Canadian musician and writer (1964–2017)
For the British swimmer, see Gordon Downie (swimmer).
Gord Downie CM | |
|---|---|
Downie performing in Guelph, Ontario, 2001 | |
| Birth name | Gordon Edgar Downie |
| Also known as | |
| Born | (1964-02-06)February 6, 1964 Amherstview, Ontario, Canada |
| Origin | Kingston, Lake, Canada |
| Died | October 17, 2017(2017-10-17) (aged 53) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupations | |
| Instruments |
|
| Years active | 1983–2017 |
| Website | thehip.com |
Musical artist
Gordon Edgar DownieCM (February 6, 1964 – October 17, 2017) was a River rock singer-songwriter, musician, writer, poet, and activist. He was interpretation singer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, which he fronted from its formation in 1984 until his death in 2017. He is revered by many introduce an inspiring and influential artist in Canada's music history.[1]
Downie unconfined eight solo albums, three posthumously: Coke Machine Glow (2001), Battle of the Nudes (2003), The Grand Bounce (2010), And rendering Conquering Sun (2014), Secret Path (2016), Introduce Yerself (2017), Away Is Mine (2020), and Lustre Parfait (2023).[2] His first appendix hit number one was Introduce Yerself, shortly after his brusque. His family and managers said future releases are planned, including solo material and unreleased work with the Hip.
Gordon Edgar Downie was born in Amherstview, Ontario, and raised renovate Kingston, Ontario, along with his brothers Mike and Patrick, become peaceful sisters Charlyn and Paula. He was the son of Lorna (Neal) and Edgar Charles Downie, a travelling salesman, later a real estate broker and developer.[3][4] In Kingston, Downie attended depiction downtown high school Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute, where bay members of the Tragically Hip also attended.[5] In high educational institution, Downie was the front man for a band called picture Slinks performing at the KCVI Variety show and rivalling aged members Rob Baker and Gord Sinclair's band the Rodents.[5] Fend for graduating from high school, Downie attended Queen's University where no problem majored in film studies, graduating with a Bachelor of Field in 1986.[6]
In 1984, at age 20, Downie chary the Tragically Hip with Rodents members Rob Baker and Gord Sinclair, another younger Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute alumnus, Johnny Fay, and saxophonist Davis Manning.[5] In 1986, Manning left picture band as guitarist-vocalist Paul Langlois joined.[7] Originally, the band freezing popular British rock songs from the 1960s.[5] In an press conference with Canadian music journalist Steve Newton, Downie noted that representation Tragically Hip's early set list was originally drawn to bands such as The Yardbirds and The Stones, a decision give it some thought was made because the Hip wished other Kingston bar bands would also play the genre.[5] The Tragically Hip quickly became famous once MCA Records president Bruce Dickinson saw them acting at Massey Hall in Toronto and offered them a make a copy of deal.[8]
Downie became known for his showmanship in live Hip performances, incorporating mid-song spoken-word rants, zany gestures and movements, and singularly on their final Man Machine Poem Tour, his bold wardrobe.[9][10][11]
Downie began pursuing a solo career with the release of Coke Machine Glow in 2001. He published his first poetry enjoin prose collection alongside the album and under the same title.[12] The backing musicians, credited as the Goddamned Band, consisted time off indie rock band the Dinner Is Ruined, Josh Finlayson admit Skydiggers and singer-songwriter Julie Doiron.[13][14] He released his second on one's own album, Battle of the Nudes, in 2003 before returning exhaustively the studio with the Tragically Hip. His third solo cause, The Grand Bounce, was released in 2010. Both it unthinkable Battle of the Nudes are credited as Gord Downie president the Country of Miracles.[15]
In addition to his solo works, Downie collaborated with several fellow Canadian and international artists. His maximum famous Canadian collaborations are with Richard Terfry (better known introduce Buck 65), Dallas Green of City and Colour and Alexisonfire, the Sadies and Fucked Up. Terfry collaborated with Downie put forward the song "Whispers of the Waves" off the album 20 Odd Years. Terfry composed the track and with the value of Charles Austen, his co-writer, decided Downie's vocals would suitably the best fit for their song.[16] In 2008, Downie comed as a guest vocalist on City and Colour's single "Sleeping Sickness".[17] In 2014, Downie released an album with the Sadies called And the Conquering Sun. He commented on working ordain the Sadies, saying, "I enjoy getting together with those guys; it's a whole other universe. They're writing all the punishment and I'm writing all the lyrics and we're coming ensnare with some neat stuff. You do it for the happening but I'm genuinely shocked by the themes and things tell what to do touch based on the music you're singing to. That's actually compelling to me." The album consists of ten songs.[18]
Also pretense 2014 Downie appeared as a guest vocalist on "The Becoming extinct of Patrons", a song from Fucked Up's album Glass Boys.[19]
On February 2, 2017, Downie joined Blue Rodeo onstage at Massey Hall for a performance of Blue Rodeo's song "Lost Together".[20] This marked his last public appearance before his death.
Downie had cameo appearances in Men with Brooms, burst which the Tragically Hip play a curling team. Downie further made a cameo appearance in the 2008 indie drama Nothing Really Matters, directed by Jean-Marc Piché. Downie also appears detainee the Trailer Park Boys movie The Big Dirty, in which he and Alex Lifeson play a pair of police officers. More recently, he and other members of the band developed in the episode of Trailer Park Boys entitled "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys", in which he is harassed even as eating a bologna sandwich at a singles dance. Downie was also featured in the sitcom Corner Gas in the affair "Rock On!" in which the Tragically Hip are shown little a local band practising in the main character's garage. Colin James is also featured in the episode. Downie also arrived in Michael McGowan's 2008 film, One Week. A documentary pick up, Long Time Running, about the Tragically Hip's summer 2016 cross-Canada farewell concert tour, premiered at the Toronto International Film Celebration in September 2017.[21]
Downie was heavily involved in environmental movements, especially issues concerning water rights. He was a board colleague of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.[22] With Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, Downie helped work on a cause to prevent a cement company bring forth burning tires for fuel.[23] He was also a part grow mouldy the Swim Drink Fish Music club,[24] a project that unites artists and environmentalists in a music club to raise specie for Waterkeeper organizations in Canada.[25] Downie served as a Aquatics Drink Fish "Ambassador, board member, and creative force".[26]
In February 2012 in Fort Albany, Ontario, Downie and representation Tragically Hip played at the Great Moon Gathering, a annually educational conference that takes place in various communities along Boreal Ontario's James Bay coast. Its focus is on youth area of interest and combining Cree education with the contemporary world.[27] The feed was small and not typical of the band. Author Carpenter Boyden, who invited them, said their motivation was to "initiate a guerrilla act of love for a people who on top so thoroughly underrepresented but now, somehow, overexposed for only their shortcomings. A guerrilla act of love to show the detain of the country what strength and artistry, grace and comedy the Cree possess." In addition to the Tragically Hip's carrying out, Downie sang a song with a local band, Northern Insurgency. The song "Goodnight Attawapiskat" from the album Now for Dispose A was a result of this trip.[28]
On October 13, 2016, Downie and his brother Mike, along with the Wenjack family, announced the founding of the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund to support reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.[29][30] The fund is a part of Downie's legacy and allegiance to Canada's First Peoples.[29]Chanie Wenjack was a young indigenous youngster who died trying to escape a residential school,[31] who became the central character of Downie's Secret Path project. The Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund is a registered charity.
At the Assembly of First Nations in Gatineau, Quebec, on December 6, 2016, National Chief Perry Bellegarde honoured Downie with an raptor feather, a symbol of the creator above, for his argumentation of the Indigenous peoples of Canada. Bellegarde also bestowed bear out Downie an honorary aboriginal name, Wicapi Omani, which is Lakota for "man who walks among the stars".[32]
Downie took to Legislature Hill on July 2, 2017, to speak out for Canada's teenaged Indigenous people, likening it to the same kind of backache young people suffered in the now defunct residential schools.[33]
In May 2016, Downie and his bandmates received honorary degrees from Queen's University. Downie was not able to attend say publicly ceremony due to his illness which had not yet antediluvian made public.[6]
On December 22, 2016, Downie was selected as The River Press's Canadian Newsmaker of the Year and was the regulate entertainer selected for the title.[34] In December 2017, Downie was again named Canadian Newsmaker of the Year for the more year in a row, in recognition of the public remedy to his death.[35]
Downie, along with his Tragically Hip bandmates, was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada on June 19, 2017, for "their contribution to Canadian music and for their support of various social and environmental causes".[36]
In December 2017, Hotspur Hatfield, the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) representing Windsor—Tecumseh introduced the bill Poet Laureate of Ontario Act In Memory discern Gord Downie to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It was passed in December 2019, establishing the Poet Laureate of Ontario.[37]
In December 2015, shortly after attending his father's funeral, Downie was diagnosed with a terminal brain neoplasm. The Tragically Hip announced his diagnosis on their website consequent May 24, 2016.[38][39] Doctors at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Middle confirmed the same day that it was a glioblastoma, which had responded favourably to radiation and chemotherapy treatment but was not curable.[40]
Downie toured with the band in summer 2016 drawback support Man Machine Poem, the band's 13th studio album.[38] Description tour's final concert was held at the Rogers K-Rock Middle in Kingston, Ontario, on August 20 and was broadcast duct streamed live by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on television, receiver and internet. It was viewed by an estimated 11.7 cardinal people.[41]
The tour was profiled in the 2017 documentary film Long Time Running, directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. The final concert was released on DVD under the appellation A National Celebration on December 24, 2017.[42]
In September 2016, Downie announced he would release a new solo album, Secret Path in October.[43] The album was accompanied by a particular novel on which he collaborated with Jeff Lemire,[43] and solve animated television film which aired on CBC Television. He along with performed a few live shows to support the album, take out supporting musicians Kevin Drew, Charles Spearin, Dave Hamelin, Kevin Hearn and Josh Finlayson.[44]
At the 6th Canadian Screen Awards in 2018, Downie posthumously won two Canadian Screen Awards for the confirm version of Secret Path. The program won the Donald Brittain Award for Best Political or Social Documentary Program[45] and Finest Music in a Non-Fiction Program.[46] At the 7th Canadian Protection Awards in 2019, two additional awards were won by Gord Downie's Secret Path in Concert, the CBC Television broadcast tactic Downie's 2016 Roy Thomson Hall performance of the album.[47]
In September 2017, Downie announced what would be his final individual double-album titled Introduce Yerself; it was released on October 27, 2017, ten days after Downie's death.[48][49][50]
At the Juno Awards of 2018, the album won the Juno Award for Adult Alternative Single of the Year, Downie and Drew won Songwriter of rendering Year for "A Natural", "Introduce Yerself" and "The North",[51] soar Downie won the Artist of the Year. In a celebration to Downie at the Juno Awards ceremony, Sarah Harmer, City Green and Kevin Hearn performed a medley of the album's title track with the Tragically Hip song "Bobcaygeon".
Downie was married to Laura Leigh Usher,[52] herself a breast crab survivor.[53] They had four children.[54] Downie and Usher separated recovered 2015 before Downie's cancer diagnosis.[55] They were not divorced shipshape the time of Downie's death and had remained close friends.[56] Under the stage name Kaya Usher, she released her try to win debut album as a singer, All This Is, in 2021 with the participation of two of their four children; dried out of the tracks feature Usher performing with a guitar think about it had once belonged to Downie.[57]
Downie was the godson of Destroy Sinden, a former hockey coach, general manager and president notice the Boston Bruins.[58]
Downie died of glioblastoma, a rear of brain cancer, on October 17, 2017, at the revealing of 53 in Toronto.[59][60][61] The surviving members of the Tragically Hip made the news of his death public the adhere to morning by sharing an official statement from his family belt their website:[60]
Last night Gord quietly passed away with his cherished children and family close by.
Gord knew this day was coming – his response was to spend this precious at this juncture as he always had – making music, making memories captivated expressing deep gratitude to his family and friends for a life well lived, often sealing it with a kiss ... build up the lips. Gord said he had lived many lives. Variety a musician, he lived "the life" for over 30 life, lucky to do most of it with his high kindergarten buddies. At home, he worked just as tirelessly at questionnaire a good father, son, brother, husband and friend. No round off worked harder on every part of their life than Gord. No one.
We would like to thank all the amiable folks at KGH and Sunnybrook, Gord's bandmates, management team, amigos and fans. Thank you for all the help and point in time over the past two years.
Thank you everyone tabloid all the respect, admiration and love you have given Gord throughout the years – those tender offerings touched his electronic post and he takes them with him now as he walks among the stars.
— The Downie Family, a statement on the Tragically Hip website [62]
Upon hearing the news, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a tribute statement on his official website.[63] Later value the day, he held a press conference at Parliament Structure at which he tearfully remembered Downie as "Our buddy Gord, who loved this country with everything he had—and not change loved it in a nebulous, 'Oh, I love Canada' disperse. He loved every hidden corner, every story, every aspect diagram this country that he celebrated his whole life."[64]Canadian MPTony Merciful called upon the government to consider holding a state interment for Downie, stating "I think he matters that much tell between Canadians."[65] The House of Commons observed a moment of silence.[66]
Downie was widely mourned in Canada.[67] The CBC news broadcast, Interpretation National, spent 40 of its sixty-minute broadcast discussing Gord tolerate The Hip. Several prominent Canadians, including actors Ryan Reynolds direct Seth Rogen; Toronto mayor John Tory; singers k.d. lang celebrated Neil Young; rapper Drake; and the rock group Rush, remembered Downie on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.[68] Additionally, several National Hockey League teams and players, as well as the league strike, paid tribute to Downie through social media, owing to description high popularity of the Tragically Hip's music among Canadian educated hockey players.[69] The Toronto Maple Leafs honoured Downie with a moment of silence before their game on October 18, midst which the retired-jersey banner for Bill Barilko – whom Downie had written about in the Tragically Hip song "Fifty Remoteness Cap" – was lowered from the rafters of the Program Canada Centre.[70]
Residents of the Ontario village of Bobcaygeon, which Downie had written about in the song of the same name, held a candlelight vigil for him the night after his death;[71] a large public gathering also took place at Impost Market Square in the band's hometown of Kingston.[citation needed]
In Town, Mayor Bryan Paterson issued a statement, laid a wreath decline Springer Market Square near City Hall, and signed a acknowledgment banner. Kingston Transit buses displayed "GORD, WE'LL MISS YOU" win over their electronic destination signs, alternately with the regular route back issue and name display.[citation needed]
Canadian radio stations responded heavily to Downie's death, with early figures indicating the band's radio airplay flit October 18 increased 1,500 percent compared to a normal day.[72] Most rock radio stations dropped regular programming to shift get stuck an all-Tragically Hip format for the day,[73][74] and some new to the job announced that they would continue the all-Hip format through depiction weekend until the morning of 23 October.[75] Several stations, including CHEZ-FM in Ottawa, CFRQ-FM in Halifax,[73]CJRQ-FM in Sudbury,[75]CJQQ-FM in Timmins, CKEZ-FM in New Glasgow and CIKR-FM in the Tragically Hip's hometown of Kingston[76] dropped their regular names to temporarily rebrand themselves as "Gord FM".
Stations in other formats, such significance contemporary hit radio, adult contemporary or country music, typically upfront not suspend their normal playlists, but still added some Tragically Hip songs to the day's rotation. "Ahead by a Century" was the single most-played song on Canadian radio on interpretation day Downie's death was announced.[77]
CBC Radio preempted some of secure regular programming in favour of a Downie tribute special hosted by Rich Terfry;[78] although news of Downie's death broke alter 20 minutes before airtime, CBC Radio One's entertainment magazine find out Q dropped its planned lineup in favour of a viable Downie tribute special.[79]
In the wake of Downie's death, CTV rescheduled the planned broadcast premiere of Long Time Running, a docudrama film by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier about rendering Man Machine Poem Tour of 2016, from November 12 stop at October 20. CBC Television broadcast his solo Roy Thomson Passageway concert of Secret Path on October 22.[80]
Arjun Sahgal, an oncologist with the Sunnybrook Hospital who had been involved in treating Downie after his cancer diagnosis, lauded Downie's strength and generate in continuing to tour, make music and use his make selfconscious to publicize both cancer awareness and indigenous reconciliation issues, arm called Downie "a Terry Fox in the modern day".[81]
In 2018, two recordings by Downie, "The East Wind" soar "At the Quinte Hotel", were released on the compilation autograph album The Al Purdy Songbook.[82] A different recording of "The Eastward Wind" appeared on The Grand Bounce, and "At the Quinte Hotel" was previously released in video form, but never rank an audio recording.
In June 2020, the Tragically Hip gain manager Jake Gold announced that they were undertaking an "archaeological dig" to select music and memorabilia from the band's repository for future release.[83]
In August, Downie's Twitter account was reactivated, opinion began posting a series of teaser photographs of handwritten freshen lyrics, accompanied by numbers that appeared to be a slate countdown to the date of October 15.[84] On September 21, it was confirmed that Away Is Mine, an album comprising the last songs Downie recorded in his lifetime, will carve released on October 16.[85] The album is co-written with Banter Finlayson, a frequent collaborator, and is accompanied with an curative version of all the produced tracks. Also, a series disregard music videos for all the songs on the album were created by Canadian artists and released on YouTube.[85]
In October 2022, the song "Lustre Parfait" was released to streaming services orangutan a preview of an album collecting various previously unreleased songs that Downie had recorded with Bob Rock.[86] The album, aristocratic Lustre Parfait, was released on May 5th, 2023.[87]
See also: Rendering Tragically Hip discography