  Gord Downie, frontman of the Tragically Hip, is about to release his third solo album "The Grand Bounce" that is out June 8. (Jack Boland/QMI Agency) |
The Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie doesn’t see his solo albums as a side project.
Instead, the 46-year-old singer-lyricist says his work with Kingston, Ont.’s The Hip and on his own, with a group of Toronto musicians known as The Country of Miracles, are part of the same process for him.
“It’s not both and it’s not one or the other, it’s all part of it, it’s all the same trip,” said Downie recently in a Toronto coffee shop, where he had biked from his home.
“I think I was always on this trajectory to get to a point where I was writing and creating everyday. ’Cause really that’s all for us to do. Just be diligent and create and work. There was no discussion about these things ever (with The Hip). No, you know, you do what you do. To quote Carver, ‘Use it up, don’t save a thing for later,’ that’s what I’ve always done anyway. Then I don’t get into trouble that way, distracting myself with motivations for doing things. Work with people in my adopted hometown of Toronto that I love. Been here 20 years. I shouldn’t be locked up in some tower room. I should be able to play. It’s part of my musical story and I’m just telling it.”
Downie’s third solo album, The Grand Bounce, hits stores Tuesday, seven years after his last solo collection, 2003’s Battle of the Nudes.
He said it specifically came about after meeting Death Cab For Cutie musician/producer Chris Walla backstage at the Pemberton Music Festival. The “encyclopedic” Walla sought Downie out because he had listened to The Hip growing up as a kid in Seattle.
“It was only after that meeting that I started thinking about a solo record.” said Downie, who recorded The Grand Bounce for two weeks at The Hip’s Bath House studios in Kingston last August.
“I realized it had been five, six years since I had played with my Country of Miracles, so it all started to come together. I just started playing my hunches.”
The difference this time is that Downie seems to have a certifiable radio hit on his hands with the winning first single The East Wind, a charging acoustic rocker that sounds like a call to arms as it begins: “Hello again my friends, I’ve come to see you again.”
Downie said: “Well, I’m shocked. I didn’t actually anticipate that. The record’s already given me so much. That’s what I thought coming out of the recording session in August and like I’m fond of saying, ‘These things are great company, these records, when you’re making them.’ It had already given me so much in that regard that anything else was totally gravy, I mean that entirely, and I think I’ve meant that all along.”
And The East Wind has an added bonus in that Downie’s nine-year-old son is playing one of the many acoustic guitars you hear as the song begins.
“That was something (Chris Walla) wanted to do. So we were seven, eight of us all around a mic, all hitting it, different rhythms and my son was even playing guitar. It was a very great atmosphere the last two weeks of August. The pool was open and everyone was in shorts. We had a great cook by the name of Happy Jack. It was Eastern Ontario’s bounty in full swing and it’s an experience the way you’d always hoped it would be. Everybody welcome, everybody having a good time, and making music.”
Downie, who begins a tour of Canada’s folk, rock and blues festivals on June 19 and will do a theatre tour in the fall, says his four children, aged four to 14, have definitely affected his writing process.
“That has affected my style, in a very positive way,” he said with a smile.
“It’s what turned Raymond Carver into a short story writer, turned him into Chekov rather than Tolstoy, which is what he aspired to be. So I took solace and inspiration from that, reading about Ray Carver. But I worry, I guess, about losing your reason under the weight of constant composition. Hopefully that won’t be a problem for me.”
