A number of St. Lawrence County residents crossed the border last week to watch The Tragically Hip’s 'Man Machine Poem Tour' in Ottawa, Ont., or viewed the broadcast of the tour’s final stop in Kingston, Ont. Many believe it was band’s last tour due to their frontman’s terminal brain cancer. North Country This Week staffer Andy Gardner offers his take on the band and tour’s end.

By ANDY GARDNER

“Coffin cheaters dance on their graves,” sings Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie in “Little Bones,” and on what could be the band’s final tour after a three-decade run, did he ever show us what that means.

The Hip, who played Akwesasne in 2007, performed sold out shows across Canada for their Man Machine Poem tour, which was put together on the heels of the band announcing their charismatic leader and lyricist Downie was diagnosed in December with terminal brain cancer.

I, along with my girlfriend, mother, stepfather and brother were blessed to have been able to attend the Aug. 18 Ottawa show at the Canadian Tire Centre. In usual Hip fashion, the crowd on the way in was pure bliss, not a sad or stern look to be found anywhere.

At the same time, there was an odd vibe in the air. This tour was something different. We’ve lost some great rockers in the last year – Lemmy Kilmister, Prince, David Bowie. None of us got to say a proper goodbye. Just poof, gone, that was it. With the Hip, they showed all their cards, and the fans showed theirs right back. The band took the last chance they had to connect with their audience, and us with them, so we could all say a proper goodbye to each other.[img_assist|nid=178886|title=Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie performs in Ottawa on Aug. 18. Photo provided by Tim Stankovic.|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=250|height=297]

They have never said they are officially done as a band or that this would be their final tour, to my knowledge. Their announcement in May used the phrase “one more tour.” But there was a finality to the whole thing, which wasn’t quite as apparent in Ottawa as with the Kingston show broadcast live two nights later. In Ottawa, we knew it would likely be the last time we would see the Hip, but the whole thing wasn’t over yet.

The band took a unique approach to this tour. They clustered in the middle of the stage for the first eight songs, with drummer Johnny Fay on a more compact kit with a second, larger kit at the back of the stage which he played for the rest of the show. They delivered groups of several songs from the same album, before moving on to another.

Gordie took the stage in a shiny green leather suit with a wide-brimmed hat adorned with feathers. He changed his suit twice, once into a shiny silver leather outfit with a “Jaws” shirt underneath and closed the show in gold leather attire.

Once the band took the stage and opened with “Boots or Hearts” from 1989’s “Up To Here,” I realized every seat was the best seat in the house. The crowd belted out the lyrics and Gordie danced and grooved around the stage in his usual fashion that helps make their shows so wild.

Although the atmosphere was pure electricity, having knowledge of Gord’s diagnosis made lyrics such as “Like boots or hearts oh when they start, they really fall apart, yeah fall apart” have an ominous ring.

The Hip in Ottawa proved, as they have their entire career, that the blues are still required. They followed “Boots” with “Blow at High Dough,” “Opiated” and “New Orleans is Sinking.” The renditions seemed to have a heavier emphasis on the bluesier side of their early songs, with at least one of guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois on a deep-sounding acoustic at all times for that leg of the show.

Although the crowd was singing along with their old favorites, louder than I’ve ever heard at any live show, at times I found myself silent so I could listen to the way Gordie was singing. A staple of his live performances is not only changing his tempo and pitch from the studio versions, but also changing the occasional lyric here and there.

They followed the early tunes with a few from their new record, “Man Machine Poem.”

[img_assist|nid=178887|title=The set list for the Aug. 18 Ottawa concert. Photo provided by Neil Pomeroy.|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=300|height=376]“In A World Possessed by the Human Mind,” “Ocean Next,” “What Blue” and the heavier “Machine” capped off the first part of the show. They went to intermission with a video of a thunderstorm in the Canadian wilderness on the screen, with the stage lights flashing to mimic the lightening.

The band returned to the stage with rainbow lights cast over the stage and floor seats, and our hero Gordie had changed into the silver suit. They belted through for four songs from their 2004 album “In Between Evolution” – “Summer’s Killing Us,” “Gus: The Polar Bear from Central Park” (my favorite from the show), “New Orleans is Beat” and “It Can’t Be Nashville Every Night.”

After the “Evolution” run came four tracks from “Day for Night” (1994) – “Greasy Jungle,” “Nautical Disaster,” “So Hard Done By” and “Grace, Too,” which always gets the people hopping to bassist God Sinclair’s thundering line that can be felt deep inside your little bones. Following “Grace,” the band walked off stage, leaving Gord by himself. He humbly stood quiet, then took to the mic and told the crowd to “carry on,” but the show wasn’t over yet.

After a brief intermission, they returned to the stage with Gordie in a third suit – this one shiny gold with a black hat and they rocked the house with four favorites from 1996’s “Trouble at the Henhouse.” “Gift Shop” had me realizing being a 20-year fan of the Hip has given us all “that glimpse over the top” he talks about, whether we’re tuned in enough to realize it or not. They followed that with a laid back “Flamenco,” a version of “Springtime in Vienna” that had everyone emphatically belting out “past screaming from the rooftops, we live to survive our paradoxes” and possibly the greatest love song of all time, “Ahead by a Century.”

The Hip treated us to not one, but five encores. From 1992’s “Fully Completely” came “Courage (For Hugh MacLennan),” “Wheat Kings” and “At the Hundredth Meridian.” The show closed with “Bobcaygeon” and “Poets” from 1998’s “Phantom Power.”

I can’t think of a better song to have been my last I would see from them live. “Don’t tell me what the poets are doin’,” because I’ve seen what they’re doin’. Gordie is probably the greatest living rock poet and the greatest of our time. The Earth has been around for billions of years and we get to live at the same time as Gordon Edgar Downie.

He left the crowd with advice that if we all followed day-to-day, the world would be a better place – “Take care of each other, okay?” The show closed with him telling the crowd that the five of them have been “friends for 35 years, and we’ll be friends forever” to deafening cheers, before hugging and kissing each band member.

There is only one Tragically Hip, like that needs to be said. Each of their albums is so rich in lyrical depth and musical talent, to a degree up there with the likes of The Beatles or Bob Dylan. Going from song to song is like going through a good art museum after dark, sometimes literally, I mean who else writes rock songs about Tom Thompson and The Group of Seven? Their music has more going on than you could ever take in over one day, and it’s genius to a degree that some of us, myself included, will never grasp 100 percent. They have mastered the pure intersection of poetry and rock ‘n’ roll.

Watching the broadcast of the final tour stop in Kingston on Aug. 20, Gordie talked about their beginnings in the early 1980s and how they just wanted to play for anybody, anywhere. “Everyone is invited, everyone is involved,” he told the world. That’s the vibe of a Hip show. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, you can connect with that band and the people around and find something in their lyrics that strikes your main nerve.

In addition to their artistic talent, the band cares deeply about social issues and took time from the Kingston show to advocate for First Nations. Downie took a minute to hail Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was in attendance wearing a Hip shirt, and push him to make good on his government’s promises to improve the quality of education for First Nations people and to do something to address the dark legacy of residential schools.

"We're in good hands, folks, real good hands … he cares about the people way up north, that we were trained our entire lives to ignore, trained our entire lives to hear not a word of what's going on up there,” Downie said. "And what's going on up there ain't good. It's maybe worse than it's ever been ... but we're going to get it fixed and we got the guy to do it, to start, to help.

"Prime Minister Trudeau's got me, his work with First Nations. He's got everybody. He's going to take us where we need to go ... it's going to take us a hundred years to figure out what the hell went on up there, but it isn't cool and everybody knows that. It's really, really bad, but we're going to figure it out, you're going to figure it out."

The Hip closed their show with an anthem to, well, everybody. They chose “Ahead By a Century” to cap off an indescribable evening. The show was an unparalleled moment in rock ‘n’ roll history.

I spent some time trying to figure out why that song and I realized Gordie was singing it to literally everybody – the crowd, the people watching on TV, his bandmates, the back stage crew, the prime minister, his family, everyone who was a part of them getting to that exact moment – “You are ahead by a century and disappointing you is getting me down.”

Pure Hip, pure Gordie. Everyone is invited, everyone is involved.

So to close, I have to say thank you to Gord D., Paul, Johnny, Rob and Gord S. – thank you for the good times and the expanded minds. YOU are the ones ahead by a century.