali on carrying every song that came before into the one he's singing.

• What's hiding in the paint once the first reveal settles, some of it in Arabic.

"You'll never see in this show where my work begins or ends." - Marc Kimelman, choreographer

WHO YOU HEAR

• Mary Francis Moore, director, and artistic director of Theatre Aquarius.

• Michael Rubinoff, producer.

• Scott Penner, set designer.

• Jason Hand, lighting designer.

• Marc Kimelman, choreographer.

• Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, who wrote the book.

• Plus Ali Momen and Talia Schlanger from the cast.

Big thanks to Mary Francis, Michael, Scott, Jason, Marc, Jesse, and Ahmed for letting a fan with a microphone stand in the wings and ask questions. What jD found back there wasn't everybody agreeing. It was a room full of people willing to say no in the dark until the right idea showed up, and nobody keeping score of whose it was. He's seen the show at least six times and still can't find the seams. So there's that. Tomorrow on It's A Good Life: The Music, with Bob Foster, and what it takes to make songs by The Tragically Hip that were never written for a stage sing on one.

"IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN" - KINGSTON

The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings the musical to the Kingston Grand Theatre, in association with Theatre Aquarius. First preview Thursday, October 22, and it runs to November 8. Opening night, Friday, October 23, is already sold out. Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026

THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN

A new show for 2027, and you set the order. Rate all fifteen records by The Hip before November 30, and the countdown starts Monday, January 4, at 8pm ET on YouTube. Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7

THE TIP JAR

Editing is hard. Help keep the battery charged. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

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MORE FROM THE TRAGICALLY HIP PODCAST SERIES

It's A Good Life - Setting the Scene and The Players: days one and two, right before this one in the feed.

Yer Hipstories - Hamilton: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/fae76ee3-738f-4007-80c8-7140729bb295

Creative team credits via the Thousand Islands Playhouse and Stage Door. Run dates via the Kingston Grand Theatre and the Thousand Islands Playhouse.

#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHPods #HipHeads #CanadianRock

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May 1st, opening night in Hamilton. On jD's left, a fan of The Hip who doesn't do musicals. On his right, a woman who's never heard of them.

His buddy David is the first one, and he mentions the musicals thing on the drive in (great timing, David). The second is 82, the mother of a Theatre Aquarius subscriber, and she knows nothing about The Tragically Hip. Nothing. Then intermission. Guess which one of them ends up at the merch table. Two people, same row, opposite ends of the room, and when jD told that story to the cast, Brandon McGibbon said it was the whole job in one sentence.

That's day two of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a day, all week, from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series. Yesterday was where the idea came from. The Players is about the people who have to stand up there and carry it. Seven of them sat down with jD between April and May, and when he asked how they found The Hip, most of them didn't tell him a story about a band. They told him a story about Canada.

Ali Momen came here from Iran when he was three, and The Hip were the backdrop to how he understood "the canvas of Canada." Years before there was a script, he had a very specific note for the producer. Karim Butt came over from Pakistan, heard 'Bobcaygeon' and 'Poets' on the radio and thought they were pretty cool, then got booked for the workshop and went straight to one documentary. You can guess how that went. Tahirih Vejdani's first memory of the band runs through a high school teacher in Regina with a claim to fame. Rebecca Auerbach found out she knew a lot more of the words than she thought. Talia Schlanger calls the whole thing zero burden and pure joy. And Sameer Cash grew up calling Gord Downie Uncle Gord.

Then the harder part. Somebody behind the script asking if they were cool enough, rocky enough, grungy enough to touch these songs. A bar band voice on a musical theatre stage, and an apology to musical theatre for every bad thing ever said about it. The one song by The Hip a cast member could play at 18, learned on a trip to Nepal, and the day she found out where it was going. Why somebody calls The Hip the cast's emotional support animal. And a note from Gord that Sameer hadn't gone back to until now.

Most of them brought their own families into the roles. A mother's convenience store in Regina. A father and a brother-in-law. A country left behind for something better. One of them was in Kingston on August 20, 2016, and carries what Gord said from that stage into this show. And one cast member shares a story about their grandfather, the show, and a lot of gratitude. It's theirs to tell, so it's in the episode.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• A cast member who met Tom Thomson by way of 'Three Pistols' and kept on reading.

• The workshop audition Mary Francis Moore promised would not get them the job.

• 'Little Bones' cranked in the car on the way to a first audition, and the guitar hook that said this might work.

• Jesse LaVercombe on how fast they found Jonathan, and what Brandon did to the writing.

• Bob Foster's arrangements, Marc Kimelman's choreography, and a song at least one of the cast had never heard before.

"That's the two people that you're thinking about, and you want to do a show that's for both of them." - Brandon McGibbon, Jonathan

WHO YOU HEAR

• Ali Momen as Waleed.

• Talia Schlanger as Kate.

• Brandon McGibbon as Jonathan.

• Karim Butt as Sam, the narrator.

• Rebecca Auerbach as Abigail.

• Tahirih Vejdani as Didi.

• Sameer Cash as Fadi.

• Plus Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, who wrote the book, and producer Michael Rubinoff.

Big thanks to Ali, Talia, Brandon, Karim, Rebecca, Tahirih, and Sameer for giving a fan with a microphone their time this spring in Hamilton. jD went in to ask about a band and came out with seven people talking about what it feels like to find a home. Some found it in Canada, some found it in a song by The Tragically Hip, and most of them found it in both. So there's that. Tomorrow on It's A Good Life: The Craft.

"IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN" - KINGSTON

The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings the musical to the Kingston Grand Theatre, in association with Theatre Aquarius, October 22 to November 8. Opening night, Friday, October 23, is already sold out. Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026

THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN

A new show for 2027, and you set the order. Rate all fifteen records by The Hip before November 30, and the countdown starts Monday, January 4, at 8pm ET on YouTube. Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7

THE TIP JAR

Editing is hard. Help keep the battery charged. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

Home: home.tthpods.com

Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com

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Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com

MORE FROM THE TRAGICALLY HIP PODCAST SERIES

Yer Hipstories - Kingston: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/c37eccb0-036d-45d0-827b-08582d3f8bba

Yer Hipstories - Hamilton: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/fae76ee3-738f-4007-80c8-7140729bb295

Cast and roles via the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Run dates via the Kingston Grand Theatre and the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Kingston, August 20, 2016 via setlist.fm.

#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHPods #TTHAlbumCountdown #CanadianMusic

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April 19th, around four o'clock, outside Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. jD is about to sit with the whole creative team, with no idea what's coming.

The first preview is three days out. jD bought a ticket for April 22nd thinking it was the premiere. It wasn't (musicals have previews, it turns out - lesson one of about 400). That's the spirit of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a day, all week, from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series: one fan, uncool and underqualified, let into the rooms where "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken" got made. It's the first musical built from the songs of The Tragically Hip, and it's moving to Kingston.

Setting the Scene starts at the start. Where the idea came from, who said yes, and how a story about a man who can't go home again ended up in Kingston, of all places. But first, the question nobody wants to ask out loud: what is a musical, anyway? Jen Towndrow, Armand, and Autumn McDonald love them, and they make the case. One fan who walked out of a jukebox show wondering what just happened makes the other one.

Then the people who built it. Michael Rubinoff, the producer, knew exactly where he wanted to be if Y2K took the world down at midnight, and he knew one thing about this show before he had the rights to a single song. Jake Gold, manager of The Hip, had two conditions. A month later came a phone call, a radio story out of Afghanistan, and the song that played once the plane was in the air.

Ahmed Moneka shouted his love for an Ontario town off a bridge, and somebody told him which song to go home and play. Jesse LaVercombe found The Hip somewhere "in the ether" and came aboard late, which meant sprinting. Mary Francis Moore offered up the room at Theatre Aquarius partly so she could watch. And Brett Christopher in Kingston had been dreaming about this for fifteen years before anyone else got the rights. That news landed hard, at first.

Somewhere in all of it the story leaves Toronto for a smaller city with prisons on one side and universities on the other. You'll hear why that move mattered. And on April 23rd, at a talk in the theatre, somebody asks for the whole show in one word.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• What "the book" of a musical is, for anyone who assumed it was a book.

• The Zoom where Michael asked the band for three minutes before getting down to business. And what he told them first.

• Friends whose fathers came from Iran and Peru, and the band they learned Canada through.

• Lindsay Pereira's CBC story, and why Jake told Michael he had to read it.

• Kensington Market, Kingston, and why a small town makes you earn it.

"If I had one kick at the can with this music and there was one way I could use this music to tell the story, I did always believe that this was the story to tell." - Michael Rubinoff, producer

WHO YOU HEAR

• Michael Rubinoff. Producer of "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," and the originating producer of "Come From Away." A fan first.

• Jake Gold. Manager of The Tragically Hip.

• Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe. Co-writers of the book, ten years making theatre together, "King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild" included. Jesse on moving north: "Sometimes I feel like as an American living up here, it's like living in a really low-stakes Twilight Zone."

• Mary Francis Moore. Director, and artistic director at Theatre Aquarius, the National Centre for the Development of New Musicals.

• Brett Christopher. Managing artistic director of the Thousand Islands Playhouse, the show's Kingston co-producer. He lives in Kingston.

• Jen, Armand, and Autumn. The crash course in musicals.

Big thanks to Michael, Jake, Ahmed, Jesse, Mary Francis, and Brett for letting a fan with a microphone into the room three days before the first preview, and to Jen, Armand, and Autumn for explaining it all first. A lot of new Canadians found their way in through The Tragically Hip. This is the story of how that ended up on a stage. Tomorrow on It's A Good Life: The Players.

"IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN" - KINGSTON

The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings the musical to the Kingston Grand Theatre, in association with Theatre Aquarius, October 22 to November 8. Opening night is Friday, October 23. Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026

THE TIP JAR

Editing is hard. Help keep the battery charged. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

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Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com

Facebook community: community.tthpods.com

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Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com

MORE FROM THE TRAGICALLY HIP PODCAST SERIES

Yer Hipstories - Hamilton: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/fae76ee3-738f-4007-80c8-7140729bb295

Yer Hipstories - Kingston: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/c37eccb0-036d-45d0-827b-08582d3f8bba

Run dates via the Kingston Grand Theatre and the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Lindsay Pereira's story via CBC.

#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #TheHip #TTHPods #CanadianMusic #HipFans

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November 30th, 2012, Minneapolis, cold enough to hurt. Brian from Buffalo was there for 'Take Forever.' The stream tried to play it three times.

It's track nine of eleven on "Now for Plan A," the Gavin Brown record that came out October 2nd, 2012. By the count on the stream, The Tragically Hip played it live eight times, starting months before the record was out, and it didn't crack the 169 songs ranked for the TTHTop40 Countdown. The poll in the Facebook group was kinder: 76% love it or like it, and one brave soul has never heard it. Jeff from Belleville has a theory about why, and it starts with where the song sits on the record.

Then the tale of the tape turns up a chart fact about "Now for Plan A" in the United States that nobody on the panel believes. It checks out.

So Brian from Buffalo, Jeff from Belleville, and Greg from Tacoma (late, and sentenced to sing it) take apart three minutes about a man trying to be a machine, a plane hurtling through the dark, and a promise to be there for as long as it takes. And Calgary. A lot of Calgary.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker: a song by The Hip that sounds like fall. Brian bends the rules before he gives in, and Jeff lands on the same song jD played in the car on the way home.
• Brian's personal ranking of every song by The Hip, and why loving 'The Lookahead' costs this one a few spots.
• Calgary as the place to do it. Brian found the story behind the line, and Jeff found the newspaper by way of HipMuseum.
• What Gord told the crowd before 'Take Forever' at Kensington Market and in Minneapolis, pulled from The Tragically Hip Archive, and the Ralph Nader primer that follows.
• Jeff's reach of the night: Stampede Wrestling, the Saddledome, and the year 2001. He admits it's a reach. jD isn't so sure.
• Greg from Tacoma, the land of Boeing, and a guess about where this song was written.
• The news: a fan survey from the band, GEDfest crossing the border, and a musical opening in Kingston.
• Next week the wheel lands on 'Sharks,' from "Music @ Work."

"I feel like it ends stronger than it begins." - Brian from Buffalo

THE PANEL

• Brian from Buffalo. A teacher, which is why fall is not his favourite season. Saw the "World Container" tour at the Phoenix in Toronto in October 2006, then in Boston and Rochester in 2007, and keeps his own ranking of every song.
• Jeff from Belleville. Back after a while away, and on a panel with Brian for the first time. Lives among rows of red pine, which explains his icebreaker, and does the homework every time. Nothing to plug, he says.
• Greg from Tacoma. Showed up late, refused to sing, and still found the line nobody else had touched. Scored every record by The Hip for jD and docked the last two a point.

Big thanks to Brian, Jeff, and Greg, and to a chat that kept the room going while the audio didn't. 'Take Forever' is one of the quieter corners of "Now for Plan A," and an hour with three fans who did the reading is a good way to hear The Tragically Hip and Gord Downie fresh. You won't hear it here. Go put it on.

IT'S A GOOD LIFE - MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 TO FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23

Five episodes, one a day. An oral history of the making of "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," the musical built on the music of The Hip, told by the people who made it. Subscribe: home.tthpods.com

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

Saturday night at the Horseshoe Tavern, nine years since Gord passed away, Grace, 2 plays for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, so follow along on the night: facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ. GEDfest Buffalo, the first American chapter, is Wednesday, October 21, and more cities celebrate on Saturday, October 24. Every city and every cause: gedfest.ca

How it started: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/9fc87037-23d5-4de2-8ed4-202f441bf759

THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN

A new show for 2027, and you set the order. Rate all fifteen records by The Hip before November 30, and the countdown starts Monday, January 4, at 8pm ET on YouTube. Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances, where every tale of the tape starts: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com

YER LETTER

One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

All three panelists plugged this link instead of themselves, so here it is. Help keep the battery charged: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

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Facebook community: community.tthpods.com

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Poets': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/339c232a-4700-404b-a533-779a14e1cf45

'Vaccination Scar': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/5fa3fc7c-f01b-4eae-a3de-5cadc658b9f9

'Tiger The Lion': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/718fe20e-83d6-4c69-86eb-cc2b4af02834

Live play count and dates from the stream. Gord's live intros via The Tragically Hip Archive, as cited on the stream. The Calgary article via HipMuseum, as cited on the stream. Release and chart details via Wikipedia and Universal Music Canada.

#TheTragicallyHip #NowForPlanA #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #ItsAGoodLife #GEDfest

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The new 5-part podcast begins this coming Monday, the 19th.

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11,300 pennies, a frame five feet by nine, about 250 pounds, and all of it Gord. Penny Gord has hung at the National Music Centre, it travels with Trickle Down now, and somewhere along the way it became the closest thing GEDfest has to a mascot.

The first three episodes covered where GEDfest came from, where it stands, and where it's headed. This one is about who. Keith's word for it is the secret sauce: the ambassadors, supporters, volunteers, and tribute players who turned one Calgary night in memory of Gord Downie into twelve chapters across Canada and into the United States. Every one of them got here a different way. A pile of pennies. A cold email. A song sung at a private party. A message from an old friend nobody had heard from in twenty years.

That last one belongs to Dan Murphy. Dan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June 2023. Three years on, he and his family have a fund at Princess Margaret, the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer, and GEDfest Toronto is raising money for it. When his oncologist told him they'd be talking about quality of life, Dan and his wife made a choice: "We decided to make quality of life about quality of life." A couple hundred people he knows, some of them friends from grade school, are making the drive to the Horseshoe in October.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker. A song from The Tragically Hip that sounds like the end of summer. One answer arrives on a cassette carried back from Kingston to a university residence floor, and Keith is answering this question for the fourth time without repeating himself.

• Luke Carruthers on how a pile of pennies turned into posters for every city, then merch, then a backlit sign he's building to hang out front of the Calgary show.

• Robbie Milgaard named his band after a song by The Hip. Keith tells the story of the night Robbie first sang it with Trickle Down, and what Robbie said at the mic before he started.

• Alan Cross on why a fanbase ends up doing this kind of thing, and why the answer starts with the band.

• The night BCDC opened for Trickle Down at the Palace in Calgary, and what the five of them said to each other backstage before they had to follow it.

• Brennan Rafferty, on the road to the Kootenays, with a tip on a young Calgary band you'll want to say you saw in a bar once.

• The first email that got a reply, and why Keith credits one of the people on this panel with giving him the nerve to keep sending them.

• Keith's case for what GEDfest gives people who want to do some good and don't know where to start.

THE PANEL

• Dan Murphy, from Toronto. First heard 'Blow at High Dough' the fall he moved into residence. Reconnected with Buddy Harold this winter, and a few months later he's part of GEDfest Toronto.

• Keith Dick, co-founder of GEDfest and the drummer in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Now four for four on the icebreaker.

• Luke Carruthers, the artist behind Penny Gord. Went from lending it out to volunteering at the silent auction, then posters, merch, and the sign.

• Alan Cross, who co-hosts GEDfest Toronto at the Horseshoe with Fearless Fred from Q107. Called in from Victoria, a couple of hours before starting a national speaking tour.

• Robbie Milgaard, from Cochrane, Alberta. Sings in The Wheat Kings, who play GEDfest Cochrane on Saturday, October 24th, and gets called up to sing with Trickle Down often enough that Keith counts him as the sixth member.

• Brennan Rafferty, frontman of BCDC, 27 years in. Lives on the West Coast and already has his tickets for GEDfest Vancouver on October 24th.

GEDFEST 2026

GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest: twelve chapters, each one raising money for a cause in its own community. Most play Saturday, October 17th. Vancouver, Cochrane, and Regina play October 24th, and Buffalo moved up to October 21st. Find your city at gedfest.ca.

jD co-leads the Toronto chapter: the Horseshoe Tavern, Saturday, October 17th, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first. Drop him a line at jd@tthpods.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com

YER LETTER

One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

Editing is hard and the battery needs charging. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

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MORE GEDFEST PAST, PRESENT, & FUTURE

'Past': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/9fc87037-23d5-4de2-8ed4-202f441bf759

#TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #Fundraising #TributeBands #HipFans #TTHPods

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August 20th, 2016, Kingston. 'Poets' is twentieth on the set list, right behind 'Something On,' the song Craig from Langley used to skip to.

It opens "Phantom Power," it was the lead single, and it sits at number 23 on the TTHTop40 Countdown. The count on the stream, pulled from Hipbase and setlist.fm, has The Tragically Hip playing it 611 times, from July 2nd, 1998, twelve days before the record came out, to that last night in Kingston. The poll in the Facebook group drew more votes than any the show has run. And the Discovering Downie panel came back together for it. They do not agree.

Justin from Bridport bought "Phantom Power" as a kid, and this was the first thing out of the speakers. Kirk from Chino calls it his Gus (an inside joke), and he spent a day with live versions until it turned. Craig from Langley plays it in a tribute band about half the time and still hits skip on the record, so he sat down with a guitar to find out why. He found out. You'll want to hear it before you sing along again.

Then the video. A house with a reputation (and a lot of cats), a bass nobody expected Gord to be holding, Johnny Fay playing it lighter than he does on stage, and a question from jD about why the band is lined up backwards.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker: one song by The Hip that feels like fall, and one answer the panel would happily trade this whole episode for.

• October 7th in The Hip Handbook, from Austin to the Fillmore. Kirk was at the Fillmore, just not that night.

• A Troubadour recording from 2009 with a lot of swimming in it. Kirk was in the room.

• Super Farmer Nano Baby, the darker take on the 25th anniversary box set, and Justin's hunch about which came first.

• Woodstock, Live 8 with Dan Aykroyd on harmonica, and Gord's rants, different every night.

• The backing vocals from Paul Langlois and Gord Sinclair. Nobody on the panel knows the words. Craig has Paul's own answer, more or less.

• At the last show in Kingston, the microphone becomes a flashlight. Kirk says that's when the song finally landed for him.

• Next week the wheel lands on 'Take Forever,' from "Now for Plan A."

"This is a hard question for me to answer because I'm so emotionally tied to this album." - Justin from Bridport

THE PANEL

• Justin from Bridport. A six-timer, by jD's count. "Phantom Power" was the first record by The Hip he ever bought. Announces for the Sprint Cars of New England, with the season finale October 24 in Claremont, New Hampshire, and helps run the Vermont Motorsports Hall of Fame, which just named its class of 2026.

• Craig from Langley. Plays in Gift Shop, a tribute to The Hip on the West Coast. They're at the first GEDfest Vancouver on October 24 and in White Rock on October 17, and the full August 20, 2026 show at the Hollywood Theatre, ten years to the day, is headed for YouTube. His own band, Windows 78, is on Spotify and Apple Music.

• Kirk from Chino. Finishing a solo album, with updates at Kirk Lane Music on Instagram and Facebook. Plays in The Daryls, a cover band around LA, Orange County, the Inland Empire, and San Diego, and hosts Steps To The Stage, a podcast for community theatre.

Big thanks to Justin, Craig, and Kirk, together again after Discovering Downie, and to a chat that was on fire all night. Twenty-eight years on, 'Poets' is still the door a lot of fans walked through to The Tragically Hip and Gord Downie, even the ones who spent it at the bar. The same three are back for the episode closest to Gord's birthday, with a solo song pulled at random.

DISCOVERING DOWNIE

Where this panel met, one Gord Downie solo record at a time. "Secret Path": https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/e086ade9-373f-4bd3-9d84-513b2097cac5

THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN

A new show for 2027, and you set the order. Rate all fifteen records by The Hip before November 30, and the countdown starts Monday, January 4, at 8pm ET on YouTube. Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances, where every tale of the tape starts: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com

YER LETTER

One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

Justin's plug was this link, so here it is. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Radio Show': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/9cdeecdc-c69a-4e6a-b087-ce6effbb2fa2

'Emperor Penguin': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/a2f229b2-b5fc-41e4-8d78-632080d31a3b

'Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/68d2991b-9074-43ef-bd71-aa832c59a787

Live play count via Hipbase and setlist.fm, as counted on the stream. Kingston set list via setlist.fm. Countdown rank from the show. Release details via Wikipedia.

#TheTragicallyHip #PhantomPower #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #DiscoveringDownie #HipHeads

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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 anybody gets excited.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Keith drove a rental car from Ottawa to Buffalo to Toronto this spring, and the thing that happened at a Buffalo gas station is the reason he now believes this can go anywhere.

• Buddy Herold went to his first GEDfest to carry amps and set up the water station. What he got asked to do instead is a cautionary tale about volunteering.

• Ian McDonald had a venue, a band, and a charity locked for Ottawa inside about 48 hours, and every single piece of it came from a phone call to somebody he already knew. Including the hockey coach.

• Sarah J. on why Buffalo was the only sensible place for the first American chapter, and what "the city of good neighbours" means when it comes to a fundraiser.

• Jeff Davison on why the rubber chicken dinner is losing, and what an event like this does that a gala cannot.

• Two men in Elks gear at the Labour Day Classic in Calgary who turned out not to live in Edmonton, or anywhere near it. Buddy has issued them a challenge and they have not delivered yet.

• The myth that The Tragically Hip were a Canada-only band, and the tribute act in the Netherlands quietly making the case against it.

• Buddy's plan involving a Blue Jays jersey with all thirty MLB parks on the back, and what he wants to put there instead.

• Keith's two current songs, both of them going into this year's set list, one of them by request from a corporate sponsor.

• Penny Gord. That is all anyone is getting here.

THE PANEL

• Keith Dyck, co-founder of GEDfest and the drummer in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Currently living inside 'Opiated' and 'Cordelia', because both are being added to the set. Would like it on the record that the first million is the hard one.

• Buddy Herold, director of sales and fundraising for GEDfest, from Calgary by way of Toronto. Five years running in Calgary, plus Regina and Winnipeg last year, and Toronto this year. Went with 'Ahead by a Century', which was the last song the band ever played live.

• Ian McDonald, Ottawa chapter lead, calling in from Vegas at 41 degrees. Came to this through his friend and colleague Ian Martin, had never run an event like it, and is now watching people he has not heard from in years buy tickets.

• Jeff Davison, CEO of the Prostate Cancer Centre, from Calgary. One in six Alberta men will get prostate cancer. His kids are now listening to The Hip in the truck, which he considers the win. Sings along to 'Locked in the Trunk of a Car' and admits it may be the only one he can manage.

• Sara Jachimiak of DATC Media, Buffalo chapter lead, from Buffalo, New York. All-time favourite is 'All Tore Up', currently deep into 'Let's Stay Engaged'. She is choosing Buffalo's charity herself, and she talks openly and without drama about the eight months of her own breast cancer treatment that shaped the choice.

GEDFEST 2026

GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, and in its ninth year it runs in twelve chapters across Canada and, for the first time, in the United States. Every chapter picks a cause in its own community and raises money for it. Find your city at gedfest.ca. jD runs the Toronto chapter, playing the Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, October 17, with Grace, 2 on stage, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets and details at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances lives at thehiphandbook.tthpods.com.

YER LETTER

One email a month, no filler. Sign up at subscribe.tthpods.com.

THE TIP JAR

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#TheTragicallyHip #GEDfest #GordDownie #Fundraising #podList #Diehards

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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 Hill. And nobody agrees on where it belongs - a "Road Apples" leftover, or the most "Fully Completely" thing that never made "Fully Completely."

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

- The icebreaker: one song by The Hip that sounds like fall. A forest at night with no leaves left on the trees, a drive-in Dave from Montreal has never been to, and a date in September that smacks every fan in the face.

- A grade nine class trip to Toronto, a bootleg shop up a flight of stairs across the street from MuchMusic, and a cassette Dave from Montreal still calls the definitive version.

- Rob's guitar talking back to Gord, and Paul playing something Dave from Montreal swears he's heard on another "Fully Completely" track.

- How one record ends up being somebody's best and worst at the same time.

- Dave from Edmonton wishes Canada had a British singles culture, and he brings Oasis to make the case.

- Massey Hall, September 27. The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the speech Dave from Montreal thinks Gord could have given.

- Next week the wheel lands on 'Poets,' the kick-off track on "Phantom Power," and the Discovering Downie panel reunites for it.

"It's really nice to have these little songs between us that don't belong to everybody." - Dave from Montreal

THE PANEL

- Francois from Quebec City. Plays the Paul Langlois parts in The Gracefully Hip, a Quebec City tribute to The Hip, and has heard 800 people in Montreal sing 'Ahead by a Century' back at him. Next gig: Friday, November 6, Grizzly Fuzz, Quebec City. grizzlyfuzz.com

- Dave from Montreal. Back again, an Anglophone Montrealer with twenty years in radio, and the only one here who has known this song since the 90s. Answered the icebreaker twice, the second en français, a first for the show.

- Dave from Edmonton. Back from Yer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour in Edmonton. Built this year's song bracket for The Hip and ran it in the Facebook group. "Fully Completely" made him a fan at fourteen.

Big thanks to Francois, Dave, and Dave, and to the chat. Thirty-four years after The Tragically Hip played it at the Horseshoe, 'Radio Show' still belongs mostly to the fans who go looking for it. Gord Downie ended it on one word. The rest is up to you.

Recorded Wednesday, September 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. jD marked it by re-releasing the Discovering Downie conversation on "Secret Path," Gord's record about Chanie Wenjack, the twelve-year-old Anishinaabe boy who died in October 1966 after running from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, trying to get home.

"Secret Path": https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/e086ade9-373f-4bd3-9d84-513b2097cac5

THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN

A new show, and you set the order. Rate all fifteen records by The Hip before November 30, and the countdown starts Monday, January 4, 2027, at 8pm ET on YouTube. Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances, where every tale of the tape starts: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com

YER LETTER

One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

Editing is hard. Help keep the battery charged. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

Home: home.tthpods.com

Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com

Facebook community: community.tthpods.com

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Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com

MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Pigeon Camera': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/49a9167c-6f8d-4641-8306-959189b38ec8

'The Bastard': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/11be433d-56cf-4213-8726-9fc7cec327f2

'Just as Well': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/ddf96225-1bd4-468b-881a-aa091a7e6148

Live dates via setlist.fm. Countdown rank and poll numbers from the show. Reissue details via Universal Music Canada and Wikipedia, Chanie Wenjack's via Wikipedia.

#FullyCompletely #TTHOnShuffle #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHAlbumCountdown #HipHeads

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Today the gang gets together to discuss the fifth album in Gord's discography, the haunting, Secret Path

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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, Keith, Jaime McNichol, and Darcy McLeod trying to name the exact moment the snowball stopped needing to be pushed.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Keith's confession about 'Courage'. It is not the confession you are expecting from a man who runs a Gord Downie tribute festival, and the night it changed is very specific.

• Julie on the one thing you cannot do if you want to scale something like this. It is the opposite of what most organizations try.

• The 2020 GEDfest. Masks, social distancing, two shows in one day, a capacity cut to the bone, and Dave Harris singing from inside a phone booth. Then the thing the host said afterward that opened the door to every chapter that followed.

• Darcy on the green room at the Blind Beggar, and why beers that arrive without you asking are a bigger deal to a working band than they sound.

• Jaime went to her first GEDfest in 2021 carrying something heavy, and found that a room full of people singing was the thing that helped. She says it plainly here.

• Three different people give three different answers for when the tipping point was. One of them says the Palace. One says it was the moment a stranger in Kelowna described a night they had never attended, exactly.

• The hip tribute band in the Netherlands who reached out, and the language barrier standing between them and a chapter.

• How Neil got Edmonton, and how a guy from Manulife got Kelowna. Neither one involves a job posting.

• Keith on the secret sauce, which is a two-word answer and is not the music.

THE PANEL

• Keith Dyck, co-founder of GEDfest and the drummer in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Reads 'the present' in "The Never Ending Present" as a double entendre, which is a level of thinking jD readily admits is above his pay grade.

• Julie Johnson, founder of GEDfest, from Calgary. Keith's wife, and the one who was standing in the crowd the first night. Went way off the board with 'Fight' as her current favourite, and had a reason at the ready.

• Jaime McNichol, GEDfest director, from Calgary. Julie's parents live next door, which is how she heard about a band called Trickle Down in the first place. Missed the first one because of the weather and has never quite gotten over it. Did three GEDfests last year.

• Darcy McLeod of DC and The Struggle, from Calgary. Opener, after-party act, ambassador, and self-described jack of all trades. Came to The Hip through a friend in junior high who put on 'New Orleans Is Sinking' and was, in his words, the coolest cat.

GEDFEST 2026

GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, and in its ninth year it runs in twelve chapters across Canada and, for the first time, in the United States. Every chapter picks a cause in its own community and raises money for it. Find your city at gedfest.ca. jD runs the Toronto chapter, playing the Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, October 17, with Grace, 2 on stage, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets and details at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances lives at thehiphandbook.tthpods.com.

YER LETTER

One email a month, no filler. Sign up at subscribe.tthpods.com.

THE TIP JAR

If you want to throw a couple of bucks at the shows, the jar is at buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.

FIND US

Home: home.tthpods.com

Email: jd@tthpods.com

Facebook community: community.tthpods.com

Instagram: @tthpods

YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods

Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com

#TheTragicallyHip #GEDfest #GordDownie #Fundraising #podList #Completeists

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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 thinks he's cracked it after twenty-six years of not reading the words. Another thinks Gord just liked how they sounded. Nobody's sure Gord would side with either of them.

Underneath all of it sits a record the band never quite got behind. Steve came in calling "Music @ Work" his least favourite record by The Hip and walked out rediscovering it. Chris has it in his top five and has defended it on this show more than once. And jD once asked Johnny Fay about a "Music @ Work" box set. His reaction is in here, and so is Greg's reaction to his reaction.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker. One song by The Hip each they never got to hear live, and a pair of Calgary tickets from 2009 that Steve sold and still thinks about.

• September 23rd in The Hip Handbook. A busy date, and two of the shows on it have somebody on this panel attached.

• Steve's first time seeing The Hip was at a zoo. Yes, a zoo. Gord took the setting to heart.

• "If this song was a car it would be a V8 with a manual transmission." Chris from Seattle, and he has the downshifts mapped.

• Billy Sunday. Chris has a theory about Philadelphia, and Steve adds a layer from the ballpark.

• Pell-mell, augurs, and augers (the ice fishing kind, per the chat). Greg's read on what's about to blow.

• Steve hears another song of theirs hiding in this one, and it's one he doesn't care for at all.

• Search for this song on YouTube and you might land on a Replacements cover at First Avenue instead. Steve did.

• Next week the wheel lands on 'Radio Show,' from the "Fully Completely" sessions, the one that stayed in the vault until the 2014 deluxe reissue.

THE PANEL

• Chris from Seattle. Back again, and the loudest defender of "Music @ Work" this panel has had. Saw The Hip three times at the Moore Theatre, and first saw them with Greg, who he's known since they were both 18. His band is Loud Flowers: loudflowers.band

• Steve from Toronto. Back again, a week ahead of schedule, and his plug this week is impending fatherhood. Originally from Thunder Bay. Heard 11 of the 14 songs on "Music @ Work" live. Not this one.

• Greg from Tacoma. Back again, once his audio caught up with him. Wore this record out on a portable CD player while painting his deck in the summer of 2000, and he's the one who turned Chris on to The Hip in the first place. Makes music as Hadees Market Music.

Big thanks to Chris, Steve, and Greg, and to a stacked chat. Twenty-six years in, 'The Bastard' still sounds like Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip with the pedal on the floor.

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ. Twelve chapters across Canada and into the United States at gedfest.ca.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances, and where every tale of the tape starts: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com

YER LETTER

One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

Greg dared you. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Just as Well': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/ddf96225-1bd4-468b-881a-aa091a7e6148

'Putting Down': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/6cfb0a5e-5909-40ec-8559-62ca0acd580e

'Tiger The Lion': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/718fe20e-83d6-4c69-86eb-cc2b4af02834

Live play counts come from Hipbase and setlist.fm, and the countdown rank and poll numbers from the show itself, as cited on the stream. Release date and the tabla credit come from the "Music @ Work" credits as listed on Wikipedia.

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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 ever belong? jD hears it as a Baby Blue EP song that missed its bus. Glenn has a timeline that says otherwise, and a theory about whose pen the opening lines came off. Ian from Maple Ridge turns up halfway through, blames the West Coast clock, and still lands the comparison nobody else had.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker. One song each they wish they'd heard live. Patrick's answer comes with a pair of near misses that still sting, and Glenn's pick has his own surname in it.

• The Misty Moon version, spun in full. Glenn calls it the definitive take, and the line he points to is the angriest one in the song.

• "Are you ready, Bruce?" Who Bruce is, and what Ian hears in the way Gord asks.

• Pig heaven, "Animal Farm," and a crossroads with a certain bluesman waiting at it. Glenn's reading of the lyric is the most ambitious thing anyone has said about a two-and-a-half-minute bar song, and jD needs a second to recover.

• The boots. Patrick ties one line to what Gord did to a pair of boots at Molson Park a few months later.

• The 1970 hit they used to drop into the middle of it live, and what Glenn thinks that says about how seriously they were taking it.

• "If the Ramones did a Lynyrd Skynyrd song." Ian, on what this actually is.

• Patrick puts his NPS hat on for the poll, then admits where 'Just As Well' ranks among the six on "Saskadelphia."

• The one song Patrick still skips, even though it's shorter than this one.

• "I'll never skip it because it's too short to skip." Glenn from Melbourne, making the lazy man's case.

• Next week the wheel lands on 'The Bastard,' from "Music @ Work."

THE PANEL

• Glenn from Melbourne. Met 'Just As Well' when "Saskadelphia" came out, from a corner of the world without many bootlegs, or many people to talk about the band with. He's a photographer who leads photo tours to far-off places, with India and Bangladesh on the calendar next year. He says he's the only Glenn Lavender in the world, so look him up.

• Patrick from Newmarket. Freelance journalist and photographer, the tall guy at Toronto shows with the pro gear or the iPhone, and you'll see him at festivals across Simcoe County next year. Showed up in a 9:30 Club shirt from the one time he saw The Hip in DC. His ear for the pre-"Road Apples" material goes back to tape trading, long before Napster.

• Ian from Maple Ridge. Sings in Gift Shop, a West Coast tribute to The Tragically Hip, with an October 17th date at Club 240 in Crescent Beach. The big one is Saturday, October 24th: Gift Shop headlines GEDfest Vancouver at the Biltmore.

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out right now, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first. Drop him a line at jd@tthpods.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free discography, lyrics, and live-performance archive behind the tale of the tape every week: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com

YER LETTER

One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Vaccination Scar': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/5fa3fc7c-f01b-4eae-a3de-5cadc658b9f9

'Putting Down': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/6cfb0a5e-5909-40ec-8559-62ca0acd580e

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 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 sat down behind a kit and learned to play drums, more or less, that afternoon. Everything that follows - the Legion, the Palace, the Big Four, Buffalo - runs back through that room.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Keith on the phonetics problem. GEDfest has been pronounced just about every way a person can pronounce it, and he is quietly keeping score.

• Don's version of the origin story does not match Keith's version of the origin story, and the gap between them is the best five minutes of the episode.

• Jeff Hiscock could not get his own gear through the front door of the first GEDfest, because the room he was about to play in was already full. What he did about it involves reloading the car.

• A tax lawyer in Toronto that nobody in the organization had ever met, one link on The Tragically Hip's website, and the donation that made Don think this thing might actually have legs.

• Kevin McKay and his wife Tracy were the first two people to walk into a GEDfest that Keith had not personally invited. How they found out about it is a very Calgary answer.

• Ian Martin's opening move after seeing Trickle Down play a Canada Day gig was to walk up and start hugging the band. His second move was the website contact form, and Keith still remembers opening it.

• A man in his twenties sang every word from the front row of a packed room last year, then asked Jeff to sign the set list and told him why he was there. Jeff still gets goosebumps telling it.

• Ken Bellis on the thing about The Hip's bass parts that you do not hear until you sit down and try to play one.

THE PANEL

• Keith Dyck, co-founder of GEDfest and the drummer in Trickle Down, from Calgary. He is a partner in a wealth management firm by day, which has nothing to do with any of this. His favourite song to play is 'Blow at High Dough', and he has a confession about 'Courage' that he saves for the next episode.

• Don Martin, founding member of Trickle Down, from Calgary. Keith's father-in-law. Came for 'Scared', stayed for 'Nautical Disaster', and once had WestJet lose his luggage and find it again on the morning of a podcast taping.

• Ian Martyn, board director of chapters, from Calgary. Twelve cities this year, and he can tell you a story from most of them. Describes his own involvement as a bromance, and he is not wrong.

• Jeff Hiscock, guitar player in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Favourite to listen to is 'Fully Completely'. Favourite to play is 'Nautical Disaster', for a reason involving singer Dave Harris's shoulder that has now become a nightly ritual.

• Kevin McKay, OG GEDhead, from Calgary. Works in the medical industry, which is part of why this one landed the way it did. Currently on a 'Poets' kick, and he is right to be.

• Ken Bellis, bass player in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Went with 'Grace, Too' inside four seconds, as a bass player is obliged to do. Also wore the wrong shirt.

GEDFEST 2026

GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, and in its ninth year it runs in twelve chapters across Canada and, for the first time, in the United States. Every chapter raises money for a cause in its own community. Find your city at gedfest.ca. jD runs the Toronto chapter, playing the Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, October 17, with Grace, 2 on stage, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets and details at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances lives at thehiphandbook.tthpods.com.

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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 from Buffalo thinks there's no way it shouldn't open the thing. Nobody defends the sequencing, and everybody agrees the band was going to do exactly what it wanted anyway.

It is also a political record, made in an election year in an American studio, and Tracey from LA says the song reads different now than it did in 2004. Underneath all of it: the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a word that turns out to have nothing to do with the bridge at all, and one line in the album booklet that settles an argument the internet has been having for twenty years.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker. One song each they never got to hear live. Brian's answer comes attached to a number that stings.
• jD did some housekeeping in the shuffle machine before the show. The odds for every future episode just changed.
• The lap steel argument. Jeff's case for why the slide lines on this one hit differently than every other Hip song with a slide on it, and the earlier song he says is its cousin.
• The American word. Gord never says it out loud, and Jeff has a guess at what it is.
• Forgetting, or for getting. Greg from Tacoma has the album booklet open in the chat, and the answer is better than either one.
• Wobbly, and the Wobblies. What jD found when he stopped looking at the bridge.
• The broken guitar string tour. Brian's name for this stretch of shows, and what he thinks Gord was taking out on those strings.
• A story about Eddie Vedder and the cutting room floor that nobody in the room can quite confirm.
• Where Brian ranks it out of every song the band ever recorded, off a list he sat down and made the week Gord died.
• "It's three chords with attitude. It's like garage band, punk." Tracey from LA, on why the simplicity is the whole point.
• Next week the wheel lands on 'Evelyn,' from the debut EP, the Baby Blue album.

THE PANEL

• Tracey from LA. Back again. Came to the band late and is making up for it with bootlegs and live recordings, and she would take any of it live, though 'Grace, Too' is what she would ask the jukebox genie for. Hears Gord's phrasing as cards coming out of a magician's mouth.
• Brian from Buffalo. Back again. 54 shows deep, an honorary Canadian who reckons he learned most of his Canadian history off Hip lyrics. Saw this song four times, all four in a row, three of them as the opener, and never again after that. Go Bills.
• Jeff from Newmarket. His first time in the chair, originally out of Belleville, which makes him the second Jeff from that town to sit on this panel and the reason jD is coughing into his hand all episode. Plays guitar, bass, and sings in a cover band with a January 16th date at the Monarch in Toronto. Not a Hip tribute act, but The Hip rotates into the set often enough.

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2. Every dollar goes to Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets through facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free discography, lyrics, and live-performance archive behind the tale of the tape every week: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com. Built on setlist.fm and Hipbase, with every source credited on the page.

YER LETTER

Once a month, one email, the whole network in one place. What went out across all eight shows, what is coming, what jD has been listening to, and the odd thing that never makes it to a microphone. It is free, it is a letter rather than a broadcast, and it goes out to the community first. subscribe.tthpods.com

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Putting Down': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/6cfb0a5e-5909-40ec-8559-62ca0acd580e

'Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/68d2991b-9074-43ef-bd71-aa832c59a787

Live play counts and the retirement date come from setlist.fm and Hipbase by way of The Hip Handbook, as cited on the stream. Album credits and the release date come from Wikipedia and the "In Between Evolution" sleeve (see Block C).

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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 page. Indigenous reconciliation, read through "the documented indigenous" and "civilization flipped its desk." A career-long metaphor about writing itself, "paint and sketch" as the whole method. And a theory about the United State of Ricochet that might be about atomic particles, might be about Gord catching flack for something he said, might be neither. Nobody wins the argument. Everybody's a little bit right, which tracks for a Gord Downie lyric.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Breck's debut, and the two words he reaches for before anything else about the song: crispy and classic.
• The unsteeped teabag. What Breck gets called mid-episode, and why it sticks.
• A grade five teacher with an alarming approach to desk discipline, and the times tables it apparently taught for life.
• The case for Gord Sinclair's harmonies being the most underrated thing on the whole record. Justin makes it twice, unprompted.
• End of summer picks. Justin's answer is this song itself, which is the whole reason he's in the chair this week. Breck goes with 'Ahead By A Century'. Toots goes with 'Lake Fever', the track right before this one on the record.
• "I feel this tune and I know all the words and I can sing all the words, but it doesn't mean that I understand them." Justin, more or less summing up the whole hour.

Next week the wheel lands on 'Vaccination Scar,' from "In Between Evolution."

THE PANEL

• Breck from Reno. First time in the chair. A musician (formerly of Trouble Show) who hears the interplay between Paul and Rob before he hears anything else. Plays Sagebrush Sounds in Winnemucca, Nevada this month, put on by High Desert Habit, with new music of his own coming this fall.
• Toots from Whitby. Back again. A pro gigging drummer, twenty years alongside Matthew Holpe, with a sold-out barn show called September Songs on the 12th and a new project debuting October 30th, his 50th birthday, at Melanie Pringles in Whitby.
• Justin from Bridport, Vermont. Back again, and showed up having already decided this was his song of the summer before jD even asked the question. Announces Sprint Cars of New England at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and helps run the Vermont Motorsports Hall of Fame, which names its 2026 class in early October at the Milk Bowl, Thunder Road.

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2. Every dollar goes to Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets through facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free discography, lyrics, and live-performance archive keeps growing: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com.

YER LETTER

Once a month, the whole network in one email. subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

If the shows are worth something to you, buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.

FIND US

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'No Threat': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/46c0301d-0fa0-4cb4-8154-1836552e3a66

'Tiger The Lion': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/718fe20e-83d6-4c69-86eb-cc2b4af02834

Setlist details for Kingston (August 20, 2016) and Fort York (June 24, 2006) come from setlist.fm, cited here. Album credits and the Juno Award come from Wikipedia and Discogs (see the fact-check notes in Block C).

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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 'Sherpa'. Then the poll came back from the Facebook group with a stack of loves, which was nobody's prediction at this table, plus eight percent who came right out and said they dislike it. Steve did not vote. Steve tells us where he would have landed, and it opens something bigger than the song: what do you do with a band you love and songs you don't? He has a list. He is not sorry about the list.

Then there is the guitar. Jeff from Vaughan puts it in the chat first, that it is the guitar that doesn't work here, and Kevin has been circling the same thing all week. A chord that goes somewhere your ear refuses to follow. He can tell you which side of the mix it comes from and which of the two of them is playing it.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• Yelly Gord. Andrew's name for the thing that starts here and does not stop, straight through 'Yer Not the Ocean' and into a version of 'Blow at High Dough' that is barely a word any more. Where it came from, and which album this song belonged on instead.

• Kevin catches the flip. First person the whole way through, and then for one line it isn't, and there is a woman in the room.

• The last thing Gord says in the song. Nobody here can explain it. Three theories, no verdict, and one line jD reads out that stops everybody cold: you die to your fans one window at a time.

• Andrew went hunting the origin story. Nine or ten full shows from 1996, chasing a rant that is supposed to be the seed of this song. He did not find it. He found something else about peacekeeping that he cannot now unhear.

• The Hip headlined the first two concerts ever held at the Air Canada Centre. Steve knows who opened, and who played the third night.

• The anniversary weekend. jD in Kingston for Springer Market Square, murals and painted guitars all over a town that does not normally do it up. Steve stretched it over three days in Toronto and got a west end blackout two songs into the last show. Kevin was in Ireland.

• The live record, and the two songs on it that are not live. Andrew has a fix.

• End of summer picks. Steve's 'The Dire Wolf' and a whole summer in Kingston in 2002. Andrew's '11th Fret', a hangover song and he means that kindly. Kevin's 'Three Pistols', Tom Thomson and Algonquin Park. Steve's first answer was not one of theirs at all, and he owns it on air.

Next week the wheel lands on 'Putting Down' from "Music @ Work". Which the band played at Fort York that same June night in 2006, four songs before this one. So there's that.

THE PANEL

• Kevin from Sarnia. First time at the table. He was buying every one of these records the week it came out and cannot remember buying this one, which tells you something. Plays in a cover band called 402 West, named for the highway between London and Sarnia.

• Andrew from Winnipeg. Back again, and the closest thing this show has to a research department. Plays bass in Crooked Ice, whose record is "Dark Stars", and he cut the video too. His radio show and podcast is Soup Full of Radio.

• Steve from Toronto. Fourth time on a jD show inside a month, which he points out himself. At Fort York in 2006, in the building in Kingston in 2016. He rides for the Tragically Clipped, a Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation team that began as an act of spite between two friends and has raised over $200,000 since. What happened to one of his riders at a rest stop is worth the wait.

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2. Every dollar goes to Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets through facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

YER LETTER

Once a month, the whole network in one email. Where the shows are headed, what got made, and what did not fit anywhere else. Free. subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

If the shows are worth something to you, buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.

FIND US

Home: home.tthpods.com

Email: jd@tthpods.com

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Tiger The Lion': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/718fe20e-83d6-4c69-86eb-cc2b4af02834

'Emperor Penguin': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/a2f229b2-b5fc-41e4-8d78-632080d31a3b

'Pigeon Camera': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/49a9167c-6f8d-4641-8306-959189b38ec8

Live performance counts, dates, and the Fort York set list come from Hipbase and setlist.fm, as cited on the stream. Production credits from the "Yer Favourites" liner notes.

#TheTragicallyHip #YerFavourites #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #TheHip #TTHPods

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 a fix for that, and it's better than extra medium.

Duxoop from Toledo dropped a question in the chat that stopped the table cold. What is that opening noise? Jeff had already gone looking earlier in the week, so we get the answer live: what the sound actually is, who made it, and the instrument buried underneath it that most of the congregation has never once picked out. Twenty-six years of listening and there it is, right in front of everybody the whole time.

We spin the MuchMusic Intimate & Interactive version from that same summer, Chris Brown and Kate Fenner on stage with them, and then Jeff comes back with something none of us caught. Gord is reciting under Rob's outro. Not scatting. Reciting. From a poem, by a Canadian poet Gord loved enough to record in full for a tribute record years later. And the hotel that poem is named for is a ten minute walk from where Jeff grew up.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• John fucking Cage. Greg pulls the passage Gord was reading and puts it in a bigger frame, and it turns out to be about a whole lot more than music. Jeff, meanwhile, has listened to some John Cage and has thoughts about it that are not kind, and he says them anyway.

• A song with no chorus. Not a bridge in the middle either, just a break. So how does it hook anybody? Dave takes a run at that one, and at what Rob does on the outro instead of what any other guitar player would have done with all that room.

• Greg's theory that the catalogue splits into four groups, that this is where the art rock properly starts, and that this cut sits in the top five heaviest songs the band ever recorded. Bombs dropping. His words.

• The sequencing. 'My Music At Work' into 'Tiger The Lion' into 'Lake Fever'. Dave would have moved it. Greg would not have moved a thing.

• Where the lyrics turn. Dave on the shift that starts around this record and how much harder Gord makes you work from here on in, and Greg on the mouth shapes and the dancing and writing words that sound right before they mean anything.

• First listens. A leaked MP3 that took seven hours to download. A boombox on a deck in Tacoma running the record two days straight. A Calgary apartment full of diehards filing this one under wait, what.

Next week the wheel lands on 'No Threat', one of the two new tracks tucked onto "Yer Favourites". Brand new panel, brand new song.

THE PANEL

• Greg from Tacoma. Met the boys back around 'New Orleans Is Sinking', has seven to ten copies of every CD and gave most of them away. He makes music with AI under Hadees Market Music, spelled H-A-D-E-E-S, after his grandparents Hazel and Ira D.

• Jeff from Belleville. Third time in the chair. Belleville sits on the Bay of Quinte, which is exactly why the last ten minutes of this one belong to him.

• Dave from Halifax. First time at the table, and a musician, which shows the second the outro starts.

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2. Every dollar goes to Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets through facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

THE TIP JAR

Greg asked for this link on mic, so here it is. If the shows are worth something to you, buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.

FIND US

Home: home.tthpods.com

Email: jd@tthpods.com

Facebook community: community.tthpods.com

Instagram: @tthpods

YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods

Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com

MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Emperor Penguin': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/a2f229b2-b5fc-41e4-8d78-632080d31a3b

'Pigeon Camera': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/49a9167c-6f8d-4641-8306-959189b38ec8

'Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/68d2991b-9074-43ef-bd71-aa832c59a787

Live performance counts, dates, and chart details come from Hipbase and setlist.fm, as cited on the stream. Album details from the "Music @ Work" credits.

#TheTragicallyHip #MusicAtWork #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #TheHip #TTHPods

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy