No Dress Rehearsal: Deep Cuts & Untold Stories from The Hip with Jake Gold

Today, I talk to Jake Gold, the legendary manager of the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. Jake talks about the new film The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal and the four-year process of bringing The Hip’s raw, emotional story to life.

We go deep into The Hip lore with stories that have never been heard before about some of The Hip's iconic songs, their appearance on SNL, touring with the Stones, and the final goodbye tour before Gord Downie's death in 2017.

Now, I can’t sit here and pretend that this is just another podcast episode. The Hip has been my favourite band since they released their first album when I was turning 19. It’s no exaggeration to say they provided the soundtrack to my life.  I hope you have an artist in your life who means that much to you because then you can understand what it means to me to sit down with Jake and hear these stories.

But here’s the thing: The film and this conversation are not really about a rock band. They’re about truth, friendship, family, tragedy, and reconciliation. They’re also about the power of music and stories to bring us together.

Please enjoy Jake Gold.

Key Takeaways:

1. No Dress Rehearsal offers a raw, emotional journey into the life of The Tragically Hip, and takes us behind the scenes of these 5 very private people.
2. Authenticity in music is what made The Hip so relatable, and it’s something people crave more than ever.
3. Music can take us back to another time and place, but hearing these new stories can give these old songs new life and meaning.
4. Managing The Hip was all about taking risks and they did things that nobody had done in the industry.
5. Festivals like Another Roadside Attraction are more than just shows—they're about building community and celebrating together.
6. The band’s final tour unified a nation as it rolled across the country and gave fans an opportunity to say goodbye to Gord Downie.
7. Every Canadian remembers where they were for The Hip’s final concert in Kingston.  It brought the country together in a way that no politician ever will. 

Resources:

• Watch No Dress Rehearsal on Amazon Prime
• The Tragically Hip's discography on Spotify
• Follow Jake Gold on LinkedIn
• Follow The Tragically Hip on Instagram

Thank you for listening today. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe to our podcast. Here is how you can connect with us at the Growth Mixtape podcast.

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Transcript

Jake (00:00.598)
Mike approached me first and then we sat the guys down and it was like, if this isn't warts and all, we can't do this again because we would be held to a higher standard. That was really important that we recognized that. And I think that's what people appreciate it. I think the fans are like, I didn't know this. And in fact, the best part is, you you see episode one and

There are people that I know, that I'm very close with in the business, that have been there on this journey with me the whole time, that watch episode one and go, I didn't know any of this.

Bob
Hi, I'm Bob Mathers and welcome to The Growth Mixtape, a podcast where I talk to the most interesting people he might not have come across yet. I find that these conversations give me new insights and perspectives about topics I didn't know existed. These conversations might not seem to have a lot in common at first. Just like songs in a mixtape, they create something memorable and emotional.

Today we talk to Jake Gold, legendary manager of the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. Jake talks about the new film No Dress Rehearsal and the four-year process of bringing the hip's raw emotional story to life. We go deep into hip lore with stories that have never been heard before about some of the hip's iconic songs, their appearance on SNL, touring with the Stones, and the final goodbye tour before Gord Downey's death in 2017. Now, I can't sit here and pretend that this is just another podcast episode.

The Hip has been my favourite band since they released their first album as I was turning 19 and it's no exaggeration to say that they provided the soundtrack to my life. I hope you have an artist in your life that means that much to you because then you can understand what it means to me to sit down with Jake and hear these stories. But here's the thing, the film and the conversation, it's not really about a rock band. It's about truth, friendship, tragedy, family and reconciliation.

It's also about the power of music and stories to bring us together. Goddamn, I just loved every minute of Please enjoy Jake Gold.

Bob (02:08.887)
Jake Gold, man, I can't tell you how excited I am for this conversation. Thanks for coming. Well, thanks for having me, Bob. So this new movie, No Dress Rehearsal, premiered at TIFF, the Toronto National Film Festival, like I want to say maybe a month ago, and I've been following you on social and you are everywhere. So I just love, like what's been the best part of last month? 

Jake
Well, you know, it premiered on September 5th at TIFF.

That was the first screening. had subsequently two more public screenings and then there was a press screening as well. You know, this has been almost four years in the making. So it's kind of like, the baby's born now. You know, like it was a very long gestation to say the least. And, you know, when you're working on something that long and there were a lot of other plans that went with it, you know, because when you're launching something like this,

You know, the record company was involved. We put out on October 1st, a book came out, a coffee table book. So when you're rolling out all these things, we have these regular meetings where it's, you know, all the PR teams and all the marketing teams and everybody just to make sure we're all on the same page. it wasn't just.

the film coming out, it was a whole bunch of other things that has to do with the Tragically Hip. And then, you know, the week after TIFF, Mike Downey, the director, and Bryn Hughes, the producer, the three of us went to Halifax and premiered it at the Atlantic International Film Festival. And then the following week, we went to Calgary and premiered it at the Calgary International Film Festival. And then the following week, we all, including the band, went to Vancouver to premiere it at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

So it's been a month of work and now we're gonna go to Windsor in a couple of weeks for the Windsor International Film Festival. So it's an ongoing thing. It's been on the platform, on the Amazon Prime platform since September 20th. And so far they're very happy with how it's doing. And I think the word of mouth is really strong on it because it's so good. Yeah, what are you hearing from people that have seen it?

A lot of tears, a lot of joy. I call it champagne and tissues, celebrating Bride. But it's interesting. It dawned on me how important this group was to a lot of people. But also, there are people that maybe didn't know as much about the group as most of us. and who are seeing it as just this really great story of friendship and family and brotherhood. And they're taking to it from a completely different way. I mean, I don't think anyone's going to write me and say, I hated it. Like, that's just not going to happen. But I'm hearing from people that I never thought I'd hear from, you know, that I didn't even know knew the band or were fans of the band or were maybe casual fans of the band. That's that's nice to hear.

But so far, think the overall response has been extremely positive. think we're like a 9.7 rating on Amazon in terms of how people are liking it. It's four one hours. And what's surprising is how many people have not felt that it was too long. There are people saying, I could have watched two more hours.

And I also think people feel it's strong because it's so authentic, which is really what the band is. The band has always been authentic. That was one of the things we always pushed about the band and the band felt strongly about being authentic. And I think the Doc series itself is really authentic. Today people are craving authenticity. There's a lot of fake out there.

And to see something real and honest and raw and something that makes you feel, I think is, is welcome today. 

Bob
Yeah, man. There's a few things about that that I, that I wanted to dig into emotional champagne and tissues. Yeah, that certainly resonates. You know, all my friends and I were looking forward to it, but we all sort of said, yeah, we need to watch this on our own first. We're going to get together and watch this as a group, but first we need to get some of those tears out on our own and not be sobbing through it with a room full of people. But it really, it made me realize how deeply personal this story is. And oddly, it's almost like a tragedy hip song, right? Like you can just watch it once and you can enjoy it. And it's a great story and you watch it again. And it's like, there's undertones, it's friendship, it's loss, it's tragedy, it's reconciliation. It's all these different things. 

Jake
Like, yeah, this is a really beautifully crafted story that I think will resonate with people that maybe don't know anything about the band. Just as a story is very Shakespearean in a lot of ways. Yeah. And the interesting thing is, is you know, when you watch it right off the top, there's that cold opening piece, which tells you what you're about to see. So it's not like we're revealing that Gord passed away. We're saying it right off the top. Yeah. Right. So now we're giving everybody a backstory on to you know, how it started and how it came to be and then what everybody went through. Cause the one of the things that I think nobody really knew is how the guys were feeling when all this was going down and what their responses were and also how they got there. You know, lot of turmoil. George Strombolopoulos says it, you know, where, you know, we knew there were problems, but nobody wanted to talk about it. Right. Because the guys were always very private.

And I think that the fans appreciated the honesty. And I think anybody seeing it will appreciate the honesty because most of these music docs that you see today, and it was something we were very conscious of, are puff pieces. And because it was us making it, you know, it wasn't a third party doc team or director's team or anybody that came in, know, Mike being

Gord's brother, it was important that we be that much more authentic because we knew that we were going to be held to a higher standard as a result. Yeah. I was wondering whether you were ever concerned because it does expose a few warts, right? 

Bob
That, you know, fans of the band didn't really know that how fractured they were, in some of the later years. And I was just wondering whether that was something you were worried about exposing or I guess what it sounds like is you really had to lean into that because if you're going to tell the story, you had to tell all of it. Yeah, you had to tell the truth because to not tell the truth. it would just be just another, you know, piece. And, you know, I don't end of this term, but it's kind of the only way to describe it is when Mike cannot Mike approached me first, and then we sat the guys down and,

It was like, this isn't warts and all, we can't do this again because we would be held to a higher standard. That was really important that we recognized that. And I think that's what people appreciate it. I think the fans are like, I didn't know this. And in fact, the best part is, you see episode one and there are people that I know that I'm very close with in the business that have been there on this journey with me the whole time.

They'll watch episode one and go, I didn't know any of this. Because we're also telling the genesis of the band and how it all that started and people seeing footage that they'd never seen before. That was one of the selling points when we sat down with Prime is we said, we're gonna have access to stuff that no one's ever seen before. And that was important to them. And you know,

Some of the things we did that you wouldn't normally see in a music doc, strangely enough, is, you know, we stayed on the music side longer. It wasn't like we're just going to show a verse from a song. We let it play out. Right. Because we knew that the fans want to see them performing. Yeah. So we were very conscious of that kind of stuff. And there was a bit of pushback because the production executives

are used to, you know, sort of cutting it like a TV show. And we always reminded them that we're making a film. just happens to be cut up into four parts. 

Bob
Yeah. I don't think I'll ever forget hearing small town bring down with a saxophone. Like that is not something I was expecting. That was not on my bingo card. So interestingly enough for me, I mean, I knew about Davis Manning. I knew there was a sax player. I had never heard any recordings of him with them. Because by the time they came to me, Paul had been in the band about four months. So when I saw that footage of Small Town Bring Down with Davis playing sax, that was the first time I ever saw it. You know, there's all kinds of stuff. When they're doing Saturday Night Live and SNL was very generous with us, they provided the backstage stuff. So there's a shot of, you know,

Chris Farley and Adam Sandler watching the band, right? we'd never seen any of that. That didn't go to air. So even when I was getting the cuts, I was like, I never saw that before. I've never seen that before. So, it was fun just for me to, to see it. Yeah. It reminds me of so many times in the movie where as a fan, I was, you know, I can look back and I was seeing what was happening as a fan of the band, but I was like,

Hmm. Like the stories behind that, like for example, when, Gord starts playing guitar for the first time and seeing them live, I'm like, what the fuck is this? And the revelation that nobody in the band was happy with that. And they show shots of the fans being like, what is going on? Where's this? Where's the raving lunatic with the, you know, screaming like a werewolf and dancing with the microphone stand. Yeah. Well, that was, you know,

That was everyone being honest. At the time, it was not an easy time when that started to happen. And it was part of the evolution. It made sense for Gord at the time because he wanted to commune with the guys as a musician, even though they always saw him as a musician being the singer. But it was, yeah, it was not an easy time. And no one wanted to go to him and say, no.

Yeah, well, and that certainly comes up later in the film. Maybe we could touch on this later. But the fact that, you know, I guess when you're in a van traveling in the country or you're traveling to New Orleans or London to make an album for six weeks, maybe you don't have to learn how to communicate because it's just kind of happening. But as life gets more complicated, yeah, these guys that never really learned how to communicate, that's when it starts making things really.

Bespoke Productions Hub (13:54.987)
bad. And so you can kind of think back about some of those early things like, yeah, it starts kind of around here, right? These, these things that'll grow into bigger issues. Yeah. The cracks. Yeah. Right. You mentioned SNL too. think it's, God, it's of course, I mean, just like most hip fans, I remember watching it. I'm sure we were a case of beer and watching it on Saturday night, wherever we were sometime in university. And when he sings that original, you know, that first line,

And we all thought, isn't that a cool modification to the first line of the song? And then we realized, no, they just took a couple of halls too many. And, Andy actually fucked up in front of millions of people. That's pretty hilarious. Well, there's that, but there's a, there's another backstory to it too, is that, if you watch it, Gord does this off the top. Okay. So there, his nephew was turning 11.

man. And the week before he said, know, if you can, the nephew said to Gord, do a little, you know, shout out or something to that effect. And so Gord was concentrating on that. And then when he heard Dan Aproit say the name of the band, it just like, you know, add to the fuel of being stoned. He was repeating what Dan was saying, but he does this.

He puts up the 11 and it says signal to his nephew. Happy birthday. That's awesome. I can't wait to go back and watch that again. One of the things I was curious about, if we just step back a little bit and talk about the very beginning. So you signed them in 86. Is that right? Yeah. August of 86 was the first time I saw them. And we basically made the deal that night. One of the things that I love about the film is you're looking back and of course these are

I know they're accessible. They're authentic guys, but they're, they're still, you know, my favorite rock band. so they're larger than life figures. when you go back and see them at that age, you just realize there's just a bunch of guys figuring it out as they go along. And even you, I'm like, how does Jake Gold know how to manage a band? Well, I've for about four and a half years, but you know, we're still learning every day. It's not like in a degree in it, although I could probably teach it, but

Bespoke Productions Hub (16:19.539)
I was fortunate enough to hook up with Alan. We met in December 85 and we became partners at the end of January 86. And Alan was a strategist, marketing guy, know, researcher. So he brought some insights to management that most people had never seen before. And I had the background of knowing how to keep a band on the road, knowing

you know, how to make sure the deals were fair, know, merchandising, all of that stuff. together we made a really good partnership and we were breaking rules with this band. Like we knew what we had, but we also knew what we didn't have. so we would go into meetings with these novel ideas that worked for the band, but didn't necessarily work in the traditional industry way. And they would all look at us like we were crazy.

But they ended up buying into what we had to say and it worked. There were all kinds of things we did that nobody else had done before. When we put out the EP, we told the radio department to just service the eight stations we thought would play the record. And they said, well, that's crazy. The other stations are going to complain. And we'd say, well, why would they complain about something they never heard before?

And we say, they complain, say, sure, we'll send you the record and then they'll play it. Because our philosophy was that if we went for 30 radio stations and we got eight, we'd be a failure. But if we went for eight and we got eight, we'd be a success. So we said, let's just go get the eight. You get the eight, the other guys complain, they can have the record too. And we did the same thing with media. We didn't service traditional media. We service only weeklies.

because we knew it was an EP, it wasn't like the best record ever, but we needed it as a calling card to get them across the country. So we said, just service the weeklies. Well, what if the other dailies complained? Send it to them. You know, the best thing you could do with media at that, and to this day, is if someone calls and says, you know, why didn't I get it? You can just say, well, we didn't think you'd like it, so we didn't wanna bother you with it. Yeah. Right?

Bespoke Productions Hub (18:42.667)
Whereas most media is just bombarded with everything all the time. Well, here was a novel approach to media. And when we explained it to them that way, they went, I see, we're being strategic about what we're doing. Then we also told media, don't review the record. Come out to the show, review the show. As we felt that great reviews of the show would work towards us coming back the next time.

Right? And so we encouraged all the PR teams, communications team at the record company to get people out to the show. We want them out to the show, let them see the band. And then we started getting reviews, know, save six bucks on the record, go to the show. We were getting those kinds of reviews, which is what we wanted because we knew the best thing we had was this live band. Yeah. Well, I do think you could.

you should be packaging up that Jake Gold Wisdom somewhere and teaching a class. Well, I can't take full credit for it. was definitely Alan and I figuring it out. Would it work today? Maybe. I think if you put something out and someone didn't get it, they wouldn't even know. Right. You know, there's so many things going on. I mean, look, we're doing this podcast, right? It's like, you know.

who would have thought that people would be talking and other people would want to hear it? Do know what I mean? Like that just wasn't a thing. The idea of listening to two people talk. Because even talk radio wasn't really a thing then. Like AM was AM pop music and FM was more of the rock type music. And that was the division. And it evolved into talk radio.

You know, guess Howard Stern was one of the first ones to make talk radio a thing. listening to people talk. What a concept, you know? That's so true. One of the things that I, that struck me. I, wanted to talk about another roadside attraction. Cause when you talk about doing things that nobody else has done, you know, it's easy to look back at those like a traveling concert. was other than maybe Lollapalooza, there wasn't anything like that.

Bespoke Productions Hub (21:11.605)
So where, like, where did that idea come from? That is a monumental undertaking to move this truckloads and truckloads of bands and equipment across a country. Well, Lollapalooza had toured, but in Canada, they'd only played, I think, Montreal, Toronto, maybe Vancouver. We wanted to be the first to do it right across the country. And so it had never happened before in that way. And we were inspired by being at European festivals.

and saw the European festivals and how they operated. And I remember going to meet with CPI, which were the big concert promoters at the time in Canada. I remember sitting down with them and pitching the idea, say, here's what we want to do. We want to go into fields. We want to set up vending, camping. We want to do all of this kind of stuff.

And there was a lot of people sitting around the room with their head shaking like, I don't know, you know, it seems like a big project. And Michael Cole, who owned the company, he sat at the end of the table and he stood up and pounded his fist on the desk and went, this is a great idea. Let's do this. And that's how it happened. Then we started working with them on finding the right apps and who was available.

who wanted to do it. you know, we were lucky enough to get Midnight Oil and Hot House Flowers and Daniel Lanwau. We had Crash Vegas on the bill. And then in certain markets, we added more bands. So in Vancouver, we had Perubu and World Party on the bill. When we came to Toronto, we did two nights at Markham Fairgrounds. And so the first, the first, the Friday night, we just did the lineup.

But Saturday we started at noon and we added like eight more bands to the bill that day. I mean, it was great to think of it and then pull it off. That's my favourite thing to do is think of an idea and then pull it off. And then we did it again in 95 and then we did it again in 97. And then we retired it. There's been talk about bringing it back as a brand and curating it. You know, now all of a sudden festivals are a thing. Everybody's doing festivals everywhere.

Bespoke Productions Hub (23:31.303)
in some areas it's getting a little tired, but it seems to be working. I think people want to go and gather, you know, live nation just, is putting a temporary stadium at Downsview park. And, you know, they announced two days with, with Oasis sold out today. They announced two days with Coldplay. Wow. I didn't even know about that. Yeah. Yeah. It just, just got announced today. There's, there seems to be a lot of people want to go to stadium shows. And I think.

people want the spectacle because the one thing about stadium shows is it's a spectacle. And that's kind of what we did with another roadside attraction. were, I guess we were building traveling stadiums before anybody was. So, and it was fun to do. you know, there were always issues along the way. You know, remember pulling into Alberta, there was a real issue with getting the public into the parking.

There was these massive lines getting people in because they because the way it was set up as they were charging for parking. And what we said was is, OK, from here on in, we just have to include parking in the ticket because we were setting up in rural areas. You had to drive to get there. And if parking was including in the ticket, then we didn't have to the vendors didn't have to take the money each time people were coming in. People could just pull in and park. So.

Those are the things we would change along the way. There was a great moment in 97 where the catering in Alberta, wherever we were, wasn't great. We were now in Saskatchewan and we had a night off. We drove overnight, but we had a night off and Los Lobos guys came up to me and they were like, look, the catering wasn't great and we got to...

do something about it. And the worst was we knew the catering was not going to be great in Saskatchewan. there was a history with the caterer there that it wasn't going to be great for the bands. So I was quite embarrassed by it. So I went to Mark Norman, who was our promoter, and I said, Mark, we got to do something. Like Los Lobos is going to be barbecuing outside their bus on their own if we don't do something. he got on in the morning, he got these giant

Bespoke Productions Hub (25:57.271)
grills delivered to the site and ordered all this meat and everything. And we said to Los Lobos guys, how's this? And they ran the barbecue backstage for everybody. And it was a real bonding moment where everyone got together and was helping cooking for themselves, which normally there's other people, but there's the Los Lobos guys are making guacamole and there's all this.

this meat and vegetables being grilled and we had these giant grills and it was a moment where everyone sort of came together on that tour and they all had their own little secret recipes on how to cook certain foods and everything and it was like it was a great moment but it came out of you know something that wasn't that wasn't that wasn't great but we solved the problem and turned it into a real positive thing and from then on in the tour became this

one unit tour. Yeah, God, I love that. I was at a couple of those roadside attraction shows. And it seemed to me like that in the day for night tour seemed to be the height of this mosh pit, like super aggressive kind of frat boy drunken fans. Were you one of them, Bob? No, I did not throw water bottles at Midnight Oil. I'm sure, I promise you. Midnight Oil didn't get water bottles thrown at. Okay, good. I'm glad I was wrong about that.

But I do wonder whether the band ever had like a really kind of love hate relationship during parts of that where, cause they invite their friends and bands that they really respected and through their entire set, there's fans yelling hip, hip, hip all the way through it. What we found was we have to build the lineup, the way you would build a set with those outdoor shows.

We always had to shut the beer gardens down an hour before the hip came on. So there'd be three hours of potential getting sober before that would end because people would have to drive after that. So we had to take that responsibly. There was a show at Molson Park in 94 and it was called The Tragically Hippin' Friends.

Bespoke Productions Hub (28:21.163)
We invited Daniel Lanlois to be on the show because he had been on the 93 Roadside and we had a whole bunch of other bands. And it's important to note that we didn't have our lineup confirmed when we needed to go on sale. And I said to the promoters at the time, I said, look, it's going to sell out no matter who's on the bill. I said, it's Canada Day, like it's the hip.

it's going to sell out. 35,000. wasn't a massive, it wasn't like Markham, which was, you know, 50, 60. I said, let's go on sale with the tragically hip and friends and then we'll figure out what the bill is. So people were buying a ticket knowing they were seeing the hip, but didn't know who else they were going to see. And we ended up selling in the first day, like 23,000 tickets. The promoters were

dubious they were like I don't want to do this I said you just trust me on it it's gonna be fine and sure enough they called me and you know we were tracking the sales as it happened and they said okay this is great we're 23,000 the first day we had like four months out from the show so we knew it was gonna sell out then we started putting the bill together and I had a call with Daniel Lanwad and I said you need to go on earlier in the day

And he said, well, we have to go on at night when it's dark. I said, no, no, that's when we go on. It doesn't get dark till like 9 15, 9 20. The show's over at 11. We're on at nine. You need to go on early in the day. Your music's introspective. It's quiet, you know. And I had the same conversation with Jane Sibri's manager at the time. And I said, Jane needs to go on at two in the afternoon when

People are lying on their blankets and it's like the sun's out and it's that vibe. And he tried to argue with me, said, you know, you have to trust me on this. This is gonna be best for you. And after her said, he came up to me and said, you were right. It was amazing. Like people respected everything and you know, the people that wanna be there were there. And if you wanted to be somewhere else, you could be somewhere else. Daniel insisted on going on at eight o'clock.

Bespoke Productions Hub (30:42.071)
And I said, it's not a great idea. The beer tents close at eight. You're going to have all these people that have been drinking all day are going to be running out of those beer tents, running down to the front of the stage, being aggressive, trying to get their spot and everything for when the hip comes on at nine. It's not going to be a great idea. He insists. said, fine. I literally said to him, it's your funeral. And

sure enough, they went on and they, you know, they had the crowd doing the hip thing and because they were like, at that point, drunk and aggressive and which I knew was going to happen. And so I knew you needed to have a pretty loud kind of rock band on before the hip. Right. And we'd experienced with another roadside attraction with midnight oil going on before the bed. And of course,

Daniel's not doing that kind of music. Then his bass player says, if, you know, stop throwing water bottles. If you continue to, we're going to stop, which is the last thing you say, because that's what they want you to do. Right. And I'm not saying it was okay. I'm not saying what they did was okay though. It wasn't okay. was, it was a bad thing to do. Right. But had he listened to me, he wouldn't have been in that position in the first place. Right. It was just the wrong music at that time.

That's all it was. But there's no excuse for throwing things at musicians or anything. And Gord came on stage and, you know, scolded the audience for doing what they did. But in 95, when we were putting together the lineup for another roadside attraction, I was vacationing in Jamaica and we still didn't have that final band that would go on before the hit. And I thought,

you know, we're not going to be at this point we weren't, was like maybe March around that time. We weren't going to be able to find that maybe, maybe February, I'm not sure, but it was early in the year, find that big rock band that could fit. And I was introduced by the guy who owned the place where I was staying to this guy named Medis and he was the day to day.

Bespoke Productions Hub (33:04.243)
manager slash tour manager for Ziggy Marley. And Ziggy happened to be playing at the hotel where I was staying. And so we started talking and I said, you know, what's Ziggy doing this summer? And he said, he said, you know, here's our tours. said, well, maybe you could do this tour with us. And I came back and I said to everyone, I think I found the perfect act because Ziggy's show was all Bob Marley songs.

And it was celebratory and positive and hopeful and great music that you knew our audience, being a lot of people smoking weed and whatever, would like. And everyone thought it was a great idea. So we ended up putting Ziggy on before the hip in 95. And it was a great move because the audience loved it. There was 11 people on stage doing Bob Marley tunes.

Like how much better does it get? So we learned from those instances how to like build the lineup like you're building a set. And then in 97, we had Sheryl Crow go on before us and we had Las Lobos on that bill and we had Wilco, like it was a great lineup. And as every year we would do it, cause the first year, you know, getting midnight on hot house flowers.

You know, they were taking a chance on us, but after the first year it became, that's the thing to do. If you're going to tour Canada in the summer is try and get on that festival. Cause you're going to play to more people than you're ever going to play play to. So then it became us being able to more pick and choose because we had way more choices at the beginning was us kind of begging, Hey, please come on this tour with us. Well, yeah. Speaking of lineups, that just reminds me. if the tragically hip.

really is probably my number one over overall favorite band. The stones are number two. And I'd love to hear the story of how you ended up getting opening for the stones for a half a dozen or so shows. Yeah, I can tell you exactly. It was four shows in Europe. It was February 10th, 1995. were headlining Maple Leaf Gardens the first time. And Arthur Fogel, who's now...

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head of world touring at Live Nation. He was one of the top guys at CPI, worked for Michael Cole. They had the Stones tour. Arthur and I are watching the hip from the soundboard. And he looks to me and he goes, do you think the guys will want to tour with the Stones this summer? And I said, for sure. He goes, okay, we're going to make it happen. And that's how it happened. I mean, that year was a crazy year. We did 30 shows with Page Plant. We did Saturday Night Live.

We did another roadside attraction and we toured with the Stones all in one year. Yeah. Do you ever have moments? I think about this all the time, my buddies and I think about it. you know, when, when Gord is writing a song, for example, and he writes some incredible lyric, does he ever just put his pen down and be like, that's fucking it. I'm never writing a lyric that good. And I'm wondering as this is going along for you, like,

We just opened for the Stones SNL, like, holy shit, like, how are we ever gonna top this? For me, it's always about what's next. I'm doing that today. You know, I'm talking to you about what already happened, but all I'm thinking about when we get off this call is what's next. You know, we have an event coming up November 1st at Massey Hall where Tara Sloan's gonna interview the guys on stage. you know, you buy a ticket and you get a copy of the book and...

You sit in on this live interview with the guys, you know, and it's going to cover the whole history of the band. it's, you know, this is the 40th year. So there's always something we're working on. We have a box set from up to here coming out in November. There are people who say, when are you going to stop? And it's like, why? Why stop? It's kind of what I like doing. So I don't really feel like I'm working to be honest with you.

Yeah, well, that's a pretty amazing situation to be in. One of the parts of the film that really stood out to me, so you worked with the band for 17 years and then you get this letter. When they presented you- I didn't get the letter. okay. Tell me about that. Because if I got the letter, I would have had it. I didn't have the letter. So they just read you the letter?

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Gord sat beside me. We were having a meeting that I thought was about something else. And when I got there, Gord starts reading this letter to me with the other guys there.

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Yeah. So yeah, that was in 03, January 03. Right. So we had finished the Inviolet Light tour. yeah. And then I ended up two weeks later getting a call to be on this television show called Canadian Idol. So which kind of worked out. Yeah.

Yeah, they, I'm curious those bands, those albums that they made kind of in between evolution, you know, all the way through to man machine poem. When you listen to those, like, do they have, do you have a different relationship with those albums because you weren't there with them? Honestly, I never listened to them. I heard some of those songs on the radio. did I have a different relationship? Yeah, zero relationship with them.

I listened to more of Man Machine Poem because they put it out, it was part of the final tour. And I went to six of those shows. It reminded me a lot more of Day for Night. So I think I probably knew more about that record. And I knew some of the songs from some of the other records just from hearing them on the radio, but I didn't really have a relationship with them. They were doing their thing, I was doing my thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, In Violet Light is still...

one of my top three albums. So it was really interesting to hear the band, think it- Billy Ray. Yeah. And they were talking about how things started to change around that time. Obviously when you left, things were already starting to get fractured. It wasn't a great time for anyone. Well, was really around music at work. Yeah. Yeah, I think Johnny says after Phantom Power, things started to change. That's right, yeah. And some of that had to do with

know, Gord moving to Toronto full time and it was a difficult time because they had the studio. You know, Gord would always have to come to Kingston or to Bath where the studio is, which is 20 minutes outside of Kingston. So they would, you know, at night go home and he would stay there, you know, with whoever was producing the record, whatever. And so he was kind of left alone.

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It's funny because only in the past couple of years since I've been watching the cuts and listening, you you listen to my music at work, the song, my music at work. And I never listened to it that way before the way that the guys talked about it, because a lot of the stuff they were revealing. I didn't know because they finally opened up, right? Like they finally admitted maybe they shouldn't have.

parted ways with me and all of this stuff, which was nice to hear, but at the time it was very fractured. But you hear the lyric, I'm all alone in the middle of the night. Gord writes that song, which is how he was in the studio, because the rest of them weren't there. So you're starting to think, OK, like, is this just work? Like, I think maybe that's what he was talking about.

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I have found that too, right? With the film, it does change. I've gone back and listened to some of those albums and it's like, yeah, I can hear, I hear different things from the music now that I know some of the stories behind it. Yeah. Well, I think that's part of the idea too. And I think that's where Mike really shined on this is being able to tell the stories behind the songs, but also tell their story and how sometimes they intertwined.

You know, the story of Fiddler's Green was a story about Gord's nephew, but it also tipped its hat to Gord St. Clair's brother. you know, Charlene, Mike's sister, her reading the letter that Gord sent her with the lyrics to Fiddler's Green that he had written about his nephew that passed away, like getting her to read that letter on camera.

Interestingly enough, Paul had a birthday party in August and I hadn't seen her in a long time and she was at the party and I asked her had she seen any of the cuts yet and she hadn't seen anything. So I said, so you haven't seen yourself read this letter? And she goes, no. And I said, well, and she was coming to the premiere in Toronto and that was the first time she saw herself read the letter.

And when I talked to her afterwards about it, I said, so how did you feel about it? She goes, my man, meaning her son that passed away, Charlie, Charles, he's forever on screen. So I can go back to this again and again and again and see him. And that's how she took it. Right. And I was talking to Gord's sons at the intermission at TIFF.

And I asked them, what do you guys think? They hadn't seen it yet. And their response was very similar. They said, it was so cool to see our dad.

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being so happy and seeing him as a young man, seeing him as our age, going through what he went through and knowing that we can go back to this all the time and see it. So it was an interesting take and Paul's daughter said the same thing to me, know, seeing my dad at, you know, 21, 22 years old. So I think for the families, it's now become like,

their own personal archive. Right. That hadn't occurred to me. That's a beautiful thing. Yeah. That didn't occur to me either because it wasn't me. Right. You mentioned being on that, on that last tour. So you were on a bunch of the dates. You know, you've got such a unique perspective on this because you're

You're in the band, we're not in the band, but you're kind of like, you know, a sixth member of the band for a lot of their career and you're watching this. So you're in their orbit, but you're not quite in it, but you're not, you're much closer than a fan. Like how would you describe the experience of watching all those people come out to those hip shows night after night, culminating in this big show in Kingston? Remember, I didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.

I didn't know that there was trepidation. After the first show, I hung out with Paul. Paul and I would always get together after the shows. And he was building the sets. It was the first time that he built the sets. And he was explaining to me how he built the sets. And his chord insisted they play, on the whole tour at some point, they play songs from every record they ever made.

So there was like 70 songs that Paul had move around and, you I saw the first two shows in Vancouver and then there was the first show was Victorian. And then there were the two shows in Vancouver. I watched it with a smile on my face the whole time. I thought of it as like, this was so celebratory and, and that all of these people were

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you know, showing their support. was, did you go to any of the shows, Bob? Yeah, I was at one of them, Okay, so there was an energy in the room that was undeniable. Yeah. Right? And you know, it's hard not to get caught up in that energy. And so I went to two Vancouver's, I went to two of the Toronto shows, I went to Hamilton and I went to Kingston to the final show.

It was, I don't think I've ever been at shows where there was that, those kinds of feelings attached to it. was more than just music. Yeah. And I've been to a lot of great shows over the years. but those were, those were special. Yeah, I did see them. And, then on the, the last, Kingston show, I was up in Muskoka and we were sitting around a fire or having a bunch of drinks and

Of course I had my sunglasses on because I was just, I don't mean tears trickling down my face. I mean, I was sobbing for most of it. And I was trying to watch it on an iPad, right? But there was shitty wifi, so it was kind of pixelated, but I could hear it perfectly. And then I watched it later on. But what struck me about the film is that I guess I had forgotten how unifying an experience that was. Like everybody I knew was doing something. They were getting together with friends. They were watching it somewhere.

And how rare that is just when you think about how fractured and polarized most of the country is, or at least, you know, society as a whole, like how there's all these divisions. I can't remember any other time where everybody seemed to be unified around this one thing. It's just, it was amazing. I forgotten what that was like. Well, Robbie says it in the doc, you know, if the third of the country can agree on us, that's pretty cool.

And it was the second most watched thing. And the first most watched was the 2010 gold medal game in Vancouver. Hockey game. I will say that that did not have the same effect. Scoring the goal in overtime had an emotional response. But the game itself, I can't remember any of it. You know what I mean? It was a hot game.

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There was elation, sure, when they scored the goal, but the next day or the day after, it wasn't the same. I think this, from an emotional standpoint, had much more long-lasting effects to this day, which is proven by the success of the documentary and how many people are watching it and how many people are talking about it. I think that, to your point, there was this coming-together moment that night.

And, you know, Jay Baruchel says it really succinctly in the doc. says it wasn't something you had to do. It was something you wanted to do. And so you had all of these people around the country wanting to do something. Interestingly enough, I'm in Kingston at the show. So anybody says that's at the show.

isn't really aware of what was going on around the country. know, sure, there was 25,000 people in the town square in Kingston, but that's to be expected, right? There was this kind of like Mecca, let's all go to Kingston and be as close to we can to the band. Not until the next day or, you know, afterwards where you realized, this was happening everywhere.

that you realize what a momentous occasion it was and how emotional it was for people. I doubt that will ever happen again. I don't think there's any one musician or band that could bring a country together like that. And unfortunately, we're seeing it with the documentary now because the, like I said, the word amount is...

You know, when it first came out, I remember the Amazon guys, because we were in Vancouver just the week after. And I said, you know, how's it doing? And they said, we had great first weekend numbers. Let's hope it stays. And it's now a month, almost a month since it's been out and it's still, you know, sitting number two behind Game of Thrones, which, you know, most expensive television show ever made.

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And they were dropping a new episode every week. So, you know, we don't get the benefit of that because we dropped them all at once. It was never talk about rolling one out one per week. That was never on the agenda. It made no sense because, you know, by the end of it all, they understood this was a film that just you watched in four parts because you referred to it as a movie. You're referring to it as a movie. And that's how we looked at it. It wasn't a television series.

Yeah. And I think what my sense, where my hope or my sense, I guess, is that, yes, it's the, it's the tragically hip fans that rushed to it initially. But then as you talked about Jake, like the word of mouth is like, you don't have to be a hip for you. Maybe you're a casual fan. Maybe you're just, you want to, there's so many different reasons to watch this. think it's going to resonate and it's in what, like 240 countries or something now.

Territories. There's only 195 countries, but apparently there's another 45 of them that aren't called countries that are considered territories. I've been asking for an explanation. haven't got an exact one on it, but yeah, it's interesting. I'm seeing on our social media comments from people now saying, you know, I sort of heard of this band, but I didn't really know. I've watched the doc.

Now I've watched the doc, like I, you know, I'd heard the name. And so we were starting to get that. We're starting to get people that are watching it for what it is. Just a great story about a great band. And there's so much other stuff you alluded to earlier. was what, one of the things that made, I was doing was going back and listening to some albums from beginning to end in order. I haven't done that in 20 years for some of these albums. did it with.

you know, even the EP and Phantom Power. And I realized I get to the end of the track and there's like another 15 songs, like these new deluxe versions that have got live takes and outtakes and songs that didn't quite make the cut on the album. And then you've got, of course you came out with Saskadelphia and books. like, there's a lot of stuff and it doesn't feel too much. Like I still think there's a huge appetite for this stuff out there. Yeah. Well, that's, that's what we hope.

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because the band's not touring and there's a lot of mouths to feed, there's a lot of kids out there. And that's my job is to figure it all out. When I first came back in, in June of 2020, I called up a friend of mine who does what I do for a very, very big band who doesn't tour anymore. Let's just say that. I said, I'm back.

you know, what advice can you give me? He goes, figure out what you got, then you'll figure out what to do with it. So we started the process of archiving all the ephemera, archiving all the music, all the film we had. And so the doc is just, the doc series is just part of that process. And there's a lot more to come. There's a lot more, I mean, the up to here box set,

We licensed the live at the Misty Moon from, from much music. So there's a live album, but also on the Atmos mixes, which is, is on a Blu-ray. have the Blu-ray of the show, which has been completely remastered to today's standards. And so it looks way better. Cause what, what the only way people have ever been able to see that is sitting in much music falls, but there's been like people that recorded on VHS and put it up on YouTube.

Right? So really bad quality. The sound isn't great, but we've really cleaned it up. also licensed the Woodstock 99 show and we have the multi tracks. So at some point we're probably going to do something with that. have the whole show. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, just, I mean, I could talk about this forever, Jake, just a little Easter egg. I don't think I've talked about this before. So for my 40th birthday, which is about 12, 13 years ago,

Rob Carly, who was the first guest on this podcast and who's a mutual friend of yours and I's. we, he arranged for me and some of my friends to go to the bath house for three days. And we, we had a sound engineer. recorded some tunes. actually pressed some vinyl albums, vinyl, albums out of it. And the intro and outro music to this podcast is actually from those sessions. wow. That's cool. Yeah. And.

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I just wanted to say that up until like, can imagine I'm walking through like the tragedy hips clubhouse with original artwork from albums that I listened to for years and Rob Baker's guitars are lying around. was just like, and his amps, like all the guys amps there and you can use them. Like people can, if you're going to record at the bath house, the amps are there for you to plug in and use. Like nobody's guitars. I've seen them play on stage and everything. And, and so that was the absolute.

coolest thing I'd ever done in my lifetime. And I will say until today, this conversation has been just you have no idea what it means to me. It's been awesome. You're too kind, Bob. It was was a fun. It was a fun talk. And Amy too. I know Amy's excited to go and she's working her way through the doc now. So now she's got a lot of meat on the bones. She's going to be seeing it even differently than I did with all these other stories you've shared. That's amazing. Amy, you've got to catch up here.

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The Growth Mixtape Podcast with Bob Mathers is produced by Bespoke Projects. Music by Joe Mapelle Walter Cronkite. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to follow and rate us. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so that more people can find us. If you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn using the link in the show notes.