Windsor Star

Surviving Hip members partners in pot business

Hip bandmates slowly step back into spotlight following Downie’s death

- JANE STEVENSON

The Hip still hurts. Gord Downie’s Tragically Hip bandmates — guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois and bassist Gord Sinclair — say they continue to mourn the loss of their longtime friend and frontman as they slowly step back into the spotlight. “A chocolatey mess,” is how Baker described still feeling after Downie died from brain cancer on Oct. 17.

“It’s still really fresh,” said Sinclair, while the trio did their first interviews at a lavish country gathering at The New Farm — about 125 kilometres northwest of Toronto — to celebrate their Up Cannabis partnershi­p.

“It’s been only eight months after 30 years. We’re really good friends. We’re a family. We have great support networks,” said Sinclair. “People go through different things. Personally, I have really sad days and I have really good days. And that’s a long process. And it doesn’t just include the five of us, or the four of us — see, there you go — I still think of it in terms of a unit. But it’s just the people we’ve worked with, you know, since the early ’90s. Speak to them, see how everybody ’s doing. It’s not the end of a career. It’s the loss of a good friend of all of ours.”

With the Oct. 17 date for legalized pot looming, the three Hip musicians, minus drummer Johnny Fay, were part of a large gathering to celebrate their partnershi­p with Up Cannabis as both investors and brand ambassador­s.

“Gord would have loved that,” said Baker of the first anniversar­y of his death coinciding with the date that weed becomes legal for recreation­al use in Canada. Five strains, all named after Hip songs — Eldorado, Morning Moon, Grace, Gems and 50MC (Mission Cap) — were unveiled this week while food from five celebrity chefs was provided on two long banquet tables with seating for 260 people. Kingston rockers The Glorious Sons and Toronto’s Dallas Green performed inside a barn, and a nearby watering hole provided a refreshing cool down in the middle of southern Ontario’s heat wave.

“He would have insisted that we played,” said Baker when asked what Downie would have thought of the event. “He would have loved today,” said Langlois. Interestin­gly, despite being long thought of as one of Canada’s most passionate frontmen, his bandmates say he wasn’t entirely comfortabl­e as a public speaker. “Gord would stand in front of 25,000 people and sing his heart out and go stream-of-consciousn­ess until the cows come home, but if you got him to speak in front of 10 people about water rights, he hated it,” said Sinclair.

Said Baker: “The whole persona he developed on stage was stage fright. It’s not a natural thing to stand in front of an audience and bare your soul or to speak to a crowd of people. I guess it’s natural for some people. It’s not natural for most people. But, for Gord, I think it was hard. And I think every tour he would say, ‘I’m not going to do the dancing bear! I’m not going to do that anymore! I’m going to stand there and sing the songs!’ And as soon as he got out there in front of the crowd, like after about 20 seconds, it would just take over because he needed to do that.” But when the Hip last toured together in 2016 — culminatin­g in a nationwide broadcast of the last show on Aug. 20 in their hometown of Kingston — Sinclair says Downie fed on the fans reactions. “He got stronger and stronger because of the love that he was getting back from them,” he said. “That’s what really struck me about the whole thing. He was really sick when we started. He was still really sick when we finished but he was better. It was all about love.”

 ?? JANE STEVENSON ?? “Personally, I have really sad days and I have really good days,” says Tragically Hip bassist Gord Sinclair, left, seen with his bandmates Rob Baker and Paul Langlois in Creemore, Ont. “And that’s a long process.”
JANE STEVENSON “Personally, I have really sad days and I have really good days,” says Tragically Hip bassist Gord Sinclair, left, seen with his bandmates Rob Baker and Paul Langlois in Creemore, Ont. “And that’s a long process.”

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