Tragically Hip bandmates reflect on healing and Gord Downie’s legacy as new album of songs recorded for ‘Road Apples’ is released

The healing continues.

With the release May 21 of “Saskadelphia,” a six-song album of previously unheard material and an upcoming performance at the Juno Awards on June 6 with Leslie Feist, the surviving members of The Tragically Hip say they are reconnecting again after the heart-breaking death of their iconic singer Gord Downie three and a half years ago.

“We were all kind of in a fog of grieving, not knowing what to do, not enthusiastic about really doing anything,” said guitarist Paul Langlois during a Zoom interview Wednesday that included guitarist Rob Baker, adding that the band hasn’t played together since their final nationally televised concert in Kingston on Aug. 20, 2016.

“It’s only been in the last year where we started being mentally healthy enough to start talking again and deciding what should we do.

“So, it feels good. We feel connected again.”

Connected enough to move forward with a special onstage reunion at the Juno Awards’ commemorative 50th ceremony with Feist … one that they needed a bit of convincing to do.

“I don’t think we really had any intention of doing this,” said Baker. “It kept getting suggested and people were throwing out names of people who could sing. We really weren’t that interested until Leslie Feist’s name came up — and I think all of us in the same moment sort of thought, oh, ‘Gord would have liked that. He would have wholeheartedly approved of that.’

“It felt natural and we all know Leslie, she’s a good friend and a great performer, great artist — and yeah it’s going to be fun and interesting … and a little terrifying.”

Less nerve-wracking is the release of “Saskadelphia,” a six-song set of five outtakes from the 1990s “Road Apples” sessions that were recorded in New Orleans, and a live recording of the song “Montreal” that the band — which also includes bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay — weren’t able to find the master for.

Both Baker and Langlois said “Saskadelphia” rekindled some forgotten memories — even about the music they recorded.

“It’s like going to a therapist and recovering memories you didn’t know you had,” says Baker.

“Some of these songs we hadn’t heard in 30 years. There are a couple that I don’t even remember doing.”

Paul Langlois says he was equally surprised.

“I wasn’t expecting much,” says Langlois. “We got sent them — maybe four of them, out of the six — the end of last summer. I was very hesitant. I waited a couple of days to play it, to be honest. I just thought, well, I haven’t heard these songs in a long time, they didn’t make the record. How good could they be?

“So, I was more than surprised — it just flew out of the speakers and I was like, ‘wow, how did this not get on ‘Road Apples?’ It was way more rocking than I was expecting. It was a great feeling. It sounded like a band. It sounded like the young us.”

The lapse of retention surrounding the sessions can be forgiven: the duo says life at the time was very much a blur due to incessant touring in Canada and the U.S., as the Hip promoted both their successful Canadian debut album “Up To Here” with energetic gigs and writing “Road Apples” whenever they could spare a minute.

Baker says the band would often write songs and perform them later that night, such was the pace as they worked to ensure that they didn’t fall into the worrisome “sophomore album jinx.”

“We were all very conscious of the sophomore curse and so we spent a lot of time writing. We’d write a song in the dressing room or at sound check and then we’d play it that night.

“We’d see how it went and what needed to be done to it to fire up the audience.”

They were also trying to impress producer Don Smith (Keith Richards), who worked with them on “Up To Here.”

“Don was rock royalty for us — and like rock royalty, he’s a weird, strange-feathered beast who is an idiosyncratic weird dude,” says Baker. “I thought he was going to come in and push us around in the studio: ‘do this, don’t play that, change the sound of your amp’ — and it was none of that.

“He said, ‘I just love you guys. I love these songs and I love the way you sound. I love the way you play in this band and my job is to capture that and make it sound as real and as authentic as I can.’ He never tried to change us.”

Smith’s encouragement was an important factor in the band’s young life: Downie was coming into his own as a lyricist and a performer, and fans, largely via radio, MuchMusic and club shows, were discovering such unique classics as “Blow At High Dough,” “New Orleans is Sinking” and “38 Years Old.”

By the time “Road Apples” was released, Hip fever was beginning to really take hold in Canada, adding such faves as “Little Bones,” “Twist My Arm” and “Cordelia” to their ascent, establishing them as a must-see concert act as both albums pulled in multi-platinum sales and eventually surpassed one million each in Canada.

Downie’s unusual performance style not only thrilled fans, but also kept the band on its toes.

“He was awesome from the get-go,” says Baker. “We were in competing bands in high school and from the first time I saw him it was like, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s got it! He’s got something interesting.’

“And playing with him on stage, you didn’t know what was going to happen. He might just take a left turn or sing new lyrics or start a new story, and you’d just play intuitively off of each other and we became very good at that.

“So, you could anticipate what someone else in the band was going to do. We just started to operate as a single mind when we were playing together jamming, backing him up.

“We had to be tight, but you also had to be loose and prepared for anything.”

Langlois said Downie always gave “110 per cent.”

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“Gord worked hard,” says Langlois. “He was as into it as any of us. He had just taken over the lyrics — he was leaving us in the dust, lyric-wise — and it was obvious and a reasonable thing, that he wanted to sing his own words. He’d look at some words that he hadn’t written and he’d be like, ‘what?’

“And we were more than occupied with trying to come up with good riffs to try and impress the rest of the guys.”

Throughout their career, the band released 13 albums and sold over 10 million albums and were a source of Canadian pride.

Then Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2015, and the clock was ticking.

Although there were future plans made — such as the continued existence of the Bathhouse, the Hip’s recording studio just West of Kingston, Downie was upset over things that were beyond his control.

“He was upset and really bothered by the fact that the band was going to kind of stop along with him,” notes Paul Langlois, “But his brother Pat represents his interests so we always keep Gord in mind. We were a five-piece, together all the time so of course we honour him whenever and however we can.”

In the meantime, “Saskadelphia” is only the beginning of a number of Tragically Hip projects in the works.

“There’s a lot of stuff in the vaults and we have stuff in the works, but we’re still working on it,” says Baker.

“Johnny’s still looking and there are multiple places to find Hip tapes, apparently. He’s doggedly determined — he’s been leading the charge on finding this stuff and getting it all transferred and consolidated in one place.”

As for Gord Downie, both Langlois and Baker says they’re aware of their singer’s impact but keep it in perspective.

“On some level, I think we’re all aware of that, but it’s not something I focus on or think about too much,” says Baker.

“For me it’s much more personal: The loss of a friend. It’s the loss of your career. To some extent, it was the loss of self-identity. For more than half my life I’ve been a member of a five-piece. It’s not a five-piece, so things have fundamentally changed. There was a lot of stuff to sort through and I’m still working on it — it’s a work in progress.”

And Langlois says Downie will be remembered for his kindness.

“With the public, Gord had a great reputation of being kind. That’s not a surprise. We saw it all the way through — talking to fans and making them feel more important by listening to them. He did that, but we did it too.

“I think that’s what he cared about most — how you made other people feel. He certainly made them feel good.”

Album Review: “Saskadelphia”

Here’s an unexpected gift from the gods of music: a six-song EP of outtakes featuring previously unheard Tragically Hip music with Gord Downie at the vocal helm.

Recorded during the “Road Apples” era circa 1990 — the point where the Kingston rockers truly broke through the Canadian Shield of fledgling act indifference to receive the warmest of public embraces as they became a national phenomenon, “Saskadelphia” reverberates with the early quirky quality Hip fans know and love.

During those days, there was less nuance and more attack, with driving beats and barrelling two-guitar rock topped off with Downie’s fervent vocals and intriguing lyrics, always providing a deeper story than what was being said on the surface.

The six songs will sound both fresh and familiar: the rumbling guitar riff that opens “Ouch” may bring to mind a related intro of “New Orleans is Sinking,” while the propelling tour-de-force of “Not Necessary” wields a similar rhythmic hammer to “Blow At High Dough.”

“Just As Well” probably didn’t make “Road Apples” due to the lighthearted atmospheric vibe it shares with “Happy Hour,” although “Happy Hour” certainly offers more profound gravitas in its subject matter.

“Reformed Baptist Blues,” an older Hip song, is one-part rhythmic calamity to two-parts blues-drenched rock; “Crack My Spine Like a Whip” is a straight-shootin’ rock ‘n roller with some great rhythmic undertow offering support for some great riffs and solos, while “Montreal” — the lone live track taken from a 2000 performance at the city’s Bell Centre on the 11th anniversary of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, finds Downie announcing that the band would like to do a song about “the identification process:” a tune that’s more contemplative than anything else on the album.

It all breezes by fairly quickly at about 18 minutes, but unlike many “outtake” projects where the material flirts with inferiority, “Saskadelphia” — actually the working title of “Road Apples” before a record executive kiboshed it — gloriously holds its own.

Whether this fulfills your collection as a completist or a hunger to hear The Tragically Hip in its prime formative years, “Saskadelphia” is the promising amuse bouche in what will hopefully be a never-ending rollout of memorable vault releases.