Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob left Hid the podcast.
Speaker 1: My guests today are Johnny Fay and Bob Baker of
Speaker 1: Tragically Hit, who have a new four part documentary on
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime.
Speaker 2: Gentlemen, what do you think of the documentary?
Speaker 3: I think Mike Downey did a fantastic job. He's Gord
Speaker 3: Downey's older brother. We've known him since since they first
Speaker 3: moved to Kingston, our hometown. They all showed up at
Speaker 3: our high school one year and we, you know, we
Speaker 3: became friends with Paul and Gored became best buddies right away,
Speaker 3: and Mike Downey was in our year and we've known
Speaker 3: him a long time. He knows all the ins and
Speaker 3: outs of the band and wasn't afraid to go to
Speaker 3: the the dark places, the more unexplored places. But I
Speaker 3: think he did it in a very fair and balanced
Speaker 3: kind of way. We were allowed to be very vulnerable
Speaker 3: with him. We knew what he wanted to do, and
Speaker 3: he brought out a lot of the vulnerability and we
Speaker 3: were allowed to be truthful basically.
Speaker 4: And Johnny, yeah, I feel the same way. Mike actually
Speaker 4: was thinking about it when I was doing an interview
Speaker 4: the other day that I met Mike before I met
Speaker 4: any other of the Downy clan, and it was really funny.
Speaker 4: I was in grade eight and Robbie would remember that
Speaker 4: he and another guy, Hugh Douglas Murray and some other
Speaker 4: people used to do ski trips and we'd all go
Speaker 4: on the ski trips, and of course, you know, music
Speaker 4: and skiing and drinking too much French beer goes hand
Speaker 4: in hand in Canada. And so I remember getting the
Speaker 4: clearance from my parents that I could go on the
Speaker 4: ski trip, and someone said that's the guy you need
Speaker 4: to talk to. And so I went up to Mike
Speaker 4: Downey and said, can I come on this ski trip?
Speaker 4: And he said, I don't see why not.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. You know, I wasn't in high school yet, and
Speaker 4: I was talking to Mike the other day and it
Speaker 4: wasn't his ski trip. He was just tagging. He was
Speaker 4: tagging along himself. But you know when you're in a
Speaker 4: room with somebody who's just so exuberant, and so yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 4: And he's always been that guy. He's always been the
Speaker 4: guy who's been really positive about things. Yeah, come on in,
Speaker 4: it'd be great. And he's also a really interesting brother
Speaker 4: because he's not the kind of brother that would hang
Speaker 4: out at every single gig, and he was kind of
Speaker 4: the ultimate fly on the wall. He knew the ins
Speaker 4: and outs of the band, but he also didn't hang
Speaker 4: out too much. He'd disappear and then he would reappear
Speaker 4: and you'd see him a couple of weeks later and
Speaker 4: he would say, Hey, that was a great gig in Boston.
Speaker 4: I didn't come backstage because it was mental and we
Speaker 4: just hung up with our friends at a local bar.
Speaker 4: But good gig, and then you wouldn't see him for
Speaker 4: another eight months or something like that. So when he
Speaker 4: became a filmmaker, it was kind of a no brainer.
Speaker 4: Robbie and I talked about this a long time ago
Speaker 4: and said, you know, we got to really manage the
Speaker 4: ship and getting Jake involved and of course having people
Speaker 4: help us tell our story is just a logical step.
Speaker 4: So yeah, what Robbie's saying is bang on that. Having
Speaker 4: Mike do it was just a no brainer.
Speaker 2: So what is the genesis of the documentary? How did
Speaker 2: it come together? And why now.
Speaker 3: We had in the wake of hearing about the Universal Fire,
Speaker 3: Johnny and I got in touch with each other. I
Speaker 3: was in Rome at the time and we thought we
Speaker 3: had lost a lot of stuff in that fire, and
Speaker 3: it kind of after Gored died, we all went our
Speaker 3: separate ways to grieve and figure out what we were
Speaker 3: going to do with our lives, which was a terrible idea.
Speaker 3: You know, we did everything together, we shared everything, our
Speaker 3: whole lives, and then at the moment when it was
Speaker 3: probably most important, we all went our separate ways. But
Speaker 3: the Universal Fire lit a fire under us to get
Speaker 3: our affairs in order, and we started an archiving process
Speaker 3: and we tracked down all our master tapes. Through the
Speaker 3: archiving process, it just seemed now is the time. If
Speaker 3: we're ever going to do a coffee table book or
Speaker 3: some kind of tell our story properly and honestly, now
Speaker 3: is the time. And Mike proposed this idea for an
Speaker 3: Amazon documentary and he had no problem getting Amazon on
Speaker 3: board and we were off. So the archiving. The fire
Speaker 3: led to the archiving. The archiving led to the book
Speaker 3: in the documentary.
Speaker 2: Okay, a couple of things. Did you lose anything in
Speaker 2: the Universal Fire?
Speaker 4: You know, it's funny, Robby, I want you to tell
Speaker 4: that story of you and I having a little chat
Speaker 4: and you picked up the new York Times and I
Speaker 4: think you read it to me and from Rome and
Speaker 4: who are we sandwiched? But we were sandwiched between some bands.
Speaker 3: It said the people who'd lost stuff in the fire,
Speaker 3: and it said meltor May, the Tragically Hip and the
Speaker 3: Von Trapp family singers. That was like, well Eastern great company.
Speaker 3: But we said about you know, we set the ball
Speaker 3: in motion trying to find this stuff and very fortunately
Speaker 3: we were spared. But what a disaster for the music industry.
Speaker 3: Truly horrible.
Speaker 2: You did mention the book. There's also coming out subsequent
Speaker 2: to the documentary. I certainly have a copy. It's a
Speaker 2: big coffee table book. Tell us the story of the band.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the book.
Speaker 4: That's Robbie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we talked about doing something for a long time.
Speaker 3: We've had a lot of great photographers through the years,
Speaker 3: and we would sort of become we're a family operation.
Speaker 3: For management, even record company people, they become extended family
Speaker 3: and photographers. We work with the same photographers over and
Speaker 3: over because they're people that we like, and they can
Speaker 3: be in the room with us and they can be
Speaker 3: shooting and you don't even know they're there. And we
Speaker 3: just thought at some point we should feature this, and
Speaker 3: we talked about it many times on the bus, but
Speaker 3: when we were doing the archiving, it just seemed this
Speaker 3: is a natural extension, This is our end, this is
Speaker 3: the moment when this becomes a viable project. And I
Speaker 3: pushed hard to work with Genesis Publishing out of London
Speaker 3: because I'm a big fan of their books. You know,
Speaker 3: I've got I can see right now, books of theirs
Speaker 3: that I've got on Laurel Canyon and moon Age day Dream,
Speaker 3: the Nick Rock photographs of David Bowie, and lots of
Speaker 3: tons of great books. The Beatles in India. They just
Speaker 3: do such a first rate job. They don't cut corners there,
Speaker 3: you know, they truly are collector's items books, and I
Speaker 3: just I'm always about that, like the quality is the
Speaker 3: most important thing. So Genesis was an easy choice on
Speaker 3: my part. And I also thought, having read a countless
Speaker 3: of these books, that there are a couple of things
Speaker 3: that really appealed to me. One was the Beatles anthology,
Speaker 3: where it's really in their words. There are a few
Speaker 3: other people mal Evans and George Martin, but it's true
Speaker 3: the inner circle and the story is told in their
Speaker 3: own words. And the other thing was the Beastie Boys
Speaker 3: book where the conflicting opinions are on full display. You know,
Speaker 3: I thought that was a great album. Someone else says
Speaker 3: that was a terrible record. I thought that's got to
Speaker 3: be right front and center.
Speaker 2: Okay. Mike was in charge of the documentary who did
Speaker 2: the interviews, And Gordon Downe, who of course is longer
Speaker 2: with us, is also in the book. Who assembled the book.
Speaker 3: The book was largely assembled by Genesis. I worked with Genesis.
Speaker 3: You know, they're in England, so it was a lot
Speaker 3: of early mornings for me to be on calls with them.
Speaker 3: But it was about a two year project, almost a
Speaker 3: two year project with them. A lot of the interviews
Speaker 3: were culled from the documentary. Each of us did about
Speaker 3: fifteen hours of interviews, and the Gordon Downey interviews were
Speaker 3: largely taken from contemporaneous interviews.
Speaker 2: You know, when we're.
Speaker 3: Out touring a record or promoting a new album or something,
Speaker 3: go would have been a front and center, very in
Speaker 3: demand for interviews, so there was lots of that.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, Johnny, in the book, it tells the story
Speaker 2: of your mother driving you to the Berkeley College of Music.
Speaker 2: Can you tell that story from my audience.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good one. I remember sort of just
Speaker 4: getting ready to I've been playing drums for a good
Speaker 4: four years and I was very, very into it. And
Speaker 4: my drum teacher had told my mom at the time
Speaker 4: that it was imperative that I stopped listening to Stuart Copeland,
Speaker 4: which every guy who played the drums in the eighties
Speaker 4: was listening to the great Stuart Copeland. I mean, he
Speaker 4: was like the guy you wanted to look like him,
Speaker 4: You wanted to be like him. You you'd I taped
Speaker 4: my hands like him. I did it all, just like
Speaker 4: everybody else in the eighties. And so I was looking
Speaker 4: at a brochure one day and I kept on looking,
Speaker 4: you know, at it, and it was from the Berkeley
Speaker 4: College of Music, which I had I had written away,
Speaker 4: and they sent one up and I had a great
Speaker 4: summer program. I'm sure they still do. And my mom said,
Speaker 4: what are you doing this summer? And I said, well,
Speaker 4: I don't really, I don't really know, just kind of
Speaker 4: kick around. And she said, you know, pack your stuff
Speaker 4: up and we'll take a trip tomorrow. And I had
Speaker 4: no idea. And so we get in the car and
Speaker 4: we start driving. You know Watertown sarrahcuse, you know, Binghamton,
Speaker 4: and then you know, we start cutting over and she said,
Speaker 4: we'll go and and we'll go check out the Berkeley
Speaker 4: College of Music. And in those days, in the eighties,
Speaker 4: it was Roxbury was not a great sort of place
Speaker 4: to be, you know, touring around and and my mom
Speaker 4: just drove right through it, right up to the front
Speaker 4: door of Berkeley College of Music. We sparked right there
Speaker 4: and said let's go in. So we walk in and
Speaker 4: my mom said, my son would like to go to
Speaker 4: the summer program here. And we were stopped by a
Speaker 4: guy by the name of Ed Sandon. I'll never forget him.
Speaker 4: He was just such a lovely, lovely man. Who's the
Speaker 4: painter with the hair that Bob what's his name? He
Speaker 4: kind of looked like him with a mustache and he
Speaker 4: said Bob Ross. Yeah, Bob Ross. He looked like him,
Speaker 4: you know, very approachable and very nice. And he was
Speaker 4: from New Hampshire. And he said, well, you can't just
Speaker 4: show up, and my mom said, well, we've driven all
Speaker 4: the way from Canada. Could you at least hear my son. Now,
Speaker 4: she didn't say where in Canada, And so he might
Speaker 4: have thought, Oh God, they've driven all the way from Vancouver.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I go, I do a little audition for him.
Speaker 4: He walks there, he goes, Actually he's he's a good
Speaker 4: little drummer. I think we could find a place for
Speaker 4: him here, and well, uh, you know, get them set
Speaker 4: up in the dormitory. I didn't know anyone from you know,
Speaker 4: a bar soap, and and so there we were. I
Speaker 4: was on Boilston Street for the summer of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: and he said, go go get your drums and I'll
Speaker 4: show you where you put them. And my mom said,
Speaker 4: we'll be right back. And we didn't have any drums,
Speaker 4: and we went across the street to had great music
Speaker 4: stores in those days in Boston, just like lined up
Speaker 4: great drum drack Jack's Drum Shop, which was right around
Speaker 4: the corner from you know where the uh base where
Speaker 4: the baseball Yeah, Fentware Fenway as you can see Fenway
Speaker 4: from there. And then Daddy's Junkie Music was across the street.
Speaker 4: So we went in and I got a little kit,
Speaker 4: a little slingering kit, and it was perfect. And my mom,
Speaker 4: I might never forget I had those drums, and she
Speaker 4: got in the car and she split and she knew
Speaker 4: I was going to be good. And I went in
Speaker 4: and I had the greatest summer of music. I really
Speaker 4: was that. I was like, I'm doing it. And then
Speaker 4: when I got home, I had a couple of weeks
Speaker 4: and then my mom said, oh, somebody's phoned and asked
Speaker 4: you if you would audition for a band. And I said, well, okay, great,
Speaker 4: and she said it's a guy by the name of
Speaker 4: Doug Downey and I said, yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: don't know. So then, like I remember, like four days later,
Speaker 4: I said it wasn't Gore down and she goes, that's it.
Speaker 4: That's the guy. That's the guy. You'll phone his numbers
Speaker 4: right over there, and I was like, oh, four days
Speaker 4: said they've got a new drummer by now, like I
Speaker 4: just uh, and I gave up. I gave a phone
Speaker 4: call and they said go up to Robbie's house and audition,
Speaker 4: and so that was that. That was October of nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four. So that's how that sort of all came together.
Speaker 2: Okay, a little bit slower. You went across the street
Speaker 2: to buy drums. Did you not own any drums?
Speaker 4: I did own some drums, but we didn't know that
Speaker 4: I was going to get in, so we were just going.
Speaker 4: I think my mom was like, I don't necessarily think
Speaker 4: my mom thought I was going to get in. She
Speaker 4: just thought we'll just go down and try, or maybe
Speaker 4: they have drums down there. You know, it's not the
Speaker 4: most portable instrument. You know, if I was going to
Speaker 4: do it over, I definitely play bass or guitar because
Speaker 4: you unplug and you're with all the girls in like
Speaker 4: ten seconds. But you know, the drums you gotta you
Speaker 4: can have a beer and then you got to take
Speaker 4: the forty minutes to get it all, you know, torn down.
Speaker 4: It's like, so I did have drums, but I just
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know, I just packed clothing and
Speaker 4: that was that.
Speaker 2: Okay, you were there for the summer. Had you spent
Speaker 2: the summer away from your family previously?
Speaker 4: Never?
Speaker 2: No, No, So what was that experience like, both culturally
Speaker 2: and learning about playing the drums?
Speaker 4: Well, it was amazing because one of my roommates was
Speaker 4: a guy that I'm still very close with. His name
Speaker 4: is John Kimball, and he taught me he was a
Speaker 4: bass player and he liked Michael Anthony of Van Halen,
Speaker 4: but Eddie van Halen was his guy. So I got
Speaker 4: a full summer of Van Halen, which was pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 4: He would he would put it on and he would
Speaker 4: explain what Eddie was doing, and you know, he knew
Speaker 4: some guitar stuff, and I was like, Eddie van Halen,
Speaker 4: my god, I don't think there's been a guy since
Speaker 4: you know. He was like he was coming onto the
Speaker 4: scene and I got incredible. So I taught him about
Speaker 4: the Police and I was in DS and he taught
Speaker 4: me about Van Halen. So that summer was an education
Speaker 4: in music. One of the great live bands of all
Speaker 4: time van Halen.
Speaker 2: What did you actually learn in class?
Speaker 4: I studied some rudiments, and I really it was about
Speaker 4: playing with other people. You could sort of hook up
Speaker 4: with other people there, and what I learned about that
Speaker 4: was that Robbie would agree that, you know, you can
Speaker 4: practice on your own in your room, but playing with
Speaker 4: other people, it's like doing ten hours of practice. Just
Speaker 4: the gelling of being with people. And I think that
Speaker 4: that really sort of opened me up to understanding that
Speaker 4: when there is that lightning in the bottle, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, recognize it. And we just had something with
Speaker 4: the hip that was really so organic and so beautiful
Speaker 4: that just it happened like that. It was really great.
Speaker 4: So I got to move around and jam with different people.
Speaker 4: There were jam rooms, so in nineteen eighty four, that
Speaker 4: was pretty That was pretty amazing. The Berkeley College of
Speaker 4: Music is just a wonderful place if you really want
Speaker 4: to study all kinds of things. But what it taught
Speaker 4: me was that there's great players and there's not so
Speaker 4: great players, and if you can sort of figure out
Speaker 4: where you want to be and where you need to go.
Speaker 4: I think it was a good sort of view into
Speaker 4: the work that I needed to do to get better
Speaker 4: on the drums. So that really helped me. That was
Speaker 4: the big learning thing for me.
Speaker 2: And Rob what was your experience with guitar lessons.
Speaker 3: I had an older sister who had a great record collection,
Speaker 3: and she had classical guitar that she ever touched, and
Speaker 3: anytime she listened to one of her records, I listened
Speaker 3: to it twenty times. So I spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time pretending to play the guitar and leaping off furniture,
Speaker 3: playing the tennis racket, listening to early led Zeppelin albums
Speaker 3: and Diamond Dogs by Bowie, and at a certain point
Speaker 3: I think I said I'm going to do this. And
Speaker 3: my parents were always very supportive, and they sent me
Speaker 3: for guitar lessons. They signed me up for a month
Speaker 3: of guitar lessons and I went to this guy and
Speaker 3: he was a very old school He was an evangelical
Speaker 3: preacher who taught guitar and I did three lessons with
Speaker 3: him and it came time for the fourth lesson. I said,
Speaker 3: I'm done. I'm not going back. I don't dig this
Speaker 3: at all. And my mother said, we've paid for four.
Speaker 3: You're going to the fourth lesson. You never have to
Speaker 3: do another one. And I went to my fourth lesson
Speaker 3: and he was sick and he had a six ten
Speaker 3: year old kid filling in for him. I was twelve,
Speaker 3: and sixteen year old kid taught me bar cords. He
Speaker 3: taught me jumping jack flash in my first lesson and
Speaker 3: the intro to Angie and I was like, hello, let's go.
Speaker 3: I mean, I studied with him for you know, Saturday
Speaker 3: mornings for about a year, and then I studied with
Speaker 3: a couple of other people at jazz guy and kind
Speaker 3: of a prog rock guy for a little bit. But
Speaker 3: I think I got everything I really needed in about
Speaker 3: the first four lessons because I was just I was devoted.
Speaker 3: For the next four years or five years, I had
Speaker 3: a guitar in my hand, probably eight to twelve hours
Speaker 3: a day.
Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit deeper what that looked like.
Speaker 2: You have the guitar in your hand. What were you doing.
Speaker 3: That guy, the sixteen year old guy, Jorgan Jensen, he said,
Speaker 3: always don't put your guitar away. In this case, keep
Speaker 3: it near when a commercial. If you're watching TV and
Speaker 3: a commercial comes on, play try and play the commercial
Speaker 3: or play anything. Just constantly have your hands on the guitar.
Speaker 3: Then I would go away in the summers, and I
Speaker 3: have terrible allergies. Summers were miserable for me. So I
Speaker 3: would sit inside and I would be with my guitar
Speaker 3: fifteen hours a day, just trying to figure stuff out.
Speaker 3: As any young aspiring guitar player does, you know, they
Speaker 3: sit in their bedroom and they practice and practice and practice.
Speaker 3: But it's not until you get playing. As Johnny said,
Speaker 3: you've got to play with other people. It's all you know.
Speaker 3: It's all well and good, it's a good way to
Speaker 3: occupy your time, but you're not really getting anywhere until
Speaker 3: you start collaborating in real time and playing with other people.
Speaker 3: So when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I said
Speaker 3: to go Sinklair, who lived across the street, I'm starting
Speaker 3: a band and I'm going to be the guitar player,
Speaker 3: and you're going to play the bass. And he said okay.
Speaker 3: About three weeks later he had a guitar, had a
Speaker 3: bass and a n app.
Speaker 2: Okay, see it, told Gord Sincleir, you're playing the bass.
Speaker 2: Did he have any experience playing the bass?
Speaker 3: He did not have experience playing the bass. But he
Speaker 3: was an extremely musical guy. His mother was played piano,
Speaker 3: not professionally, but she played at parties and things and
Speaker 3: in church, and his dad had a stand up bass,
Speaker 3: so Gordon would have goofed around with that. But he
Speaker 3: was just naturally a good musician. He played the bagpipes
Speaker 3: at that point. He was actually a very good bagpiper.
Speaker 3: He went to an international competition in Edinburgh, Scotland and
Speaker 3: finished sixth in the world under eighteen, which was pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: He was a kid, was like fourteen, so he was
Speaker 3: just a musical guy. You know. He was doing these
Speaker 3: funny things when we were in grade nine where he'd
Speaker 3: get two cassette tape recorders and he was bouncing back
Speaker 3: and forth. He'd play Riders on the Storm on a
Speaker 3: keyboard on a pump organ that his parents had, and
Speaker 3: then he'd play that into another tape recorder and overdub
Speaker 3: something on top of that. Like he was just thinking
Speaker 3: that way as a young guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, before we get into the band, let's start with location.
Speaker 2: A lot of Canadians are very familiar with the landscape.
Speaker 2: A lot of your fians elsewhere or not. You guys
Speaker 2: are from Kingston. We're in is Kingston?
Speaker 3: What is it like? Kingston is right where Lake Ontario
Speaker 3: meets the Saint Lawrence River, So it's right at the
Speaker 3: end of the Great Lakes and it's just to short
Speaker 3: jump over to upstate New York where two hours north
Speaker 3: to Ottawa, two hours south to Syracuse, two hours east
Speaker 3: to Montreal, two hours west to Toronto. So it's a
Speaker 3: nice central location. Smallish town, you know, when we were
Speaker 3: growing up, it was about seventy five thousand. It's about
Speaker 3: one hundred and forty five now, I think, so big
Speaker 3: enough that there's something to do and small enough that
Speaker 3: you wouldn't lose your kids.
Speaker 2: Now, you guys both still live in that area, right.
Speaker 3: I do. Johnny lives in Toronto.
Speaker 4: I live in Toronto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how did you decide to leave Kingston behind?
Speaker 4: It wasn't easy, it was I was thinking of making
Speaker 4: a move. I was actually going to Vancouver, because I
Speaker 4: don't think any of us have ever gotten a plane
Speaker 4: and gone to Vancouver have a bad time. It's such
Speaker 4: a beautiful, beautiful city. I think that Canada doesn't make
Speaker 4: a lot of sense without Montreal and Vancouver. I always say. So.
Speaker 4: I was on my way out there and that got
Speaker 4: derailed and I ended up just going to Toronto. I
Speaker 4: don't know why. I still I'm still asking myself why.
Speaker 4: But I'm in I'm in Toronto, and I missed my
Speaker 4: days in Kingston. I come, I come down to visit,
Speaker 4: uh my, you know, my mom, and and it is
Speaker 4: a beautiful town. It's it's one of the greatest fresh
Speaker 4: water sailing it is the freshwater sailing capital of the world.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 4: They have a Canadian regatta called Cork every summer. That's
Speaker 4: when you kind of know summer's over in Kingston when
Speaker 4: Cork starts. And so there's a lot of sailing. It's
Speaker 4: right on Lake Ontario and directly across from Clayton, New York.
Speaker 4: So I I ended up in Toronto. And yeah, it's
Speaker 4: not until sort of halfway through the hip, sort of
Speaker 4: starting touring.
Speaker 2: Okay, are you a sailor?
Speaker 4: I was a sailor. Yeah. I went to sailing camp
Speaker 4: before I went to the Berkeley College of Music that
Speaker 4: bit because that's where all the girls were going. So
Speaker 4: my buddy had said, oh, these are the girls that
Speaker 4: are going in July, and these are the girls are
Speaker 4: going in August. And it was like, okay, well then
Speaker 4: we'll do it. And you've got these little nutshells, these
Speaker 4: little boats, and you sailed around, you know, some of
Speaker 4: the islands. It was. It was actually a great way
Speaker 4: to spend the summer and get sunburned.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you still have kids in school, right, I do.
Speaker 2: So how many times you've been married?
Speaker 4: Just the once? I'm a little allergic to it, Bob,
Speaker 4: but just the ones.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you waited a while. Why did you wait?
Speaker 2: Were you sewing your wild note? So you hadn't met
Speaker 2: the right person or what was happening?
Speaker 4: I think you know the latter. I think that I
Speaker 4: would always I was so happy to be in a
Speaker 4: band and wanted to make sure that I was committed
Speaker 4: to that. And it was just, you know, the right person,
Speaker 4: and and of course you never know the way these
Speaker 4: things shake out. But I wanted to have kids when
Speaker 4: I had the time, and I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: I learned a lot about being a dad from four
Speaker 4: great dads in the band. You know, they you know,
Speaker 4: in the early days, they brought their kids on the road,
Speaker 4: and so I remember I was talking to Robbie's wife
Speaker 4: about it the other day when Boris, their son, came
Speaker 4: to Europe in Belgium and Germany, when we played with
Speaker 4: the Rolling Stones, and then you know, there he was
Speaker 4: with a lanyard around his neck and it was hitting
Speaker 4: the floor. He was so small and he was tripping
Speaker 4: over it. He was just a wee thing, and he
Speaker 4: experienced music. And so I got to grow up and
Speaker 4: have those kids in my life, and then I got
Speaker 4: to have my own kids. But I learned how to,
Speaker 4: you know, really be a dad and be a musician.
Speaker 4: But by the time I was i'd had kids, it
Speaker 4: was over and you know, there were no absolutes in life.
Speaker 4: So I'm very thankful for it. Now I've got time
Speaker 4: to spend with my kids.
Speaker 2: And Rob, how many kids do you have?
Speaker 3: I just have one son who's an aspiring musician.
Speaker 4: He's a great musician. He's a touring musician.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's ask the most important question. Is he off
Speaker 2: the payroll?
Speaker 3: Well? Yeah, for the most part, he just his own home.
Speaker 3: This summer, moved into his first house. I wouldn't say
Speaker 3: he's entirely off the payroll. There's a he's got the
Speaker 3: use of the Mini Cooper, but he's pretty pretty self sufficient.
Speaker 3: He's got a job that's paying his way, and he's
Speaker 3: touring as a bass player in a band, and he's
Speaker 3: kind of the the driving force behind the band.
Speaker 4: So he's the Robbie. He's the Robbie of the band
Speaker 4: really because he's doing all the bookings. And Robbie did
Speaker 4: all the bookings for the band in the early days.
Speaker 4: So he's learned. He's got a great mentor there.
Speaker 2: And he doesn't have a day job. He's supporting himself
Speaker 2: as a musician.
Speaker 3: No, he does have a day job. He did a
Speaker 3: master's degree in neuroscience and he works with he works
Speaker 3: with people who've had brain surgeries. Helping them rehab and
Speaker 3: doing some physio type of stuff, mirror therapy with them,
Speaker 3: and he also does analysis for a company that does
Speaker 3: hallucinogenic therapy for veterans with PTSD. Kind of a big
Speaker 3: up and coming thing. People, you know, this is a
Speaker 3: major on the horizon thing.
Speaker 2: You guys have toured around the world. A lot of
Speaker 2: successful acts come from Canada. For those outside of Canada,
Speaker 2: what do they not understand about Canada?
Speaker 3: Can I say it? Johnny?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you got to.
Speaker 3: Saying used to be I think it was Ronnie Hawkins
Speaker 3: said in Canada you have to you have to work
Speaker 3: ten times as hard to get one tenth as far.
Speaker 3: And I think it's just that the dis between cities
Speaker 3: to be a touring band in Canada is absolutely grueling.
Speaker 3: You're contending with huge distances, you're contending with horrific weather,
Speaker 3: and you know, you go to the States and there's
Speaker 3: another big city every hour or two hours, and in
Speaker 3: Canada you might have a fifteen hour drive between gigs.
Speaker 3: So it kind of weeds out the people who it's
Speaker 3: not really for. You know, if you're going to be
Speaker 3: a touring band in Canada, it's because you really love
Speaker 3: what you're doing and you're devoted to it, So I
Speaker 3: think that makes a difference. The other thing I think
Speaker 3: is that Canadian bands, the example that was set for
Speaker 3: us by people like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, is
Speaker 3: that you walk on stage and you're kind of the
Speaker 3: same person on stage that you are off stage. It
Speaker 3: wasn't about the make over or the character that you're playing.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a singer songwriter vibe even for
Speaker 3: a band, like you know the guests who are whoever?
Speaker 3: And I think that makes a difference.
Speaker 2: It's grounding, okay to what degree. I mean, I've been
Speaker 2: to Canada many times. You know, everybody seems to know
Speaker 2: everybody in Canada. It's like a giant high school and
Speaker 2: you can't let your ego get too big. Someone's going
Speaker 2: to step on you. So any other differences that you
Speaker 2: can point out between Canada and the United States.
Speaker 3: I think. I think the cutting down of tall trees.
Speaker 3: Canada is founded by skinning beavers and cutting down tall trees,
Speaker 3: and it it's that way to this day. If you
Speaker 3: get above your station, people get out their access and
Speaker 3: starting you down. I think the US loves their success
Speaker 3: stories and the US loves their mythology. Canada loves to
Speaker 3: blow holes in our own mythology and we don't celebrate
Speaker 3: our own the way the US does. But I think
Speaker 3: we're learning. I think it's improved a lot over the
Speaker 3: last twenty something years.
Speaker 4: Also, I'll throw in that because of the our British influence,
Speaker 4: the British really can they can take a grudge to
Speaker 4: the grave. It's just like, yeah, really, that's it. And
Speaker 4: in America they'll chop you down. But they also love
Speaker 4: a redemption, which is pretty cool. And you see that
Speaker 4: a lot. Well, I'm sorry for what I did. Martha Stewart.
Speaker 4: Look what happened there, she's back on top. I don't
Speaker 4: know that that would happen. I mean, you're right, our
Speaker 4: population in Canada is a population of New York State.
Speaker 4: In the entire country, that one state is like here
Speaker 4: we go. So you're right, everyone does seem to know
Speaker 4: everyone up here. But I would have to throw that
Speaker 4: in that in the in the United States, you're you're
Speaker 4: not guaranteed her redemption, but you're it could be tabled.
Speaker 4: And I like that about America. I think that's that's
Speaker 4: pretty cool. And in Canada it's like, really, we can forgive,
Speaker 4: but we'll never forget.
Speaker 3: Do you run.
Speaker 4: It's kind of run like an Italian family.
Speaker 2: So so true, Johnny, you talk about coming back from
Speaker 2: Berkeley and your mother taking a phone call from Gord.
Speaker 4: How did Gordon doug downy? Well, as my dad. My
Speaker 4: dad was at the university here and I think you
Speaker 4: know he was going for tenure at the medical school,
Speaker 4: and they were kind of dancing around it, and he
Speaker 4: went to he got on a plane and went to
Speaker 4: Nigeria because they'd offered him the chair of medicine there.
Speaker 4: And then he got to Nigeria and they said, yep,
Speaker 4: you've got the job. And then he was at a
Speaker 4: dinner and this guy said, oh, somebody's been bitten by
Speaker 4: a snake and they died, and so anyway, I will
Speaker 4: continue with the dinner. And my dad said, what was
Speaker 4: that and the guy said, oh, green, mom, but bit
Speaker 4: this guy. But you know that happens all the time.
Speaker 4: And my mom is if she sees a snake on TV,
Speaker 4: it's like well, so she'd have a heart attack. So
Speaker 4: there was no going to Africa. But my dad said
Speaker 4: something to me that was really interesting. Sometimes to come back,
Speaker 4: you gotta go away. So I'd gone to Berkeley, and
Speaker 4: without even knowing it, I came back and I was
Speaker 4: the only guy in town who had been to Berkeley. Now,
Speaker 4: I think that carried a little bit of something. And
Speaker 4: you know, there's great drummers around Kingston even today, and
Speaker 4: so maybe that that just highlighted my name more than
Speaker 4: it should have. I don't know. But when I got
Speaker 4: back and Gord had known me because of the high school,
Speaker 4: and I'm the same age as his brother Patrick, so
Speaker 4: maybe Patrick had said something I don't know, and so
Speaker 4: that's kind of how they came to know me. I
Speaker 4: don't actually know.
Speaker 2: Wow, were you aware of Johnny and playing the drums
Speaker 2: at the time?
Speaker 3: I was not. I was two years ahead of Gordon
Speaker 3: Paul in high school and five years ahead of Johnny,
Speaker 3: so I was not that aware. But we had someone
Speaker 3: who we thought was lined up for drums and it
Speaker 3: just wasn't working out. There was no he had no
Speaker 3: time for us, and we just said, well, does anyone
Speaker 3: know a drummer? And of course our circle was small.
Speaker 3: We're thinking about our high school basically, you know, not
Speaker 3: even the city at large. It was more, you know,
Speaker 3: our neighborhood and Gord or yeah, it would have been.
Speaker 3: Gordon said, there's a kid in the high school, Johnny,
Speaker 3: and I think he just went to Boston to Berkeley,
Speaker 3: and he's a good drummer. I've heard he's a really
Speaker 3: good drummer. He said, let's check him out. Very simple,
Speaker 3: and as Johnny says, he showed up for the first
Speaker 3: rehearsal and there was already a drum kit in my parents' basement,
Speaker 3: and he came in and we smoked a couple of joints,
Speaker 3: and he woke up and he was on the road.
Speaker 4: And it was very We should point out that it's
Speaker 4: Rick McCreary. It was really his gig to give up,
Speaker 4: because he's a beautiful drummer, a great player, and he
Speaker 4: was the drummer and Rick in the road. And I
Speaker 4: think maybe, you know, as I've said a couple of times,
Speaker 4: I think his dad said to him, you know, why
Speaker 4: don't you get you know, university under your belt, and
Speaker 4: then you can go and do all this stuff and
Speaker 4: and and but go to university and get that out
Speaker 4: of the way. His dad was kind of steam pressing
Speaker 4: him a little bit, and and that just it was
Speaker 4: his It was really his gig to give up.
Speaker 3: But that was that was the thing for all our
Speaker 3: parents really that certainly my parents Gord's parents, was get
Speaker 3: university under your belt. You got to have something to
Speaker 3: fall back on. H So, having no other options and
Speaker 3: just wanting to be in a band, I thought, well,
Speaker 3: go to art school. I could do that. That's how
Speaker 3: bands are formed, isn't it. That's how the you know,
Speaker 3: Lennon Clapton, Keith Richards, they all went to art school.
Speaker 3: I thought, that's what you do, okay.
Speaker 2: You know we talked and you talk about Queen's College
Speaker 2: and everything in the book of the three other members
Speaker 2: of the band and yourself. Did any of you finish school?
Speaker 3: I finished? I got a fine arts degree, and Gorge
Speaker 3: Sinclair got a history degree. Gordon Downey dropped out after
Speaker 3: third year. He was doing poly political science and film,
Speaker 3: and Paul Langui dropped out part way through his first
Speaker 3: year of journalism in Ottawa.
Speaker 2: And did they drop out because of the band?
Speaker 3: No? Well, Gord Downey I would say yes, he did
Speaker 3: drop out because of the band because at that point,
Speaker 3: you know, Gordon I had been in a previous band
Speaker 3: that was working three, four, sometimes five nights a week
Speaker 3: and we were trying to go to university at the time,
Speaker 3: and that was really not panning out too well. So
Speaker 3: we quit that band and said, let's just form a
Speaker 3: band of friends for fun, and that was the tragically hit.
Speaker 3: But by the time I finished my fourth year, we
Speaker 3: were gigging three, four or five nights a week and
Speaker 3: making enough money to kind of keep body and soul together,
Speaker 3: and we just thought, let's ride this and see how
Speaker 3: far it goes.
Speaker 2: Now, Johnny, your father's a doctor. What does he think
Speaker 2: about you playing in a band while you're in high
Speaker 2: school in not finishing college.
Speaker 4: Well, I didn't even go. Yeah, I finished high school.
Speaker 4: But as Robbie's in university, Gord Sinclair's in university, these
Speaker 4: guys are just they're in. But I had two older
Speaker 4: brothers that were finishing university and there were no jobs.
Speaker 4: So this was nineteen eighty four, so they were going
Speaker 4: to have they both had to go back. One did
Speaker 4: a master's and another one went into law. So my
Speaker 4: argument was that you go to university and there's no job,
Speaker 4: so you go to go back to university. And they
Speaker 4: were like, yeah, you're right. And my dad was always like,
Speaker 4: like all of our parents, you got to get up
Speaker 4: and enjoy what you're doing every day. And so it
Speaker 4: was very much that that I could at least give
Speaker 4: it a try. I got entrance to university, and so
Speaker 4: that was good enough for them. But it was an
Speaker 4: interesting time to be uh. As we've we've often said,
Speaker 4: it's like, it's not like the parents were shouting at
Speaker 4: the top of the rooftops. You know, our sons are
Speaker 4: going to be musicians. You know it was you know.
Speaker 3: It, yeah, supportive but qualified.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh okay. This drummer whose drums it was, who was
Speaker 2: pressured by his parents to continue his education, do he
Speaker 2: ever circle back with regret?
Speaker 4: No, No, I don't think so. He went into mining
Speaker 4: and he became he did very well and became, you know,
Speaker 4: a father, and I just think his h I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't think so. It was a lot of work
Speaker 4: to be in that band, right, Robbie the Rodents, And
Speaker 4: I don't think he ever kind of looked at it
Speaker 4: that way. I never got I saw him the other
Speaker 4: day and he was just he was beaming. He was
Speaker 4: beaming in the movie. And I don't know, maybe Robbie's
Speaker 4: got a different take on it, but he's he was
Speaker 4: very supportive of us, and he was not jealous. He's
Speaker 4: not that kind of a guy. He's really a beautiful,
Speaker 4: big heart. That's what I got from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think he has any regrets. He's still
Speaker 3: drums all the time. He has a place set up
Speaker 3: not too far from Kingston where he keeps the kids,
Speaker 3: set up with the PA system, and he goes and
Speaker 3: he plays drums for two days a week to workout
Speaker 3: his angst and then he goes back in. Is you
Speaker 3: know VP at a bank or VP of Barrett Gold
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 2: Okay, when Johnny joins the band, is everybody else involved?
Speaker 2: Or is Paul Langmah not in the band yet?
Speaker 3: Paul was not in the band yet, and we didn't
Speaker 3: even really have Before Paul, we had a sax player
Speaker 3: and we didn't even have him yet, so it was
Speaker 3: really just it was the three of us and Gordon Downey,
Speaker 3: so we were a little four piece. And then shortly
Speaker 3: thereafter we got a sax player and he was with
Speaker 3: us for about eighteen months, and we kind of over
Speaker 3: that eighteen months we went from never having played a
Speaker 3: gig to being kind of the popular band in eastern Ontario,
Speaker 3: starting to travel bit make a name, and we had
Speaker 3: to part ways with our sax player, who was some
Speaker 3: years older than us. He had a very different history
Speaker 3: from us. And at that point, I think we could
Speaker 3: have chosen, you know, who's the hot shot guitar player
Speaker 3: in the area. We could have cast a much wider net,
Speaker 3: and instead we chose a good friend. You know, It's like, well,
Speaker 3: Paul knows how to play four chords on the guitar
Speaker 3: and it's not like it's rocket science. Were better off
Speaker 3: to choose someone who were friends with, who we can
Speaker 3: hang out in a van with four fifteen hours driving
Speaker 3: between gigs and he'll learn how to play the guitar.
Speaker 3: And boy did he learn how to play the guitar.
Speaker 3: He was already trying to write songs. But he became
Speaker 3: a great songwriter in his own right, and he's got
Speaker 3: a great voice. So it was the right call.
Speaker 2: Okay, From the moment Johnny joined the to the recording
Speaker 2: of the so called EP before the first album. How
Speaker 2: long a period of.
Speaker 3: Time is that, would you say, Johnny? Three years?
Speaker 4: I yeah, little less? Yeah, maybe a little less, because
Speaker 4: we got together in eighty four and then we played
Speaker 4: a sprinkling of gigs, and then Davis joins and then
Speaker 4: he's gone. And in the movie you see these pictures
Speaker 4: of us as a five piece, then a four piece,
Speaker 4: then a five piece again, and those pictures are cool
Speaker 4: because that's Robbie's wife taking those photographs. It was black
Speaker 4: and those beautiful black and white. So we took these
Speaker 4: band photos and then two days later Davis was gone,
Speaker 4: and then we had to call her again to say
Speaker 4: we gotta go to some of those same places again
Speaker 4: and take photos again, minus one, but Paul came in. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think by eighty seven we had recorded that little
Speaker 4: Baby Blue record, right, Robbie, So this was just a
Speaker 4: two and a half years maybe.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's hard to keep a band together. They're all
Speaker 2: these different mindsets. Did anybody think, or certainly you two
Speaker 2: sing Wait a second, this isn't going to work out.
Speaker 2: Either I got to join a different band, or I
Speaker 2: got to live a straight life, or you guys all
Speaker 2: in with everybody all in all the time.
Speaker 4: It's funny. I was thinking about that the other day,
Speaker 4: Pop because when I joined the band, I remember auditioning
Speaker 4: with Robbie and Gord and Gord Sinkla're handing me a
Speaker 4: Little Richard record and say here's a song. The go
Speaker 4: can't help, but we're going to do our version of that,
Speaker 4: and we're also going to write some of our own tunes.
Speaker 4: And what's really cool about it is that in that
Speaker 4: time period, you know, we were influenced by different bands,
Speaker 4: but those bands were career bands. It was The Stones, Aerosmith,
Speaker 4: you know, you name it, and so we made a
Speaker 4: commitment to each other.
Speaker 3: Then.
Speaker 4: I don't think that people do that now, and I
Speaker 4: don't know that I would. I would do too well
Speaker 4: in a band if we had to start it now.
Speaker 4: But back in those days, you know, we just wanted
Speaker 4: people to hear us. And if it was six people,
Speaker 4: and then you know, next time we came to that
Speaker 4: town it would be fifteen people or something like that.
Speaker 4: But the thing about it, which is captured in the
Speaker 4: movie by Mike beautifully, is that it was the commitment
Speaker 4: that we met, that we made with each other, and
Speaker 4: the luck that we had to meet each other in
Speaker 4: the first place. I think that that really kind of
Speaker 4: comes out about it, but that people don't seem to
Speaker 4: have that anymore. They want to be an individual and
Speaker 4: then have a bunch of players. This guy plays keyboards
Speaker 4: in that band, and he plays bass in that band,
Speaker 4: and he's the backup singer in that and they try
Speaker 4: and fragment themselves. And as my drum teacher used to say,
Speaker 4: my beautiful drum teacher, Jim Blackley, just you know, stay
Speaker 4: the course, just do that. And we did that, and
Speaker 4: there were hard times in the beginning, so I'm glad
Speaker 4: we did.
Speaker 2: Okay. Today is different the Internet, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 2: in the early seventies there was a whole DJ movement
Speaker 2: and now you'll go to a club and they'll have
Speaker 2: somebody spinning records. But when you guys are playing out
Speaker 2: in Kingston, how many opportunities are there? Where is there
Speaker 2: to play? What does it look like you're booking the gigs, Robbie,
Speaker 2: What are the opportunities?
Speaker 3: They were more than you'd think. I thought the same
Speaker 3: thing when we started out. But we were just eager
Speaker 3: to play, and we thought the only way we're going
Speaker 3: to get better is playing anywhere and everywhere. We played
Speaker 3: sweet sixteen parties, We played parties at health clubs. There
Speaker 3: was a biker bar that had urban folk dancing that
Speaker 3: we became kind of a house band. There there was
Speaker 3: another bar in town that featured mostly blues and R
Speaker 3: and B acts, and they were very serious about that,
Speaker 3: bringing in blues and R and B authentic roots music,
Speaker 3: and it used to bother them so much that they'd
Speaker 3: hire us on an off night and we'd set a
Speaker 3: new bar record and pack their place out. So we
Speaker 3: became a house band there as well. So we're playing
Speaker 3: two competing bars as house bands. But then we'd go
Speaker 3: and play a biker picnic, and then we'd go and
Speaker 3: play at the university to college kids, and it just
Speaker 3: it seemed, you know, a high school dance. We would
Speaker 3: play anywhere, and at a certain point I was like, well,
Speaker 3: we've played every place you can possibly play in this town.
Speaker 3: We need to start casting the net further and further.
Speaker 3: And at a certain point, probably a year and a
Speaker 3: half in, we thought London, Ontario, which is in western
Speaker 3: Ontario on the far side, few hours west of Toronto.
Speaker 3: We thought, it's a bit like Kingston. It's a kind
Speaker 3: of a they have a snooty university, kind of a
Speaker 3: Canadian version of the Ivy League, and it's a big
Speaker 3: city that has a big ceed underbelly, kind of like Kingston.
Speaker 3: We thought, let's go there. And do the same thing
Speaker 3: that we just did in Kingston, Let's do it in London.
Speaker 3: And we did. In a weird sort of way. We
Speaker 3: surrounded Toronto and then we'd make little forays into Toronto.
Speaker 3: And the guy who booked the Horseshoe Tavern, which is
Speaker 3: quite a famous venue in Toronto for roots music, booked
Speaker 3: by our old friend x Ray McCrae. It was a
Speaker 3: Kingston guy. I called him up one day cold call
Speaker 3: and said, Hi, we're the Tragically Ip and we're from Kingston.
Speaker 3: He said, Kingston, what are you coming through? I'll book you.
Speaker 3: It was really pretty much that easy, okay.
Speaker 2: A was anybody calling you, b if they said like, oh, come,
Speaker 2: we'll give you fifty dollars in beer, you would.
Speaker 4: Say absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3: The deal. The deal I had was everyone in the
Speaker 3: band gets fifty dollars and we drink for free and
Speaker 3: you pay for the pa in lines.
Speaker 4: But we had to work up to that though, Bob,
Speaker 4: because I remember I looked in a little a book
Speaker 4: that I had, uh and it was in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty six, and I remember we played this place,
Speaker 4: Lake Ontario Park. Robbie booked the gig. It was an
Speaker 4: afternoon gig. I don't think anyone showed up, but we
Speaker 4: got one hundred and six dollars of that gig. We
Speaker 4: didn't have to pay for PI. So we were, we
Speaker 4: were on the move. We were we were starting to
Speaker 4: really get some gravity.
Speaker 3: We did have standards. There was one gig where we
Speaker 3: were on the Marquee. We were book built second to
Speaker 3: Shepherd's Pie, and I think we were we were in
Speaker 3: a no show. I think we pulled the plug on
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 2: But okay, And how many nights a week were you
Speaker 2: working then?
Speaker 3: At that point we were probably working like two nights
Speaker 3: a week.
Speaker 2: And then how much most of you, if you were
Speaker 2: working two nights a week, how much were you rehearsing?
Speaker 3: Uh, not very much rehearsals for the band After that
Speaker 3: first couple of years, first year and a half, most
Speaker 3: of the rehearsing happened in sound checks, dressing rooms, hotel rooms,
Speaker 3: you know, and on those occasions when we did get
Speaker 3: together with a specific purpose. You're gonna play on Saturday
Speaker 3: Night Live or you're gonna you know, you're going out
Speaker 3: on tour. For three months, we've rented a place for
Speaker 3: you to go and rehearse and we would get together
Speaker 3: and we'd jam. For the most part, there is very
Speaker 3: little rehearsing. Like you know, if you ever saw the
Speaker 3: band live, it's not like we rehearsed our endings very well.
Speaker 2: Okay, when you're working two nights a week for fifty
Speaker 2: dollars a piece in beer, inside of you saying oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna make it. We're gonna be on TV, We're
Speaker 2: gonna be famous for you saying we're getting high with
Speaker 2: our buddies. This is what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think by the time Push came to Shove,
Speaker 3: we'd been doing it for about three years, and by
Speaker 3: that point we were probably making about three hundred dollars
Speaker 3: a piece each a week, and that just seemed like
Speaker 3: an that we could pool our money and rent an apartment,
Speaker 3: be like the monkeys, you know. That was you know,
Speaker 3: I'll ride trikes around our apartment together. Yeah, when you're
Speaker 3: working two days a week, that's not really a I
Speaker 3: don't think we ever really had dreams of a world conquest.
Speaker 3: It was always just kind of putting one foot in
Speaker 3: front of the other. So if we were playing two
Speaker 3: gigs a week, the ambition would have been we need
Speaker 3: to get another gig every week. That was we aim low.
Speaker 2: You were the booker was just like on your brain
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven, were you calling people incessantly? How
Speaker 2: much work and how much mental capacity or a mind share?
Speaker 2: Was this taking.
Speaker 3: More than I liked, more than I had capacity for it?
Speaker 3: But no, it wasn't on my mind twenty four to seven.
Speaker 3: Being in a band was on my mind twenty four
Speaker 3: to seven. The booking part was a little bit of
Speaker 3: an annoying task, not one I was really well suited for.
Speaker 3: But after about the first you know, first six or
Speaker 3: eight months, we had a handful of gigs that were regulars.
Speaker 3: You know, as I said, there was the Urban Folk
Speaker 3: Dancing Club on the one side of town, and then
Speaker 3: there was the Roots Bar on the other side of town,
Speaker 3: and we were kind of operating as a house band
Speaker 3: of both of those. So that's you know, that was
Speaker 3: good for a bunch of good paying gigs every month,
Speaker 3: and then it was just a matter of filling in
Speaker 3: what we could. And it started with me making calls,
Speaker 3: but then the calls started coming in. You know, whether
Speaker 3: it was a you know, if you got a high
Speaker 3: school dance that was that was a good gig. They
Speaker 3: might pay eight hundred dollars for that, you know, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, it's probably the statute of limitations. Usually these
Speaker 2: gigs paid cash. Did you ever to clear the money
Speaker 2: pay taxes on it?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, at a certain point, I think around the
Speaker 3: time up to here came out. I asked my father,
Speaker 3: who had been filing my taxes for me, or I
Speaker 3: thought he'd been filing my taxes. I went to him
Speaker 3: and it turns out that I was in about eight
Speaker 3: years of arrears tax so I had some I had
Speaker 3: some sorting and explaining to do. But yeah, we we
Speaker 3: always operated very above board. We were union members from
Speaker 3: long before we needed to be union members. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I just that's kind of we're sort
Speaker 3: of a middle upper middle class kids from a small town,
Speaker 3: and our parents were all professionals, and it was all like,
Speaker 3: you do everything above board. That's the way we were
Speaker 3: and still are.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you get together. At first, it's kind of
Speaker 2: a garage band. You're playing covers. How does original material
Speaker 2: come into the equation?
Speaker 4: It was it was done pretty holistically. It was just
Speaker 4: kind of we're going to play these covers and then
Speaker 4: sneak a couple of these originals and our courts and
Speaker 4: Clothes really doing a lot of the writing, and Robbie
Speaker 4: and and you know, we had some kind of bluesy
Speaker 4: kind of numbers. And then in those days you had
Speaker 4: to file a list, and the bar owners in some
Speaker 4: cases wanted to see the list. So Robbie could tell
Speaker 4: you better than I could about some of the names
Speaker 4: that were used that were fictitious. But we do, as
Speaker 4: I said, you know, a little Richard tune and then
Speaker 4: one of our tunes baby blue Blood and what were
Speaker 4: what were some of the names that we we had
Speaker 4: to sort of file in as.
Speaker 3: The Reformed Baptist blues and yeah, heart Attack love.
Speaker 4: By written by but written by.
Speaker 3: We would we would say, oh this is off of Yeah.
Speaker 3: They did say we don't want any original music, just covers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but we weren't playing but we weren't playing hits like
Speaker 3: we weren't. We never played top forty. If we were
Speaker 3: going to play a Rolling Stone song, we weren't going
Speaker 3: to play Satisfaction or nineteenth Nervous Breakdown. We were playing
Speaker 3: something off the first record or off the hook or yeah,
Speaker 3: have Mercy or off the hook or something like that.
Speaker 3: So if they'd say, what's that song there, and if
Speaker 3: it was one of ours, we'd say, oh, that's off
Speaker 3: of a German bootleg of the Doors, and they'd say, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: that's good. That's good because Bob.
Speaker 4: In those days in Canada anyway, it was like as
Speaker 4: easy top cover band. It was a Owling Stones cover
Speaker 4: band that they were from actually Kingston called the Blushing Brides.
Speaker 4: And then you know other other covers are CCR. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's a band band called Green River. So they were
Speaker 4: being booked and then we were kind of creeping in
Speaker 4: like that, and people wanted to see what the material was. Okay,
Speaker 4: you guys are getting a little bit of traction, but
Speaker 4: let's see the let's see the setlist and who's who's
Speaker 4: whose tunes of those they're kind of quirky, but go ahead,
Speaker 4: you know. And and so that's how we got better
Speaker 4: at our own tunes.
Speaker 3: And I think by having a really obscure setlist, you
Speaker 3: know that we could put the Monkeys back to back
Speaker 3: with Howl and Wolf. Uh. People really had no expectations
Speaker 3: and it allowed us to slip our material in and
Speaker 3: you know, they didn't know any of the songs we
Speaker 3: were covering so our songs fit in beautifully.
Speaker 4: And then we got then we got requests for those songs,
Speaker 4: which was really cool, which pumped our tires. Which is
Speaker 4: an original band, that's what you want. Yeah, and so
Speaker 4: it's like, okay, well we weren't going to play it tonight,
Speaker 4: but we'll throw it in. So that was cool.
Speaker 2: Okay. A lot of bands quite consciously write rigial materials,
Speaker 2: say the only way we can break if is if
Speaker 2: we have our own material. Was this a very conscious thing? Okay,
Speaker 2: we want to make it, We have to write original stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't think anyone who was thinking too much
Speaker 3: about making it. I think that the idea of writing
Speaker 3: our songs, writing our own material was just a natural
Speaker 3: extension of you know, you've been learning songs for the
Speaker 3: last ten years, over and over, learning other people's songs.
Speaker 3: You pick up a little bit about how to write
Speaker 3: a riff, what song structure is. It seems natural. After
Speaker 3: a while, It's like the mystery is kind of blown.
Speaker 3: It's like, not the mystery of how to write a
Speaker 3: great song that will always be a mystery, but the
Speaker 3: mystery of how to put a song together is no
Speaker 3: longer a mystery, and it's like, oh, I think I
Speaker 3: can do this, you know, a simple chord progression. We
Speaker 3: just need some lyrics. And Gorge Sinclair was really natural.
Speaker 3: He was the one that was really kind of he
Speaker 3: was coming forward with song ideas and everyone, I think
Speaker 3: everyone in the band felt like, well, we all want
Speaker 3: to be songwriters. He's actually doing it, and it kind
Speaker 3: of kicked our asses a bit to step up and
Speaker 3: dig in and start putting ideas.
Speaker 2: Forward, you know, jumping a little bit forward. There's a
Speaker 2: point in the documentary where Gordon down he says, I
Speaker 2: need to write all the lyrics and it's a little
Speaker 2: uncomfortable and it's hinto there's a little tension. Tell me
Speaker 2: what was going on there?
Speaker 3: Well, I he did need to write the lyrics. You know,
Speaker 3: he's as the lead vocalist. It made sense that he
Speaker 3: needs to be in tune with what he's singing. He
Speaker 3: needs to feel it. But as songwriters, it did feel
Speaker 3: a bit like Paul Langua and Gorge Sinkler were both
Speaker 3: writing lyrics at the time, and you know, Johnny and
Speaker 3: I were collaborating on musical ideas and Gordon I were
Speaker 3: collaborating and we were all collaborating together, but Paul would
Speaker 3: come in with a finished song, music and lyrics. Gorge
Speaker 3: Sinkler would come in with a Finnish song, music and lyrics,
Speaker 3: and suddenly it felt like their wings were clipped. And
Speaker 3: I think that led to some resentments that carried forward.
Speaker 3: But Gord truly developed into an outstanding lyricist. You know,
Speaker 3: he was already becoming one, but he really developed, and
Speaker 3: I don't think maybe that would have happened without that,
Speaker 3: Maybe it would have. I don't know. It did lead
Speaker 3: to some problems for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know it's depicted. You're all from the same town.
Speaker 2: You're all middle upper middle class. In the document, everything's groovy,
Speaker 2: everything's harmonious, except for that little blip. Was this really
Speaker 2: the case or were there ever any argument ever? Anybody
Speaker 2: threatening to quit?
Speaker 3: Yes, no, I don't think.
Speaker 4: I don't did anyone threaten to quit?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think anyone threatened to quit.
Speaker 4: But we had we had arguments, Yeah, okay, you had
Speaker 4: arguments about what. Uh one of our doozies. One of
Speaker 4: our doozies was the night that we met Jake Gold
Speaker 4: and Alan Gregg. We went out and met them and uh,
Speaker 4: we played a gig at Larry's Hideaway. You were there
Speaker 4: that night, Bob uh when was given an award recently,
Speaker 4: and we kind of touched on that Larry's Hideaway gig.
Speaker 4: And then we went to the Pilot House in Toronto
Speaker 4: and talked to Alan and Jake and we were trying
Speaker 4: to feel out management and and I don't think anyone
Speaker 4: didn't think that they weren't the right people. But we
Speaker 4: just were asking questions, which is what we did, which
Speaker 4: is what we needed to do. You know, are these
Speaker 4: the guys for us? And you know, and we had
Speaker 4: we had a pretty good We had a doozy that night,
Speaker 4: I think, didn't we rob Yeah, we did.
Speaker 3: I was I may have been the holdout on that one.
Speaker 3: I was really upset that night because Alan, who we
Speaker 3: perceived as the brains of the management. We were you know,
Speaker 3: maybe jumped the gun on that, but we perceived him
Speaker 3: as the brains of the management. And he curved Gordon
Speaker 3: Downey as the face of the band and Gorge Sinkler
Speaker 3: is the premier songwriter. He took them to one end
Speaker 3: of the table and bent their ears and charmed them
Speaker 3: and Jake was left at the other end of the table.
Speaker 3: With the three dummies, and I was irritated beyond belief.
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't want to be with these guys.
Speaker 3: That's a divide and conquermentality. And anyone who tries to
Speaker 3: divide the five of us, you know, I was scorched
Speaker 3: earth about that. Not a chance. But also we operated
Speaker 3: by unanimity throughout our career. For the most part. We
Speaker 3: never enforced decisions a three to two or a four
Speaker 3: to one vote on something. So I was the odd
Speaker 3: one out on that, I think, and I would have said, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's it. There are managers, And it turns out Jake
Speaker 3: was a brilliant manager. He came up with great ideas
Speaker 3: and very very smart, savvy, street savvy manager.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go back. Now you're making three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: a week, and you see, we can live in an
Speaker 2: apartment with strikes like the monkeys. Where was everybody living?
Speaker 2: And did you like Jefferson airplane? This is a famous
Speaker 2: motif everybody gets together in a house. What did happen?
Speaker 4: We were kind of on the road a little bit there,
Speaker 4: but we needed to have sort of a It got
Speaker 4: to a point where we needed to have an apartment
Speaker 4: in Toronto. So we had with our road manager at
Speaker 4: the time, an agreement with some girls that we would
Speaker 4: just flop on the floor in one of the one
Speaker 4: of the rooms. So we found out later that we
Speaker 4: were giving him the money and then going back to Kingston.
Speaker 4: I think we were still maybe staying at girlfriend's houses
Speaker 4: or parents, but when we were on the road, we
Speaker 4: were on the road, we were in kind of limbo
Speaker 4: and this this road manager guy was ripping us off.
Speaker 4: He never gave the money to the girls and so
Speaker 4: we had to go and play a gig to pay
Speaker 4: off our It was a good learning experience we had
Speaker 4: to We had to pay off this rental debt that
Speaker 4: we had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a good lesson that anyone involved with
Speaker 3: the band has to be part of the family. There
Speaker 3: has to be trust and commitment all the way around.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're talking about the vast distances in Canada. You're
Speaker 2: talking about being in Kingston starting to play London. Rock
Speaker 2: and roll lore is about burning the candle on both ends,
Speaker 2: being high, being drunk in car accidents. So what was
Speaker 2: your experience with all that late night driving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were many car accidents, That's what I'd say.
Speaker 3: You know, we always had someone who would do the driving,
Speaker 3: the road manager or lighting guy. There was always someone
Speaker 3: who could do it, and we could all pile into
Speaker 3: the van. And I don't think we ever had Did
Speaker 3: we ever have a major accident, Johnny.
Speaker 4: No, we didn't, but I was. I was looking at
Speaker 4: a non itinerary a little while ago and Paul Langwall
Speaker 4: and Gord Sinkler used to do the lion's share of
Speaker 4: the driving for us, and they both smoked, so they
Speaker 4: cracked a window and they you know, they would have
Speaker 4: the sig out the window and they could keep going.
Speaker 4: Those guys. But Jake had has booked at this thing
Speaker 4: in London at the Casby Awards, and then Ottawa, then London,
Speaker 4: then Kitchener then back up to Ottawa and then after
Speaker 4: that gig. I remember that last Ottawa gig. We didn't
Speaker 4: have enough money to get hotel rooms, so we didn't
Speaker 4: so we went to the Chateau lauriermus Canadian Hotel and
Speaker 4: we kind of just bummed around one of the ballrooms.
Speaker 4: I don't know how we didn't get kicked out. We
Speaker 4: just kind of tried to catch a couple hours of
Speaker 4: sleep and then we played this gig and then we
Speaker 4: had to pile in the car. And I remember talking
Speaker 4: to Paul about this that I don't know how to
Speaker 4: this day that he stayed awake because you always had
Speaker 4: to have someone in the driver's seat beside him talking
Speaker 4: to him because it was and I fell asleep and
Speaker 4: I was just in the periphery of my vision. I
Speaker 4: was seeing these purple bunny rabbits poke their heads up
Speaker 4: just as just as we were going back. I was like,
Speaker 4: did you see that? You said? And Paul was like what.
Speaker 4: And then I drift off to sleep and I was like,
Speaker 4: how did we stay alive that night? And that was
Speaker 4: the power of Paul. He could just do it. He
Speaker 4: could like he could drive. He and Sinclair really were
Speaker 4: the reason that we're alive today. And you know, for
Speaker 4: so many of those late night, no hotel, no sleep
Speaker 4: gigs and we go up and play for half an hour,
Speaker 4: Bob and then Violin drive eight hours to London then
Speaker 4: back to Ottawa, and these were showcase gigs and it
Speaker 4: was Jake was like, you got to play this. I
Speaker 4: know it's terrible routing, but you gotta play this. This
Speaker 4: is going to be big, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when Jake and Allen sold themselves to us. One
Speaker 3: of the things they said is we're going to you know,
Speaker 3: look at this routing that you guys are doing. It's terrible.
Speaker 3: We'll end that routing. It'll all make sense from here.
Speaker 3: The routing will all be very logical. And of course
Speaker 3: the only thing that happened was the bad routing got
Speaker 3: multiplied by a factor of ten.
Speaker 2: Okay, when usually in the United States were talking about
Speaker 2: showcase gigs, You're in New York or LA playing for industry,
Speaker 2: hoping for some kind of leg up, what was a
Speaker 2: showcase gig outside to Toronto about.
Speaker 4: It was about getting college gigs. College gigs, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, college bookers.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you know, at first you're playing anywhere that'll
Speaker 2: have you to what degree are you conscious at first
Speaker 2: you're being paid to rehearse, you know, work it out
Speaker 2: on stage. At what point are you conscious of audience reaction,
Speaker 2: wanting to get the audience involved, and at what point
Speaker 2: do you get enough of a reaction do you feel
Speaker 2: wait a second, something is happening here.
Speaker 3: I think we're always very conscious of audience reaction. That
Speaker 3: was I've always felt that, you know, the five of
Speaker 3: us could be playing in a room and we're just
Speaker 3: you know, working out an idea. The second a stranger
Speaker 3: comes into the room, we're all performing. We're just naturally
Speaker 3: that way. Everyone digs in differently and you're try trying
Speaker 3: to get a reaction out of the person that's walked
Speaker 3: into the room. It was like that from the very
Speaker 3: first gig on, very conscious of trying to get people involved,
Speaker 3: get people to pay attention. It was kind of a
Speaker 3: dance crowd at the time, like you wanted people up
Speaker 3: and dancing, and then at a certain point it starts
Speaker 3: to get more crowded up front and there's not room
Speaker 3: to dance. But we'd look out and if there was
Speaker 3: a fight happening, and we'd say, hey, we're doing a
Speaker 3: good job. The energy is so high that people don't
Speaker 3: know what to do with their energy. And then of
Speaker 3: course you get tired of that and you move on
Speaker 3: to you know, it's become a bit more focused about
Speaker 3: the kind of attention you want. But yeah, always very
Speaker 3: important to us to try and make that connection with
Speaker 3: the audience.
Speaker 2: Okay, was there a breakthrough gig in your mind based
Speaker 2: on audience reaction or the way you felt to the
Speaker 2: whole field? We go wait, a second. We are on
Speaker 2: our away.
Speaker 4: You know, in the movie, there's a gig that we
Speaker 4: play and Bruce Dickinson is in the audience and it's
Speaker 4: kind of a make or break kind of thing and
Speaker 4: it was at Massey Hall, and that was Dickinson, Yeah,
Speaker 4: our man, and he came up to see us. He'd
Speaker 4: heard of the band, and it could have gone horribly wrong,
Speaker 4: and we might have thought it did. But I think
Speaker 4: that that was a moment that really shaped us getting
Speaker 4: our record contract and then working with the great Don Smith.
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, looking back at it and
Speaker 4: seeing it in the film, that was obviously one of them.
Speaker 4: But you know, leading up to those those gigs there
Speaker 4: there were so so many of them, and you know,
Speaker 4: you're you're always promised that this is going to be
Speaker 4: the one, this is going to do this, and and
Speaker 4: it does pan out, and we seem to have all
Speaker 4: these kind of gigs and then other people would just
Speaker 4: they'd play the same gig and they'd get something from
Speaker 4: it and we didn't. Sort of we were living through
Speaker 4: it together, which was really great and beautiful, and we
Speaker 4: were a support system to each other. But it didn't
Speaker 4: happen overnight for us.
Speaker 3: Bob.
Speaker 4: It was just it was a long, long, long haul.
Speaker 4: And after forty years and it's our fortieth year now,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I have trouble sort of saying there
Speaker 4: was that one gig. You know, we had all these
Speaker 4: crazy things that happened to us. But I don't know, Robbie,
Speaker 4: there's one for you.
Speaker 3: No, I can't think of one. I mean, in retrospect,
Speaker 3: that one with Bruce is a good one, a good choice,
Speaker 3: because you know, we always used to say it's not
Speaker 3: a good gig until something goes wrong, because all the
Speaker 3: best gigs, you know, if we walked out and had
Speaker 3: a sound check and everything was smooth soundcheck, we'd say
Speaker 3: we got a problem. If the sound check was terrible
Speaker 3: or a fraud, then we'd probably go on and have
Speaker 3: a great gig. But you know, a gig when you
Speaker 3: come on and something's malfunctioning at the beginning of it,
Speaker 3: oftentimes you just dig in. We weren't. We didn't get
Speaker 3: thrown by stuff like that. We would and Gord was
Speaker 3: very good at just improvising his way out of something.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what Bruce Dickinson saw that night,
Speaker 3: was that what could have been a disaster, Gorge's mike
Speaker 3: tipping over and the mic blows up and the cable's out,
Speaker 3: and he just started into this pantomime thing and we
Speaker 3: just jammed while they sorted out the mic issue, and
Speaker 3: it worked smoothly because we were by the time people
Speaker 3: were seeing us in these larger venues, we were already
Speaker 3: kind of seasoned on stage. It was not new to us,
Speaker 3: and we didn't really have great expectations that, oh, this
Speaker 3: gig is going to break us. Now, we're just going
Speaker 3: to go out and we're going to do what we do,
Speaker 3: which is have fun together and try and connect with
Speaker 3: the audience, try and you know, try and stick in
Speaker 3: people's minds.
Speaker 2: Okay, It almost is played in the documentary like you're
Speaker 2: out doing your thing. If somebody says, oh, you should
Speaker 2: meet these managers, you meet Jake and Allen, that's it.
Speaker 2: How much previously did were you interviewing managers and saying no,
Speaker 2: were you trying to get managers? Were people coming up
Speaker 2: to you? Was this really like one and done? Or
Speaker 2: were there all these things going on?
Speaker 4: There were people in Kingston that were approaching us and
Speaker 4: they were saying, well, I think there's something really special
Speaker 4: about you guys, I'm not a manager, but I'd like
Speaker 4: to manage you. We had like a couple of people
Speaker 4: that we sat down with and then I think the
Speaker 4: conversations guarded and it's like, well, yeah, we do need management.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Robbie was being pretty taxed with the gigs Gord Downie
Speaker 4: was doing, using his his connections to get them. And
Speaker 4: I remember I got like a gig at my high
Speaker 4: school because I was still at the high school there.
Speaker 4: So it was time to move outside of Kingston. And
Speaker 4: I think that, uh, we had this guy who worked
Speaker 4: for the band who was a good friend of Robbie's Fraser,
Speaker 4: and he got a tape into the hand of somebody
Speaker 4: who got it into the hand of Alan Gregg, and
Speaker 4: we had heard that he was in management or they were,
Speaker 4: you know, he liked music, and I think that that's
Speaker 4: it came. Came kind of like that. But we hadn't
Speaker 4: really been talking about management. But we knew we needed
Speaker 4: to make that that that dive into the deep blue
Speaker 4: water that we needed to, you know, for us to
Speaker 4: really take another step, we needed to do something with
Speaker 4: a manager. Proper manager.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: One thing that's in the book, which I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Is that they say that or in the book it
Speaker 2: has said that Alan greg put in multiple hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars. A. Was that true? B? Could you
Speaker 2: sense that?
Speaker 3: I don't know about multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Speaker 3: But he did finance the Baby Blue record to the
Speaker 3: tune of probably thirty grand, and he financed the first
Speaker 3: two videos and that may have been to the tune
Speaker 3: of you know, eighty grand or one hundred grand. So yeah,
Speaker 3: he was probably in for over one hundred grand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So you talk about those videos, you get
Speaker 2: action on Much Music. And with explosion of MTV, unless
Speaker 2: you were in Canada or Canada savvy, you didn't a
Speaker 2: know about Much Music. There wasn't MTV Candada at that point.
Speaker 2: It reached everybody. It focused on Canadian bands. Your video
Speaker 2: got on Much Music. How did that happen and how
Speaker 2: did that affect the trajectory of your career?
Speaker 3: Ah? Well, Much Music was weird. It was fortuitous for
Speaker 3: us that it had just kind of really taken off
Speaker 3: in Canada and it was a different time. So on
Speaker 3: a Friday night or Saturday night, if you went to
Speaker 3: someone's place, there was a good chance that Much Music
Speaker 3: was showing and you're watching the young bands coming up,
Speaker 3: and there's something called CANCN where a third of the
Speaker 3: material has to be Canadian in origin. So what often
Speaker 3: happened is they'd have ghetto wised the Canadian artists into
Speaker 3: an hour or two hour special and then the rest
Speaker 3: of the day would be Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper
Speaker 3: and whoever else. But just the fact that we had
Speaker 3: a video on Much Music gives you a certain credibility
Speaker 3: and it allowed us to go and play in thunder Bay,
Speaker 3: thunder Bay, Ontario, or Sudbury, Ontario, or Saskatoon, and people
Speaker 3: have seen your video, so they're going to come out
Speaker 3: as curiosity seekers, As music lovers and curiosity seekers, they
Speaker 3: come to check you out, and then your job is
Speaker 3: be good, turn them on. And if you turn them on,
Speaker 3: the next time they'll bring a friend or a couple
Speaker 3: of friends. So you go from playing to forty people,
Speaker 3: the next time you cross the country, you're playing to
Speaker 3: you know, two hundred and fifty people, and then you're
Speaker 3: playing to one thousand people. But your job is always
Speaker 3: the same. You've got an audience deliver. You have to deliver.
Speaker 2: Okay, you make a deal with MCA, they bring in
Speaker 2: a seasoned professional. Don Smith was originally an engineer starting
Speaker 2: to produce. You know, what was your experience of making
Speaker 2: that first record and because your newbies really and where
Speaker 2: you sat a fied with the.
Speaker 4: Result he was done was just such a great breath
Speaker 4: of fresh air. He met us in Memphis and it
Speaker 4: was the wintertime, and he did this with the two
Speaker 4: records we did with him. We met up and we
Speaker 4: had a week before we started tracking, and we took
Speaker 4: over this abandoned Mexican restaurant next door to the studio.
Speaker 4: It had terracotta flooring and it was freezing, and we
Speaker 4: rehearsed and he would make us rehearse the songs that
Speaker 4: he thought we should track, and I think we had
Speaker 4: quite a few extras, but he was focusing on a
Speaker 4: couple of the New Orleans is sinking blow a high
Speaker 4: dough every time you go, and he just made us
Speaker 4: go over them and over them and over them again.
Speaker 4: And you know, practice makes perfect. So those records, those
Speaker 4: first two records anyway, were rehearsed and we went in
Speaker 4: and we executed. We were looking for versions of them,
Speaker 4: and so that kind of erases the red light fever.
Speaker 3: A little bit.
Speaker 4: And he was really a beautiful guy to work with.
Speaker 4: He would come into the studio and listen, and he'd
Speaker 4: go back in the tracking room, come back in the
Speaker 4: studio and listen, and then go back. And he said,
Speaker 4: what I'm doing is I'm making it sound in there
Speaker 4: like it sounds in here. And he had that great
Speaker 4: ability to do that. He did it with Keith Richards,
Speaker 4: he worked with the Traveling Wilbury's, he worked with Tom Petty.
Speaker 4: He was like a live guy. So it was a
Speaker 4: great experience and I really think it for our trajectory
Speaker 4: of recording from there on out. It really set us
Speaker 4: up with knowing what a great high watermark looked like.
Speaker 2: Absolutely a lot of times the first record is done
Speaker 2: and when they get the actual product at the end,
Speaker 2: the being says, this isn't really who we are, or
Speaker 2: we were naive. Were you guys totally satisfied, or were
Speaker 2: you such newbies? Were you so green that you felt that,
Speaker 2: wait a second, we should have pushed harder for something.
Speaker 4: I personally thought. I personally thought it was the greatest
Speaker 4: thing since slice bread. I couldn't believe that that was
Speaker 4: us I couldn't wait to play it for friends in
Speaker 4: those days, Bob's you know your setup for the record.
Speaker 4: You know, we had a release and it was like
Speaker 4: we were finished in like March, maybe end of February,
Speaker 4: and then we had to wait five months before anyone
Speaker 4: before it came out. So I was chuffed about it personally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. I was so excited. I loved the
Speaker 3: experience working with Don and when we got those mixes back,
Speaker 3: I was blown away. The thing you just described about
Speaker 3: feeling dissatisfied or this doesn't represent us. I think I
Speaker 3: felt that way a little bit about the Baby Blue
Speaker 3: record that proceeded at the EP, because I don't think
Speaker 3: that we even thought we were making a record when
Speaker 3: we went in to do it, so the song selection
Speaker 3: and everything else. But having said that, just having a
Speaker 3: record meant it was such credibility at that time that
Speaker 3: you had an album out. We were pretty excited and
Speaker 3: it was something to show your parents, like see this,
Speaker 3: you know we're doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so okay, you have the cover with the scratch polaroids.
Speaker 2: How did that come to be?
Speaker 3: That was suggested to us. Michael Going was the photographer
Speaker 3: and he was known for mostly photographing like golf courses
Speaker 3: and travel destinations and things. But he was suggested and
Speaker 3: I got to be the the shepherd on art projects.
Speaker 3: So the you know, I wouldn't say it was the
Speaker 3: art director for the band, but I was the shepherd.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you were, Yeah, you were. You're the art
Speaker 4: director for that, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: So he he was suggested and his photographs were beautiful.
Speaker 3: I'd seen his work before in a an airplane magazine,
Speaker 3: you know, one of those flight magazines, in flight magazines,
Speaker 3: and yeah, he was a great guy. He just came
Speaker 3: on the road for a couple of days and did
Speaker 3: portraits of us, took some live shots and a fantastic
Speaker 3: guy and interesting, interesting art. But at that point I
Speaker 3: was not an art art director really. I was just
Speaker 3: I was a go between. The directord company was kind
Speaker 3: of this is what we're going to do, and I
Speaker 3: would I would nod a lot. I wasn't given the
Speaker 3: chance out of the gate.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it is implied, and I want to dot
Speaker 2: the I that the publishing is shared amongst the band.
Speaker 2: A is that true?
Speaker 3: True? Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, at this late date, most of people know when
Speaker 2: it comes to the actual recordings, most of the money
Speaker 2: is in the songs that bands break up over that. Certainly,
Speaker 2: certain bands, certain members are much wealthier because they wrote
Speaker 2: the songs. How did you guys decide that the publishing
Speaker 2: would be shared.
Speaker 3: We were in Paul Langui's basement and we had just
Speaker 3: received cassette tape mixes about to hear this is my
Speaker 3: recollection of it anyways, and we sat down and had
Speaker 3: the conversation about it, and it was decided. Although Gord
Speaker 3: Sinclair was still probably the pre eminent songwriter amongst us,
Speaker 3: Gord Downey was starting to write a lot more lyrics
Speaker 3: and there is a lot more collaboration and five way
Speaker 3: collaboration happening. We all want to be songwriters. We just thought.
Speaker 3: We sat down at the meeting, we just said, if
Speaker 3: this will eliminate a lot of fights, sharing everything equally,
Speaker 3: deciding whose song gets picked as a single is going
Speaker 3: to create a fight. Having someone's song take off and
Speaker 3: be a hit. They're going to show up at the
Speaker 3: next gig in a Mercedes and everyone else is going
Speaker 3: to be taking the bus, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: that's the recipe for a disaster. So we always thought
Speaker 3: the only way we're going to make it as a
Speaker 3: band is by lasting. We even even Bruce Dickinson when
Speaker 3: he signed us, he said, you're not the type of
Speaker 3: band that I'm going to sign and you're going to
Speaker 3: have a big hit on your first record. You're the
Speaker 3: type of band that's going to take four or five
Speaker 3: records to build some kind of critical mass. And you're
Speaker 3: going to do that through laying live, by doing what
Speaker 3: you do, writing the songs you write, and by delivering
Speaker 3: those songs live. And he wasn't wrong. I just I
Speaker 3: feel sad that I don't think bands now get that
Speaker 3: opportunity necessarily.
Speaker 2: Okay, the first album comes out, what are your expectations
Speaker 2: and what actually happens?
Speaker 4: I think maybe the first you know, the Baby Blue record,
Speaker 4: and I agree with what Robbie's saying. It was just like,
Speaker 4: here's the record. We're going to put a record out,
Speaker 4: according to Jake, and it's like okay, And he was right.
Speaker 4: It got us from Halifax to Victoria and that that
Speaker 4: was what we needed. And then we come back to
Speaker 4: do this other record and we put it out and
Speaker 4: we knew it was a full length record because as
Speaker 4: Robbie said, we refer to that as the Baby blue
Speaker 4: record because it's just really an EP. So we were
Speaker 4: looking to maybe you know, bump up in venues size
Speaker 4: and play to more people. And that didn't happen right away.
Speaker 4: In fact, something that happened we started to get into
Speaker 4: the States because it was more of a you know,
Speaker 4: MCA was pushing us down there at first. And I
Speaker 4: remember we played in sort of Wilkesburg, Pennsylvania, and we
Speaker 4: didn't play to very many people, or maybe it was Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana,
Speaker 4: I think, and yeah, and Dave Powell came in and said, guys,
Speaker 4: hard times out there, I know, but guess what back home,
Speaker 4: you're about to go gold with up to here. So
Speaker 4: while we were down to the States, the radio was
Speaker 4: doing its thing, Jake was doing his thing, and it
Speaker 4: was starting to get some traction. So we had that
Speaker 4: little baby blue record and then we were going in
Speaker 4: the right direction, you know, and so up to here
Speaker 4: was taken us up to there and it was it
Speaker 4: felt good, but we didn't really know that until we
Speaker 4: were down in the States playing a few people. And
Speaker 4: then of course that becomes a story later on.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, as you said earlier, Bobby, you're talking
Speaker 3: about connection with the audience and how important that was
Speaker 3: to us playing to those four people in Bloomington, Indiana.
Speaker 3: There's a gig in Hoboken, New Jersey where we played
Speaker 3: to two people and that you know, we got up
Speaker 3: and delivered. We gave him a full show. We didn't
Speaker 3: pull any punches. It was like, it doesn't matter two people,
Speaker 3: two thousand people, you're still performing and you give it
Speaker 3: everything you've got. And those two people came to probably
Speaker 3: sixty shows after that over the years, so there were
Speaker 3: lifelong fans. Same with two of the guys from Bloomington, Indiana.
Speaker 3: We were so excited. We thought it was John Mellencamp
Speaker 3: going to come to our gig tonight. He didn't make
Speaker 3: it that night. Now four people showed up, but one
Speaker 3: guy smashed his chair demanding an encore and he got it.
Speaker 2: So okay, first album runs in cycle. At what point
Speaker 2: do you start thinking about the second album and what's
Speaker 2: the experience of recording the second album.
Speaker 4: Well, there's one thing that happened. We were we were
Speaker 4: doing some shows, you know, you know, in the States
Speaker 4: and back in Canada, but we were keeping in touch
Speaker 4: with with Dawn Smith. He would phone, you know, phone
Speaker 4: us up and and see how we were doing. And uh,
Speaker 4: I remember I had a conversation with him. It was
Speaker 4: really interesting because he said, we're going to do another record, right,
Speaker 4: So I got a guy on the inside at uh
Speaker 4: Ampex take and they've got a really good batch of
Speaker 4: tape because back in those days it was the adhesive
Speaker 4: on the tape, and so they would talk to the
Speaker 4: guys in the factory and he said, Petty just got
Speaker 4: a hole. He got one hundred rolls of tape and
Speaker 4: he goes, I'm going to get this guy to send
Speaker 4: twenty extra roles of this good batch because we're going
Speaker 4: to make another album. So we didn't know where, we
Speaker 4: didn't know when, but Don Smith is collecting tape because
Speaker 4: he's wanting to work with us again. And that felt
Speaker 4: pretty great too, and so we sort of started the
Speaker 4: ball rolling on that one. We're in the tour for
Speaker 4: up to hear we're talking about the next record. We
Speaker 4: haven't written many tunes. There's like gams going on in
Speaker 4: the stage, but you know, later on we're starting to
Speaker 4: you know, we borrow people's houses to do you know,
Speaker 4: a little bit of writing here and a little bit
Speaker 4: of writing there. Somebody's cottage. Somebody's parents are away. So
Speaker 4: we're thinking of the second record, but we haven't sort
Speaker 4: of figured it all out, but we want to work
Speaker 4: with Down again. That's kind of how it started.
Speaker 2: The record is cut. What's your experience when the record
Speaker 2: is done?
Speaker 3: The second album?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we're all aware of kind of the
Speaker 5: sophomore curse, and I think it's almost expected, you know,
Speaker 5: as they say, every band spends years writing their first
Speaker 5: record and then they're not really prepared for their second record, And.
Speaker 3: On some level that may have been true. But I
Speaker 3: really think that we were going in with a solid
Speaker 3: batch of songs and we were much more relaxed in
Speaker 3: the studio and stretched out a bit, and I think
Speaker 3: the second record showed a lot of growth from the first.
Speaker 3: And we're with Down, which we just knew that it
Speaker 3: would sound great, you know. We really trusted in Down
Speaker 3: fully and completely. He was a yeah, just a master,
Speaker 3: and he put us at ease, and we relaxed into
Speaker 3: the process and just had at it, and we came
Speaker 3: out of there again feeling like this is we don't
Speaker 3: know how it's going to be received, but we're really
Speaker 3: happy with this. This It reflects where we are now,
Speaker 3: and it was also felt a little closer to our
Speaker 3: live show, just being able to stretch out and take
Speaker 3: songs in different directions on stage. So we just immediately
Speaker 3: said about touring like there were a few years there
Speaker 3: from before up to here through the end of Fully Completely,
Speaker 3: where we were probably playing two hundred shows a year.
Speaker 2: So okay, you don't use Don Smith on the subsequent album. Why.
Speaker 3: I think some of it was that Don was very
Speaker 3: Don's approach was about trying to capture the live sound
Speaker 3: of the band, and he was really focused on the
Speaker 3: kick drum and the bass and the interaction and the
Speaker 3: micing and getting a live feel. But he wasn't so
Speaker 3: focused on lyrics, and I think Gord, as an aspiring poet,
Speaker 3: wanted a little bit more involvement with someone in that respect.
Speaker 3: I don't think Chris was the guy that was going
Speaker 3: to give it to him Chris Anderides, but I think
Speaker 3: it was felt like we've done two records with Don,
Speaker 3: we should try something different, and going from Memphis to
Speaker 3: New Orleans, it felt like there was a bit of
Speaker 3: a this search for the source happening, and London felt
Speaker 3: like the next step in the search for the source.
Speaker 3: Because it was the London bar scene from the mid
Speaker 3: sixties or early sixties that really informed our initial approach
Speaker 3: as a band, So going to London seemed like a
Speaker 3: good choice, and we just kind of put feelers out
Speaker 3: for who might be interested in doing the record, and
Speaker 3: Chris Sanrin's was one of the people because we loved
Speaker 3: his work with Concrete Blonde, and he was so instantaneous
Speaker 3: in his enthusiasm. He said, when's your next show, I'll
Speaker 3: fly over. I want to be there, I want to
Speaker 3: see it, and he was Yeah, he bowled us over
Speaker 3: with his enthusiasm, and that's all it took.
Speaker 2: The record has done. How do you feel about the
Speaker 2: record compared to the record you did with Don.
Speaker 4: It was I think it took for me a little
Speaker 4: bit of digesting. You know. It was a different work
Speaker 4: ethic too. Uh. Chris was very nine to five and he, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, Fridays were kind of a wash. You know,
Speaker 4: you'd have lunch, tea and then things you kind of
Speaker 4: wind down. Then we had uh, you know, Friday night, Saturday,
Speaker 4: Sunday night. We were on our own. There was no
Speaker 4: sort of access to the studio with down we worked.
Speaker 4: We worked on a Saturday and then we we do
Speaker 4: a lot of listening with Don. That was the other
Speaker 4: thing is we knew what we had and Don would
Speaker 4: listen to what we were saying. And if he heard
Speaker 4: Gord Sinclair and I say, oh we can get that better,
Speaker 4: he'd say, Okay, let's track it again tomorrow. Let's have
Speaker 4: no problem, let's do it. Let's keep pushing it, keep
Speaker 4: pushing it. With Chris, it was not like that. It
Speaker 4: was very British, you know. The Brits have that way
Speaker 4: of doing it. It's like we're going to do the game,
Speaker 4: get the bed track, the backing track, then we're going
Speaker 4: to do the guitars. And then they don't fluff around.
Speaker 4: They just they get it. And then they're already booked
Speaker 4: for their next gig. So we're going to finish on
Speaker 4: the fifteenth of January. Is when we're done, when we
Speaker 4: go to mix, and the mix is the balance. They
Speaker 4: also erase tracks britz that we to. You know, when
Speaker 4: the guys we've worked with they don't need it and
Speaker 4: they don't hear it, they erase it, and when they
Speaker 4: go to mix, it's just a balanced mix of everything
Speaker 4: that's there that they've done. And if you're very focused
Speaker 4: on it. It's great. They don't like to add stuff.
Speaker 4: You can't come in and say, well, I want to
Speaker 4: do this, I want to do that, And we were
Speaker 4: kind of getting into that. I loved the record with Chris,
Speaker 4: but I really didn't know what we had until maybe
Speaker 4: we were on tour. I had no idea how it
Speaker 4: was going to be received.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. You know. We
Speaker 3: spent three and a half weeks doing bass and drums,
Speaker 3: and I did all my guitar parts in just over
Speaker 3: two days, and then we never sat back and listened
Speaker 3: like a listening party or you just don't know what
Speaker 3: you've got, and then you get a cassette tape a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks later and it's like, oh, really interesting,
Speaker 3: and you have to listen a bunch of times. But
Speaker 3: with the previous records, you left the studio knowing exactly
Speaker 3: what you had. You come out feeling a little bit
Speaker 3: shattered as a musician, because you should be, you should
Speaker 3: feel a little shattered after a recording experience, but also
Speaker 3: feeling really confident in the songs fully. Completely. Was definitely
Speaker 3: a change from that, and I remember thinking that the
Speaker 3: songs that were less developed, really developed with Chris, and
Speaker 3: the songs that were already strong live didn't jump forward
Speaker 3: as much much as I thought they would. But now
Speaker 3: with the you know, with the perspective of time, I
Speaker 3: think it's a fine record. I think it was you know,
Speaker 3: a good a good effort, and Chris did a fantastic job.
Speaker 3: But it was a strange experience to make.
Speaker 4: It was great. And you know what else happened, Robbie.
Speaker 4: Remember we were working with Chris and we were in
Speaker 4: this great studio that was used to be called Morgan Studio.
Speaker 4: So Zeppelin had been in there the faces and then
Speaker 4: they expanded it and became part of the Zomba music
Speaker 4: group and they built studio on studio on studio. So
Speaker 4: it was a bit bit of a complex. And one
Speaker 4: day where there's this singlish, very English guy and he's
Speaker 4: great to have you here, and we'd see him every day,
Speaker 4: and you know, as time went on, his enthusiasm was
Speaker 4: kind of, oh hello, gents. One day, one day he
Speaker 4: comes in and whispers in Chris's ear, and Chris is
Speaker 4: like what who oh, come on, and he and then
Speaker 4: the guy came back in and and Chris said, okay, well,
Speaker 4: they booked the studio with Daryl Hall. He's coming in
Speaker 4: and they know they shouldn't have done that, but they're
Speaker 4: moving us to the studio up the road. The good
Speaker 4: news is that's where they did the guitars were back
Speaker 4: in black. So we went up there and you guys
Speaker 4: did your guitars at a different studio, and Chris Anderitas
Speaker 4: was like that ruddy Daryl Hall is in our studio
Speaker 4: and fuck him, you know, And so we had a
Speaker 4: good we had a good laugh about that, but we
Speaker 4: got booted out of the studio because he called him
Speaker 4: Daryl Ball. It was. But Chris was a beautiful man.
Speaker 4: He was, he was, He was great. And yeah, Robbie's right, like,
Speaker 4: I don't think we really kind of knew the you know,
Speaker 4: kind of record that we had until it was being
Speaker 4: played on the radio and Encourage got leaked, which gave
Speaker 4: a little bit of a pump to it, and Jake
Speaker 4: had to break some arms to get it. Radio stations
Speaker 4: to stop playing it because it wasn't part of the setup.
Speaker 3: And yeah, stop playing our record was a different problem
Speaker 3: to have.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, until we're ready to put it.
Speaker 2: Out, okay, you end up essentially self producing thereafter, But
Speaker 2: then you go to work with Steve Berlin, and in
Speaker 2: the documentary, you guys are testifying about Steve Berlin, how
Speaker 2: great he was for the band. Hey, why did you
Speaker 2: decide to use an outside producer again? And what was
Speaker 2: that experience like that made it so great?
Speaker 4: No, I just remembered it was a suggestion of Jake's.
Speaker 4: We were on tour and we had done one record
Speaker 4: like that, and I think Jake sort of was smart
Speaker 4: enough to know, you know, I think you need a producer.
Speaker 4: You've already tracked some stuff. I think Steve Berlin would
Speaker 4: be great. He brought him on the bus and we
Speaker 4: knew him with Lost Lobos and Robbie will tell you
Speaker 4: about that whole thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the making of Trouble at the Henhouse, I think
Speaker 3: that it was a good record and it was necessary
Speaker 3: for us to self produce necessary exercise. We had our
Speaker 3: own studio by this point are the Clubhouse, which we
Speaker 3: made into a bit of a studio, and it was
Speaker 3: important that we do that. But it was a tough album,
Speaker 3: and I think it exposed some fractures in the band,
Speaker 3: and there was jocking for position power and who's going
Speaker 3: to be closest to the producer's seed and who's going
Speaker 3: to make these calls? Because when you're in a five
Speaker 3: way collaboration, you know, imagine five people trying to do
Speaker 3: a painting together, and once one guy has a big, great,
Speaker 3: big brush and he wants to paint everything black. It's
Speaker 3: you know, you get into creative differences. This is how
Speaker 3: it happens. And we just felt having an outside arbiter
Speaker 3: who could make the call, had worked for us in
Speaker 3: the past and would work for us again. And it did.
Speaker 3: And because we knew Steve Berlin from the roadside Attraction
Speaker 3: tours where Los Lobos came out on the road with us,
Speaker 3: he just seemed like a natural guy. We just got
Speaker 3: along famously with him, and he stepped in. He knew
Speaker 3: how bands work, he knows about the dysfunction that happens
Speaker 3: in bands and what his role would be and he
Speaker 3: just slipped into it very naturally. And he's and again
Speaker 3: a beautiful guy and part of the Hit family.
Speaker 2: So Okay, at what point does the Tragically Hip become
Speaker 2: Canada's band and become the biggest rock band in Canada?
Speaker 2: And is that palpable? Do you feel it?
Speaker 3: Uh? I've never bought into much of any of that.
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't know legacy stuff and the biggest
Speaker 3: band in the country. You know what about Rush, They're
Speaker 3: the biggest band.
Speaker 2: You've always been huge Canadian acts, but the relationship that
Speaker 2: Canada had with the Tragically hip was different and that
Speaker 2: the country really owned them. And as I say, this
Speaker 2: is from the outside, so I guess I'm asking, were
Speaker 2: you just seeing yourself as another arena band in Canada
Speaker 2: or were you seeing yourself as something different.
Speaker 4: I don't think we've ever viewed ourselves as something extra special.
Speaker 4: There's so many great talents in this country. We're just
Speaker 4: kind of look at it like we're happy to be
Speaker 4: part of it. But I don't think anyone's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean some of the things that happened and some
Speaker 4: of the people that wear your T shirts. She's like,
Speaker 4: did you see that? It was a young young swimmer
Speaker 4: who won some Olympic medals. She's seventeen years old. Her
Speaker 4: name is Summer McIntosh. I remember watching TV and her
Speaker 4: I think her dad was wearing a hip shirt. I
Speaker 4: was like, that is super super cool because her daughter
Speaker 4: is a star and what the hell are we doing
Speaker 4: on her Dad's T shirt and I thought, wow, that
Speaker 4: was that. You know, you have little brushes like that.
Speaker 4: But I don't think we ever sort of said, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, that's it. I agree with Robbie. You know,
Speaker 4: the Pope was in our film Geddy Lee. It's like
Speaker 4: the Godfather, like you know when he speaks, and that
Speaker 4: guy knows it very smart. He's a very smart businessman.
Speaker 4: He's a very incredible bass player. My god, and to
Speaker 4: have him in the movie, it's just like with all
Speaker 4: the other people, it's just like amazing, amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, you have this great success, but you're working two
Speaker 2: hundred nights of a year on the road, you're recording music.
Speaker 2: At what point do you get a check? At what
Speaker 2: point do you say, I put in this hard work,
Speaker 2: I'm actually seeing some money. And what did you do
Speaker 2: with the money?
Speaker 3: I bought a house, still living, been here for thirty
Speaker 3: five years, same house. You know. It wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 3: being a big Canadian rock star is like being the
Speaker 3: world's tallest midget. It's not quite a global phenomenon. We
Speaker 3: were doing just fine, and we were expanding, and we
Speaker 3: were playing a lot in Europe, and we had a
Speaker 3: good thing going on the States, playing too, like a
Speaker 3: thousand or fifteen hundred people every night, occasional arenas in
Speaker 3: some of the border cities. You know, things were good,
Speaker 3: and that was a time, you know, around day for
Speaker 3: night where we were actually, you know, you could make
Speaker 3: a little money off records, but it was always about
Speaker 3: playing live, touring live for us, and we were always
Speaker 3: focused on the tour, but also on what's next. What
Speaker 3: you know, we need songs for the next project, whatever
Speaker 3: that will be, and we just stayed focused on that.
Speaker 3: There was never a five year planned, ten year plan.
Speaker 3: It was more like a you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: it was a five minute plan or a five day plan.
Speaker 4: But you know, it's interesting also that Jake really was
Speaker 4: the guy who first said, here's your money, you're just
Speaker 4: don't spend it all in the same place. At the
Speaker 4: same time, he goes, you've got to live off of
Speaker 4: this hump for not a year, but a year and
Speaker 4: a half because you've still got to do some writing
Speaker 4: and then some recording. Then we go on the road.
Speaker 4: He was always conscious of us going to the trough
Speaker 4: too many times. Now we've got to disappear, and back
Speaker 4: in those days you could disappear for a year and
Speaker 4: there'd be no media on you. You would just disappear.
Speaker 4: And if you weren't around, maybe people played your records
Speaker 4: a little more than because you weren't going to play
Speaker 4: some shows. But and the other thing is that I
Speaker 4: don't think the five year or three year planning, which
Speaker 4: is why we've got this movie and this great book
Speaker 4: that Robbie's worked on. The five year planning kicked in
Speaker 4: when the career after we played our final show, which
Speaker 4: is kind of cool because what we have is our
Speaker 4: music and that's our legacy, so we keep that chip shape.
Speaker 4: Then that's great, and that's Jake coming back into the
Speaker 4: fold again. That that's when those we were we were
Speaker 4: kind of rudderless. The boat wasn't really it was just
Speaker 4: kind of floating around, and we knew we needed to
Speaker 4: get the tapes sorted out, our new old music digitized,
Speaker 4: and to just keep some things going. The movie, the
Speaker 4: book that was the That was when the five year
Speaker 4: plans started to kick in, which is kind of it's
Speaker 4: just cool because a lot of bands don't do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know this is something that is you can't
Speaker 2: see my ear quotes on audio, but Haunted the band
Speaker 2: for its entire career, that the success in the United
Speaker 2: States is not as big as the success north of
Speaker 2: the border. Mentioned a couple of time times in the documentary,
Speaker 2: to what degree are the two of you consciousness? Does
Speaker 2: it bother you? Do you not care? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3: It doesn't bother me. I think we had a career
Speaker 3: that almost any US band would envy. That was our
Speaker 3: career in the States. You know, we're playing playing the
Speaker 3: Beacon Theater and the Fillmore in San Francisco, you know,
Speaker 3: Cobo Hall in Detroit. We were playing solid venues, doing
Speaker 3: great business. And how could the success be the same
Speaker 3: as it was in the States or as it was
Speaker 3: in Canada. You know, it just the story got magnified that,
Speaker 3: you know, nothing's happening for themselves at the border. And
Speaker 3: a lot of this is perpetuated by natural Canadian inferiority
Speaker 3: complex that Canadians say, oh, he's really good, this Neil
Speaker 3: Young is good, but you know he had to go
Speaker 3: to the States to make it, or what's he doing
Speaker 3: in America? That everything is you know, the only stamp
Speaker 3: of approval is well, they're doing well in America, And
Speaker 3: that never really mattered to us. Because I don't think
Speaker 3: we thought so much about the border that way. They're
Speaker 3: obvious we took the border very seriously, trust me. But
Speaker 3: it was just people playing to people. And there are
Speaker 3: a lot more people in America, and they're just like
Speaker 3: the people up here, and they're a lot like the
Speaker 3: people in Europe. People are people, and they respond to
Speaker 3: the same type of things. They want, you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of them want some kind of authentic expression and
Speaker 3: something they can connect to, and we just focused on
Speaker 3: that that. The rest of it is a story, you know,
Speaker 3: and when journalists after journalist comes to you with this,
Speaker 3: this is a this is the story I'd been told
Speaker 3: to write about the discrepancy between your success in Canada
Speaker 3: and the US. It does get in your head, and
Speaker 3: it does, it does affect you. But I never really
Speaker 3: took a lot of it too too seriously. I think
Speaker 3: we had a great career in the States.
Speaker 4: I agree. And as we were growing up as a
Speaker 4: band and things were, uh, you know, we're watching bands
Speaker 4: in the US. There was one band, the Smithereens, and
Speaker 4: there are guitar band and and I remember you know
Speaker 4: them being on MTV and and uh, and then we
Speaker 4: started playing in the States, and I remember there were
Speaker 4: a couple of cities that we played that we played
Speaker 4: the same venue, and I was like, you know, you're
Speaker 4: you're not always getting all the information the correct in about,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, the myth of the hip. We didn't.
Speaker 4: We weren't playing as big places down there, but we
Speaker 4: had a good, healthy following, you know, we had little
Speaker 4: pockets that we were doing well.
Speaker 3: The Blues Traveler guys I remember being they came out
Speaker 3: with us. They opened a whole whack of shows for
Speaker 3: US across Canada and in Europe, and we went down
Speaker 3: to the States and opened some shows for them at
Speaker 3: Red Rocks and run around. It was huge on the
Speaker 3: radio for them, big pop hit. And asked John Popper,
Speaker 3: what's it like, you know, you just had a big
Speaker 3: breakout single and suddenly you're playing to like fifteen twenty
Speaker 3: thousand people. What's it like? And he said, it's really
Speaker 3: it's really nice. It's a lot like it was before
Speaker 3: this happened. And in three months we'll be playing the
Speaker 3: five thousand people again. I thought, that's exactly right. He said,
Speaker 3: we were just going to enjoy this well at last,
Speaker 3: because it's going to go back to the way it was,
Speaker 3: and I thought, yeah, that's really grounded. That's the right response.
Speaker 3: You're doing it for the right reasons. It's not. You're
Speaker 3: not chasing some you know, brass ring that you'd keep
Speaker 3: reaching for and can't hang on to. You're you're doing
Speaker 3: it for the music and the camaraderie and the connection
Speaker 3: and community.
Speaker 2: So, okay, how did both of you find out that
Speaker 2: Gourde was ill? Gord Downy And when it was presented
Speaker 2: to you, was it that he was going to die
Speaker 2: or what he's ill?
Speaker 4: Let's see, I found out well, I found out through
Speaker 4: uh our our management at the time had said that
Speaker 4: he had had a seizure and that he was in
Speaker 4: Kingston and they were they were sort of doing a
Speaker 4: biopsy and they was sort of having a having a
Speaker 4: look at what was going on, and then you know,
Speaker 4: just to sit tight. And that was the first I'd
Speaker 4: heard of him. And then they they you know, they
Speaker 4: did some more investigative work and then they operated. So
Speaker 4: that all happened pretty fast, and so I found out
Speaker 4: about it through the management, and then I talked to
Speaker 4: Pat Downey afterwards to get more information. That's how I
Speaker 4: kind of came into it.
Speaker 3: I'd been with Gord the day before, at day before
Speaker 3: the big seizure, at a celebration of life for his
Speaker 3: father in Kingston, and we had a lovely day that
Speaker 3: day and lots of hugs, and we had made a
Speaker 3: plan to go see another artist, Daniel Romano, who was
Speaker 3: playing at a club in Kingston that we had played
Speaker 3: at when we were up and coming, the Grad Club.
Speaker 3: And I got a text from Gord at about five
Speaker 3: thirty or six in the evening saying, not going to
Speaker 3: be able to make it tonight. I'll explain to you later.
Speaker 3: And I had no idea that he was texting me
Speaker 3: from the hospital where he was being investigated. So and
Speaker 3: at first the initial report was that they thought he
Speaker 3: had a tumor or illsion, but that they thought that
Speaker 3: it was probably a good case scenario. And then within
Speaker 3: you know, forty eight hours, that bubble burst.
Speaker 2: So okay. You know, this is a typical of bands.
Speaker 2: Usually a band member dies way before their time, you know,
Speaker 2: the twenty seven Club, and we've seen a lot of
Speaker 2: classic acts where you know, they're running out a runway
Speaker 2: to sort of put it. Where's this happened? When you
Speaker 2: were vibrant and still healthy young men. Is they say
Speaker 2: you've gone on about what friends you were, what harmony
Speaker 2: there was? This happens to gore down. It's an incredible tragedy.
Speaker 2: It really, to the degree it can be accepted, it's
Speaker 2: very singular. However, it does affect everybody else. So what
Speaker 2: point did you think, holy fuck, what about me? And
Speaker 2: what am I gonna do? And when you ultimately did
Speaker 2: think about that, what were your thoughts?
Speaker 3: Well, you do feel guilty about it. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like you're losing a friend he's got a terminal diagnosis.
Speaker 3: But I was also keenly aware that I was losing
Speaker 3: the dream, that this was the dream that we shared,
Speaker 3: dream that we had and we are living it, and
Speaker 3: it was just like, this is our golden goose. We
Speaker 3: loved We all loved being in this band. Even though
Speaker 3: there were tough times and acrimony at times, it was
Speaker 3: a beautiful thing and it treated us very well and
Speaker 3: we loved it. And suddenly it's like it's winding up.
Speaker 3: And I didn't think that it would ever happen like this,
Speaker 3: And you feel guilty about mourning your own loss when
Speaker 3: you're when it's your friend who's dying. And then like
Speaker 3: I watched my father and people of his generation, older
Speaker 3: men who were so entwined with what they did for
Speaker 3: a living that their sense of self identity was what
Speaker 3: they did, and I said, well, I'll never make that mistake.
Speaker 3: And of course the band played its final notes and
Speaker 3: my friend died, and then I was like, what am
Speaker 3: I now? I'm nothing? The band's gone. I'm not a
Speaker 3: guitar player and a popular band. This has been my
Speaker 3: whole life. What am I? What do I do now?
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm nothing? Maybe I have to completely reinvent myself
Speaker 3: and start over. And I went through a really difficult
Speaker 3: time trying to come to terms with all of it
Speaker 3: and trying to figure out where I fit or what
Speaker 3: I was going to do with the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: So do you think you've come to terms with it?
Speaker 2: Or is the type of thing you can really never
Speaker 2: come to terms with? In how are you coping in
Speaker 2: terms of what you're doing marching forward?
Speaker 3: I think I have come to terms with it. I
Speaker 3: you know, in trying to figure out what I was
Speaker 3: going to do, I thought, well, I just need some time.
Speaker 3: I just need some time to process this. And what
Speaker 3: I did with that time was I set up my
Speaker 3: prot Uel's rig and I worked for fifteen hours a
Speaker 3: day writing songs and recording, and at the end of it,
Speaker 3: it was like, oh, I write songs and record music
Speaker 3: that probably no one will ever hear. And when I'm
Speaker 3: not doing that, I go and do paintings that no
Speaker 3: one will probably ever see. And I'm okay with that.
Speaker 3: That's fine. I get the same a lot of the
Speaker 3: same satisfaction. There's no monetary plus to it, but that
Speaker 3: doesn't matter. The band treated me very well and our
Speaker 3: fans treated us very well. So I'm I think I'm
Speaker 3: contented with it. I think i'm I think I'm in
Speaker 3: a good place.
Speaker 4: In Johnny, I had a different situation because I had
Speaker 4: I had a family crisis that kind of butted up
Speaker 4: against Gord getting sick, and so at the end of
Speaker 4: the tour, I became you know, I knew it was
Speaker 4: going to be finished. I became very reflective of it,
Speaker 4: and I'm reminded of it as the years go by
Speaker 4: by things that happened, things that happened to other bands.
Speaker 4: I was talking the other day that, you know, Gord
Speaker 4: had this horrible thing that happened to him, but he
Speaker 4: was able to get the other parts of his body
Speaker 4: and take these infusion drugs and get his brain working
Speaker 4: to where he was remembering things and he could get
Speaker 4: up on stage. Steven Tyler's voice is gone. It's gone.
Speaker 4: And that just happens like that. And if we'd had
Speaker 4: COVID hit when Gord was getting ready to get up
Speaker 4: and get on stage, that that could have killed that tour.
Speaker 4: So I'm very thankful for it because a lot of
Speaker 4: bands don't get to even do it for a couple
Speaker 4: of years, you know, a lot of bands don't get
Speaker 4: to say goodbye. So I became very thankful for it
Speaker 4: for what we had. I uh, you know, it's a
Speaker 4: long time to do it, and then I had to
Speaker 4: focus on some other things, so my brain was in
Speaker 4: a different place, and for me it was just kind
Speaker 4: of I was just, you know, sort of saying how
Speaker 4: great it was that we were able to do it,
Speaker 4: and then you know, not long later, you know, Gord
Speaker 4: was gone. And it's also worth mentioning that he when
Speaker 4: it was announced that he was sick, he had to
Speaker 4: think of his family, but he was thinking of us
Speaker 4: as individuals too. He did that final tour for us
Speaker 4: to to make sure that we were going to be
Speaker 4: financially good, so you know, at the end of his life,
Speaker 4: he's sweeping up and making sure things are good for everyone,
Speaker 4: his family, his beautiful kids, and his other family. So
Speaker 4: that that makes you think, Wow, how lucky we are
Speaker 4: that we got to say goodbye, How lucky we are
Speaker 4: that we were able to do it for so long.
Speaker 4: And so I think I was more reflective and then
Speaker 4: had other things to focus on. But we all, as
Speaker 4: Robbie said, his was different than Paul's, different than Court Sinclair's.
Speaker 3: And we all did it separately, which is so weird
Speaker 3: after spending thirty five years together, you know, cooped up
Speaker 3: together and going through everything together. When the shit hit
Speaker 3: really hit the fan, we were all on our own. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was Unfortunately, that was a mistake we made him.
Speaker 3: We made a mistake. We probably should have been in
Speaker 3: therapy from the beginning, but at some point, you know,
Speaker 3: we probably needed help.
Speaker 4: But having said that, the movie and the book was
Speaker 4: great therapy to go through because those interviews you didn't
Speaker 4: know what the other guy was saying, the way that
Speaker 4: Mike broke them up, and that was really interesting, and
Speaker 4: I don't think everyone was very and I think that
Speaker 4: was a good thing because Mike did it in such
Speaker 4: a way that he asked these questions and I didn't think, oh,
Speaker 4: I wonder what Robbie's going to answer to this. I
Speaker 4: wanted to answer it and be fully conscious of the
Speaker 4: moment and the question about how I felt about that
Speaker 4: at this moment, having some time and all the stuff
Speaker 4: that had happened. And I think that that turned into
Speaker 4: a therapy session of its own. And you know the
Speaker 4: other day when we watched the movie and there was
Speaker 4: a little parade to go and watch a a band
Speaker 4: do some hip tunes that Jake had had arranged for
Speaker 4: It's a beautiful sunny day, and we walked behind these
Speaker 4: people and there were fans there, and I think that
Speaker 4: was like that was there. It was again, and I
Speaker 4: had my boys there and they heard people singing hip
Speaker 4: songs and that was like seeing it through ten year
Speaker 4: old eyes, and I was just able to relive it
Speaker 4: and the thing that we set out to do in
Speaker 4: the very beginning and make music and make music with
Speaker 4: each other and commit to each other. There those songs
Speaker 4: are that people know is for and that's beautiful. That really,
Speaker 4: to me, it was just such a special day.
Speaker 2: Okay, Rob, you talked about each grieving separately. Now that
Speaker 2: the movie has been made in the present day, is
Speaker 2: there more interaction between the four members or did everybody
Speaker 2: just come together for these projects and everybody living their
Speaker 2: own separate life.
Speaker 3: We have zoom calls every second week. Management and Johnny
Speaker 3: are in Toronto. Paul Langua, Gorge Sinclair and I are
Speaker 3: all in Kingston, and I get together with Gorg Sinclair
Speaker 3: on a fairly regular basis, maybe every other week, to
Speaker 3: do something in person. We get together and listen to
Speaker 3: albums actually, which is really really nice. It's kind of
Speaker 3: where it all started for me, was hanging out with
Speaker 3: Gorge Sinclair and listening to albums from a very young age.
Speaker 3: So that to be at that stage in my life
Speaker 3: where I'm returning to my childhood and my infancy, it's
Speaker 3: kind of really pleasant.
Speaker 2: Okay. I have to ask the question that everybody asks,
Speaker 2: which is Gord is dead. But we have act after act,
Speaker 2: which is going on the road, moving forward with new
Speaker 2: lead singers. Used to be this never succeeded. Then we
Speaker 2: had Sammy Hagar with Van Halen. Now we have a
Speaker 2: new lead singer for Lincoln Park. I know, you guys
Speaker 2: say this is off the table, but is it really
Speaker 2: off the table.
Speaker 4: We've always said, you know, never say never. Gord Sinkler
Speaker 4: said that the other day, and I agree with it,
Speaker 4: and it's just, you know, on any given day, you
Speaker 4: could ask each guy what he thought about it, and
Speaker 4: I might wake up on a Tuesday and say, you know,
Speaker 4: it would be really great to go out and play tunes.
Speaker 4: I live in Toronto, so I see, you know, practically
Speaker 4: hip grace too, all these cover bands, and I'm reminded
Speaker 4: of the fact, and my friends point out that people
Speaker 4: just want to hear those songs, you know, they want
Speaker 4: to hear your songs. So I think that we would
Speaker 4: never say never, but it would, but you know, you'd
Speaker 4: have to get me on a Tuesday, and Robbie on
Speaker 4: a Thursday, and Paul on a Friday kind of I
Speaker 4: don't I don't know.
Speaker 2: And Rob.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm also in the never say never category, but
Speaker 3: it would almost have to be something completely different. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, if Zoe Daschanel wanted to sing for the band,
Speaker 3: I'd probably say yes. But you know, we did the
Speaker 3: thing with Leslie Feiss and that seemed to work. There'd
Speaker 3: been a bunch of names thrown out, and it just kept.
Speaker 3: It didn't feel right, and it kept. All I could
Speaker 3: think was like, well, you know, Bill, they're all going
Speaker 3: to get compared to Gord. Everyone's going to compare everyone
Speaker 3: to Gord. And when Leslie Feis's name came up, it
Speaker 3: was like, no one's going to compare it to Gordon.
Speaker 3: It's a different thing entirely, and that's that's fine, But
Speaker 3: then you're doing a different thing entirely. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I got to say, it took me a long time
Speaker 3: to get to a point where I'm okay that the
Speaker 3: dream ended. It was a pretty great dream. I had
Speaker 3: a really good time, and I loved being up on
Speaker 3: stage and I loved being on the road with my
Speaker 3: best friends on Earth, you know, brothers from other mothers,
Speaker 3: and I did it for a long long time. I
Speaker 3: currently don't really have a drive to be on stage.
Speaker 3: I play guitar every day. I'm driven by that. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I just and you know, you brought mentioned some examples.
Speaker 3: I personally think that after David Lee roth Aim should
Speaker 3: have stopped. And you know, you don't replace Robert Plant
Speaker 3: and led Zeppelin or you know, I you know, I
Speaker 3: think that who should have stopped when Keith Moon was gone? Personally,
Speaker 3: that's how I feel, So I.
Speaker 4: Thought that who should have stopped when they said they
Speaker 4: were going to stop in Toronto?
Speaker 3: Which time?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Which time?
Speaker 2: In any event, gentlemen, you're not the typical rock stars,
Speaker 2: very aerudite and articulate, and I want to thank you
Speaker 2: so much for speaking with my audience. Certainly watch the
Speaker 2: documentary on Prime. It's included in Prime. You'll hear all
Speaker 2: this and much more, the nitty gritty of the band
Speaker 2: in depth and at length, and of course the book
Speaker 2: will give you even more So Johnny, Rob, thanks so
Speaker 2: much for taking the time to speak with me.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Bob.
Speaker 4: It was a pleasure, Bob, great chatting with you, and
Speaker 4: thank you so.
Speaker 3: Much for doing us.
Speaker 2: Until next time. This is Bob left Sex