Mike Downie’s epic love-letter to his brother Gord focuses on friendships, families, and fans

By Steve Newton

Stayed up till the wee hours of the morning watching the new documentary on the Tragically Hip, which started streaming on Prime Video today (September 20).

It’s a deep, four-hour dive into the history of the lil’ old band from Kingston, Ontario that takes an honest, unflinching look at the trials and tribulations of its five main members–singer Gord Downie, guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair, and drummer Johnny Fay–but never loses sight of its underlying theme: that a band of “brothers” welded together by love and respect is impossible to stop.

That brotherly aspect is driven home by the fact that The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal was directed by Gord Downie’s older sibling Mike, which meant unfettered access to all the archival footage the budding filmmaker may have shot since the band started gigging–with saxophonist Davis Manning, before Langlois even joined–at Kingston bars in 1984.

The familial connection also came in handy when others closely related to Gord–like his mother Lorna, daughter Willo, sister Charlyn, and other brother Pat–are called upon to give heartfelt accounts of the beloved artist, who tragically passed away from incurable brain cancer in 2017, at the age of 53.

The series kicks off with the introduction of the four surviving members, who get comfortably seated and prepare to lay out the ups and downs–but mostly ups–of the Tragically Hip’s meteoric rise to the status (unless you’re a hardcore Rush fan) of Canada’s Best-Ever Rock Band. Throughout the doc a panoply of other commentators–including fellow Canadian musicians such as Sarah Harmer, Tom Wilson, Finny McConnell, and Rush’s own Geddy Lee, along with actors like Will Arnett, Dan Aykroyd, and Jay Baruchel–get their two-bits in.

Jake Gold, who managed the band for 17 years, also gets considerable air time, cataloguing the many successes the Hip enjoyed in Canada, especially during its 1989 to 1998 heyday. The group’s efforts to break through to the American market, and its surprisingly tame album sales Stateside, are also touched on in Episode 3, when a frustrated Downie–during a phone interview he did with me in 1996–decries the Canadian media’s obsession with the subject:

“I’m the guy out there living it, you know. And someone starts saying, basically, ‘Does this bum you out? When I pick this scab does it hurt?’

“I just did three interviews, and in all three people said their editors wanted the main thrust of the story to be the canyon that exists between our success in Canada and our success in America.”

The American record-buying public’s snubbing of the Tragically Hip, while baffling, is well known to its fans, but there are several revelations regarding the band that come to light through Mike Downie’s tenacious storytelling.

For example, as seen in Episode 2, Gord informed the other members that he wanted to be the sole lyricist in the group. That meant that Gord Sinclair, who had written three songs himself for the band’s self-titled 1987 EP–including the singles “Small Town Bringdown” and “Last American Exit”–would no longer have his lyrics in Hip tunes.

Another surprising factoid gleaned from No Dress Rehearsal concerns the divisions that plagued the Hip during the recording of its 2009 album, We Are the Same, when Downie spent weeks huddled in the studio with superstar producer Bob Rock while his bandmates were nowhere in sight. As Sinclair and Langlois disclose in Episode 3, those actions nearly broke up the group for good.

Fortunately for the Hip and its multitudes of fans, the brotherly bond that had held the gang together for nearly three decades was strong enough to pull them through that troubled time, and Episode 4 documents how, after the shocking announcement of Downie’s terminal brain-cancer diagnosis in 2016, the band embarked on a courageous final tour across Canada that united the country in a way that hasn’t been felt since Team Canada beat Russia in 1972.

The last part of the documentary focuses on Downie’s fierce support for reconciliation with Canada’s indigenous peoples and the huge effect he had on so many others’ lives–whether bandmates, family, friends, or fans–the sombre strains of “Long Train Running” wafting in the background. While interviewing Gord’s lovely daughter Willo, director Uncle Mike comments off camera: “I just wish he was here… to bask in the light.”

I know what he means. And I bet you do, too.

The first two episodes of The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal will be screened at the Vancouver Playhouse on September 28 as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, with Mike Downie and the Tragically Hip members in attendance.

And to hear the full audio of my five interviews with Gord Downie conducted between 1989 and 1996 subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with music legends since 1982.