Watch Gord Downie Making His Final Album
A thought-provoking new video shows the Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie working on his final solo album Introduce Yerself in the months leading up to his death. You can watch the clip, shot as he recorded vocals for his track “The North,” above.
Downie is seen collaborating with Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene. “Each song is about a person,” Downie says, later adding. “A lot of these, I wrote the words in advance, like poems. I'd get one or two a day and then I’d have to stop. Because that's about all... the soul, or whatever, would give up. And so, with music it becomes pretty easy. Kev gave me half the songs, I wrote half the songs, and he’d send me through stuff like a piece of music on his piano. … and then, 20 minutes later, I’d send him back the thing. ... It was really more just a celebration of our friendship, I guess.”
The 23-track double-album Introduce Yerself is Downie's sixth solo album overall, and followed 2016's Secret Path. The new LP is released today (Oct. 27) via Arts And Crafts. The Tragically Hip's album Man Machine Poem came out last year.
Downie passed away on Oct. 17, aged 53, after a battle with brain cancer that was diagnosed in 2015. The band performed their final show in August, with an estimated audience of nearly 12 million people tuning in. Guitarist Rob Baker praised his bandmate for focusing on issues that mattered to him in his final month, saying Introduce Yerself was “pretty incredible.”
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