Fans, Downie and The Hip get emotional in tour kickoff
Outside Rogers Arena before Sunday night’s concert, Tragically Hip fans sporting baseball caps and hockey jerseys were locked in brotherly hugs.
Fathers, mothers, daughters and sons embraced each other and held hands as they soaked in the preshow buzz.
It was a scene reminiscent of Friday night’s tour kickoff in Victoria, where Gordon Downie and The Hip played a marathon 26-song set to kick off the Man Machine Poem Tour, setting the bar way, way high.
Around Rogers, fans lined up for the band’s coveted tour merchandise and showed off shirts and jerseys from tours past.
Neil Evans, 37, and Ashley Hickey, 30, flew in from Fort St. John for Sunday’s and Tuesday’s shows, making this Evans’ 26th and 27th Hip concerts.
Hickey wore Evans’ homemade Hip hockey jersey, signed by all the members of the band: Downie, guitarists Robbie Baker and Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay.
“Neil Power Always,” read a dedicated inscription from Downie.
Evans was emotional looking ahead to Tuesday’s show.
“It’s going to be the last time I see them,” he said, visibly shaken.
Hip fandom runs deep and strong in B.C.
Geoff Harms, 29, a forest firefighter from Campbell River and longtime fan, said he fully fell in love with the band after he bought a motorcycle in Prince Edward Island in 2008.
He rode his bike across the country, stopping in places he heard about in songs such as Bobcaygeon, where he “watched the constellations come out,” like Downie sings in the song.
“It really hit home after that trip,” he said of the connection the band has with the Canadian landscape.
If the vibe in Victoria before the show felt relaxed (if slightly anxious), in Vancouver it was electrifying, with a crowd of 17,500 people jammed on the concourse, hooting and hollering while carrying handfuls of beers.
At the stroke of 8:30 p.m. Downie and the band made their appearance, Downie dressed in a shiny aquamarine leather suit and white feathered hat. The band basked in the applause and launched into Twist My Arm and a rocking Three Pistols.
The crowd stood up and never sat down. The band was surrounded by adoring fans, with the back of the stage open (as it was in Victoria) to allow as many as possible to see the concert.
(In Vancouver, the resale factor was so bad that thousands of tickets on StubHub were being sold at discount prices Thursday, and more were “released to the public” by Ticketmaster the day of the show.) Downie was in solid form. “It smells like dope in here,” Downie quipped early on. “It’s almost unsettling.”
Like in Victoria, there were minor timing slips Sunday, a few lost lines here and there, but Downie was held aloft by the band, and given love and support by the fans. Teleprompters on stage provided extra help to the man whose diagnosis of glioblastoma, a terminal form of brain cancer, hit the country hard.
It was a show defined and “possessed by the human mind,” to borrow from the song.
Man Machine Poem was a gripping moment. The song, which appeared on the 2012 album Now for Plan A, was riveting, with the stage splashed in white and Downie belting out the words, making every one count.
The genius of the band’s final shows lies in its set lists: Close to 30 songs presented in rotating segments dedicated to specific albums.
Everyone in the crowd gets a little something just for them: Cornerstone cuts from Up To Here, Phantom Power, Road Apples, Trouble at the Henhouse, and the underappreciated World Container are all accounted for.
Whether you were a casual fan with a favourite record or a true completist, the shows so far have hit every mark Fully, Completely.
Few other acts could get a bunch of blue-collar Canadians to sing out loud encyclopedic knowledge about their own country.
Few frontmen could be as delightful and delirious in their delivery, bringing together hockey-worshipping hosers, fellow poets and artists, and good ol’ Tim Hortons-drinking moms and pops.
During show closer Ahead by a Century in Victoria, an older gentleman with long grey hair sporting a music festival T-shirt was dancing in his seat with total abandon, waving a small Canadian flag in his left hand.
“No dress rehearsal, this is our life,” he sang at the top of his lungs. It was perfect. “Thank you, thank you, it means a lot,” Downie repeated as he took his last bow, his emotions showing clearly on the screen above the stage.
This tour will forever be remembered as The Hip’s final master stroke, a gift given to their multitude of fans with boundless love, spirit and life-affirming energy.
And grace, too.