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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 [email protected]. 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. 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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: [email protected]. 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 Home: home.tthpods.com Email: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com 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 Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 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: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com #TheTragicallyHip #GEDfest #GordDownie #Fundraising #podList #Diehards Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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: [email protected]. 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: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods 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 Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today the gang gets together to discuss the fifth album in Gord's discography, the haunting, Secret Path Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com #TheTragicallyHip #GEDfest #GordDownie #Fundraising #podList #Completeists Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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: [email protected]. 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 Home: home.tthpods.com Email: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com 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. #TheTragicallyHip #MusicAtWork #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #HipFans #CanadianMusic Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 [email protected]. 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 jD asked for a caribou or two in the hat on mic. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40 FIND US Home: home.tthpods.com Email: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com 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 #TheTragicallyHip #TTHOnShuffle #RoadApples #UpToHere #HipFans #TTHPods Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. 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: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #GEDfest #podList #Fundraising #HipHeads Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 THE TIP JAR Editing is hard and the battery needs charging. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40. FIND US Home: home.tthpods.com Email: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com 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). #TheTragicallyHip #InBetweenEvolution #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #TTHPods #CanadianMusic Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 Home: home.tthpods.com Email: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com 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). #TheTragicallyHip #MusicAtWork #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #TheHip #TTHPods Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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: [email protected] Facebook community: community.tthpods.com Instagram: @tthpods YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com 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 f*****g 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: [email protected] 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

Hey, it's jD here. August 20th, 2026. Bath, Ontario. A stone coach house west of Kingston that the band turned into a recording room, where "Phantom Power", "Music @ Work", "We Are The Same", and "Man Machine Poem" were all made. Ten years to the day since the last show. This is the last one. Yer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour ran the length of the Man Machine Poem Tour, city by city, Victoria east to Kingston, and it ends here, in the room where the last record was made. Three fans at the table, and not one of them tells August 20th the same way. One was on the floor. One was in the square with 25,000 people. One was on his couch in Brockville with a bottle of wine and a good reason. 🎸 𝗪𝗛𝗢'𝗦 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘 Shamus from Brockville is a teacher whose marriage is punctuated by The Hip turning up uninvited. A wedding present in 1997 from a friend running sound on Another Roadside Attraction put him somewhere he was not supposed to be, then somewhere better. A door held open at a highway rest stop in 2002 put a member of the band right in front of him and his wife, and what the two of them said in unison is the whole thing in four words. He tried for Kingston, he tried for Ottawa, and he got into the penultimate show because of one message from his wife on the afternoon of. He still has the ticket. He brought it. Eric from Ottawa went to seven shows before Kingston, most of them out west, most of them alone, on advice from his spouse that turned out to be exactly backwards. Kingston was the white whale. He got in because a Canada Post employee named Jonathan Allard refreshed a screen at the right second, ended up holding two front row tickets and nobody to bring, and posted an ad asking people to make him a proposal. What Eric offered instead of a markup, and what he handed over three months in advance on nothing but trust, is the best ticket story this series has turned up. Then he found his seat and found out what was bolted to the floor in front of it. Tiffany from Kingston got a tattoo the morning of the show. The lyrics come from a song she had never heard live, off a record she was still learning, and she was hoping against hope they would play it. They played it. She spent the night in Springer Market Square with her husband and her best friend, bused home so she would not have to think about parking, and hit play on the PVR before her coat was off. She also has the sharpest read on why a night that size, that emotional, with that much beer in it, produced no trouble at all. 💬 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬 𝗦𝗔𝗜𝗗 "You're acknowledging that you're on the way out, unfortunately, but yet you're going to park that emotion and you're going to be the undisputed best frontman ever." - Eric from Ottawa "It kind of felt like the day after a wedding. You get married and you've got all this anticipation. And then the event happens and it's over. And you're just sort of like, well, what now?" - Tiffany from Kingston "As a person who's been in bands, there's a thing where nobody's leading. It's almost like a Ouija board." - Shamus from Brockville ⚡ 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗡𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 Thirty songs at the Rogers K-Rock Centre. Three encores, which was not something they did. Eight songs played tight together at the front of the stage before the thunderstorm broke the set open, and the panel has a theory about why the five of them stood that close. Each of them brought one song back. Shamus picked '𝘔𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦', off the record he could not bring himself to listen to until he heard it live. Tiffany picked '𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘉𝘭𝘶𝘦', which is now on her arm. Eric picked '𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴', and his reason has nothing to do with the band and everything to do with where eight thousand people were looking. Setlist confirmed via setlist.fm. ❤️ 𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗠 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗘𝗟 Tiffany and her husband run a food drive for the Humane Society every December - Fill The Sleigh on Facebook, a sleigh on the front lawn, and about 150 blow molds around it. Three years in, nearly $5,000 and over 5,000 pounds of food. Shamus asks only that you share the road, use yer blinker, and be kind to each other. 🎧 𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗡 Listen: [EPISODE LINK NEEDED] 🎟️ 𝗚𝗘𝗗𝗙𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗢 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 Saturday, October 17th, 2026. The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, with Grace 2 on the stage. GEDfest raises money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer, and this community has put nearly $40,000 toward causes like these since 2018. Tickets: facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ Thank you to Shamus, Eric, and Tiffany for closing this out, and to every person who sat down over the run of this series and handed over the most specific night of their life. It was never really about the setlist. So there's that. Where were you on August 20th, 2016? Floor, square, couch, somewhere else entirely. Tell me in the comments. #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHPods #HipFans #CanadianMusic #InGordWeTrust Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

August 20th, 2016. The Rogers K-Rock Centre, Kingston, Ontario. Thirty songs. Three encores, which was not a thing they did. And a country that put down whatever it was holding. Ten years later, jD asked fifteen people one question. Not what they made of it. Not where it ranks. Just this: where were you. The answers do not go where you would expect. An airplane hangar outside Olympia, Washington. A garage door in the country north of Superior with fifty people camped in the yard. A smoker in Calgary that had been running since sunrise. A lakeside deck in upstate New York with a bottle of Macallan 12 on it and a great blue heron that keeps turning up in the shape of an album cover. An arena in Chicago where a man from Detroit stood in a Gord Downie shirt underneath a Tigers jersey, missing the whole thing on purpose, waiting to find out whether two sentences he had typed five days earlier had reached anybody. They had. That is all yer getting. Who's Here Adam from Tampa had never seen The Hip play a note and owned five of the records. At 7:55 he told his houseguests he would be back in either five minutes or two and a half hours, went upstairs, and typed the words CBC and The Tragically Hip into a search bar. What he did the following morning cost him the next four years. Andy from London was three weeks deep into Scotland with a speaking gig in Pennsylvania waiting on the Monday. He flew home without his family for exactly one day. Where he watched it, and who was running the sound there, is the part that still gets him. Brian from Canastota got hooked by a Saturday Night Live performance in 1995 and never came unhooked. Bose rig on the deck, the lake in front of him, and a heron that has been showing up in a very particular silhouette for years. His wife found him out there at two in the morning. Brock from Kitchener was in the lower bowl. A ticket scanner went down and he ended up sitting inside a nearly empty K-Rock Centre while eight thousand people waited outside. Ten years on he has still never watched the broadcast. Not once, not one song. Colin from Winnipeg lost his mother and had his first child inside the same fortnight, and had to move a funeral to do it. He watched with a newborn who is ten years old now. He has a plan for the rewatch, and it involves all three kids. Dan from Buffalo and Colleen from Buffalo drove in from the Hamilton show with no tickets, no expectations, and their phones switched off at the border. Dan wandered down to look at a boat show at half past nine in the morning and got into a line without asking what the line was for. He was number twenty-eight. Duxoop from Toledo watched at home, alone, so that nobody could see him cry, pulling CBC down through a Windsor channel on Ohio cable. He knew twelve of the thirty songs that night. He is up to nineteen now, and the way he counts them is not the way you would count them. Greg from Tacoma spent the evening at his mother Rosalie's 79th birthday party in an airplane hangar, slipping off to a corner every ten minutes with a phone and no headphones. What he heard inside 'Grace, Too' that night he has never stopped hearing, and the people standing beside him in that hangar are a large part of why. Janice from Kitchener stopped for a photo at the Welcome to Kingston sign, signed the banners downtown, and walked into the arena at the exact moment it stopped letting anybody else in. She has a theory about how many people are eventually going to claim they were in that room. Jimmy from Detroit had tickets for the London and Toronto shows, and a promise to his wife that put him in Chicago on the 20th instead. Five days out he sat down and wrote two sentences on a message board. He will go to his grave believing somebody read them. Joanne from Thunder Bay had seen the August 12th show in Toronto and could not get to Kingston. A friend rigged a projector onto a garage door out in the country and fifty people camped in the yard to watch it. One song landed harder than everything around it, and it was not the closer. Spencer from Calgary made three racks of ribs, a couple dozen perogies by hand, and a house rule about side conversations. Gold glitter letters stuck to the fridge spelling out the songs he was hoping for. Then he walks the setlist album block by album block, and a decade later the surprises still surprise him. Steve from Toronto got a single ticket half an hour after they went on sale and watched from ten rows back. He has the sharpest disagreement in the whole episode, and it is not about the band. It is about whether the people watching it and the people inside it were even at the same event. Todd from Fort Mac says the words Fort Mac and 2016 and everybody already knows he means the fire. He watched at his grandfather's house in Louisdale, Cape Breton, with the family in from out west. It was the last time all of them were in that room together. What They Said "I'll start with the punchline, which was I was in an airplane hangar weeping."  - Greg from Tacoma "I went by myself, but I was not alone."  - Andy from London "When you're watching it on TV and Gord's breaking down at the end of the song, you feel completely helpless. But when you're at the show and that happens, you just start making as much noise as you know how to make to help your guy pull through."  - Steve from Toronto "To me, it's a celebration of Canadian culture. And I know that was never the intention, but it's just always what it turned out to be."  - Todd from Fort Mac About That Night Thirty songs at the Rogers K-Rock Centre. 'Fifty-Mission Cap' into 'Courage', 'Wheat Kings', and 'At the Hundredth Meridian' - four songs in and the whole country was already accounted for. Then 'Tired as F**k', uncensored, on the national broadcaster. Then a thunderstorm nobody had been warned about. Then 'My Music at Work', 'Lake Fever', 'Toronto #4', and 'The Last of the Unplucked Gems', which is not a setlist, it is a dare. Three encores, closing on 'Ahead by a Century'. Setlist confirmed via setlist.fm. Fifteen people, one date, and not one of them tells it the same way. That is the whole point of this show, and Kingston is where it lands. GEDfest Toronto 2026 Saturday, October 17th, 2026. The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, with Grace, 2 on the stage. GEDfest raises money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer, and this community has put nearly $40,000 toward causes like these since 2018. Tickets and details: facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ The Community Yer Letter lands once a month with everything happening across the network. Subscribe at subscribe.tthpods.com. The Facebook group is roughly 7,500 fans deep and still climbing at community.tthpods.com. Leave yer own Hipstory any time - jD reads every one. Home: home.tthpods.comEmail: [email protected]: @tthpodsYouTube: youtube.com/@tthpodsTip Jar Editing is hard and the battery needs charging. Buy jD a coffee at buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40 More From The Final Tour Yer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour - Ottawa: redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/7fb753ff-654b-4be4-ab44-3cbae3b7a68bYer Hipstories: Reflections From The Final Tour - Hamilton: redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/fae76ee3-738f-4007-80c8-7140729bb295Closing Thank you to Adam, Andy, Brian, Brock, Colin, Dan, Colleen, Duxoop, Greg, Janice, Jimmy, Joanne, Spencer, Steve, and Todd. Fifteen people handed over the most specific night of their lives and asked for nothing back. So there's that. #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHPods #HipFans #CanadianMusic #InGordWeTrust Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy