The band’s remaining members recently surprised everyone by reuniting once again. “You slip in like no time passed and you carry on as if you were hanging out the day before. It’s just a comfortable place to be with those guys,” Baker says in reference to being onstage with his bandmates again. “It’s all very familiar, very long-standing friends. Performing in an empty Massey Hall in Toronto while Covid-19 protocols were in effect, the ensemble ran through the Hip’s “It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken,” a nod to the group being honored with the Juno Humanitarian Award that night. Since Downie’s death, the band had only reunited once, backing Canadian indie-pop singer Feist during the televised 2021 Juno Awards. “And if I have a great time, other people are going to have a great time, and I think everyone approached it that way - it was a great rollercoaster ride onstage.” I always felt my job was to have a better time than anyone else in the building,” Baker says. “The question was, ‘What do you think it’s going to be like for the guys? Are they going to keep doing music?’, ‘They’ll keep doing music, but their heart will never be in it.’”Īrguably Canada’s greatest rock band, and one of its most cherished musical exports, the Tragically Hip transcended what it meant to not only entertain and embrace an audience, but also the ability to harness the sheer power of rock & roll - this force of nature for positive, tangible change contained in their lyrical aptitude and live-wire stage presence.

“My dad did an interview the day after Gord died, and one of the things he said turns out in hindsight,” Langlois says. A little more than a year after that performance, Downie succumbed to his illness on Oct. The Hip embarked on a final tour that culminated with the curtain call in Kingston, Ontario. “And then, the very next day, this tempest moved in and just washed everything away, putting everything out of focus.”ĭownie, the band’s charismatic lead singer, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2015 and revealed the news in May 2016. “When we played that last show, our entire career came into focus - everything that we’d been through, being in the band, and then we did this cross-country tour ,” Fay says. Sadly, that night in Kingston - nationally televised on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to a viewership of millions - would be the last time Sinclair, Downie, guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois, and drummer Johnny Fay would perform together. “It was the audience, it was the power of the music - that very real, emotional connection between the group, the performance, and the audience.” By the time it got to the last show, it was just like, ‘We should be playing more,’” Sinclair tells Rolling Stone. “There was a deep connection with the people, and as we progressed on that last tour, got stronger and stronger. 20, 2016, at the sold-out Rogers K-Rock Centre in the group’s native Kingston, Ontario, bassist Gord Sinclair stood onstage in awe of the moment - wondering what the future held for the larger-than-life Canadian rock band. When the Tragically Hip played their final show on Aug.

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