The Tragically Hip Podcast Series

From a 400-person room to a 1,000-person room to twelve chapters in two countries, in nine years, on a formula nobody wrote down.
That is the middle chapter of the GEDfest story, and this is the episode about how it actually happened. GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest. It was born in Calgary shortly after Gord Downie passed away in 2017, and it is now the largest fundraiser in his memory in the country. The jump from one hometown night to a national organization did not happen because somebody drew up a plan. It happened because people kept walking up and asking how they could help.
Julie Johnson was in the audience on night one while Keith was on the drum stool, which means she saw something he could not see from up there. A woman came up to her in that tiny bar and started talking about a Canadian art gallery and all the images The Tragically Hip put into people's heads, and whether there was room for that next year. That was the first sign. There have been a lot of them since. This episode is Julie, Keith, Jaime McNichol, and Darcy McLeod trying to name the exact moment the snowball stopped needing to be pushed.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• Keith's confession about 'Courage'. It is not the confession you are expecting from a man who runs a Gord Downie tribute festival, and the night it changed is very specific.
• Julie on the one thing you cannot do if you want to scale something like this. It is the opposite of what most organizations try.
• The 2020 GEDfest. Masks, social distancing, two shows in one day, a capacity cut to the bone, and Dave Harris singing from inside a phone booth. Then the thing the host said afterward that opened the door to every chapter that followed.
• Darcy on the green room at the Blind Beggar, and why beers that arrive without you asking are a bigger deal to a working band than they sound.
• Jaime went to her first GEDfest in 2021 carrying something heavy, and found that a room full of people singing was the thing that helped. She says it plainly here.
• Three different people give three different answers for when the tipping point was. One of them says the Palace. One says it was the moment a stranger in Kelowna described a night they had never attended, exactly.
• The hip tribute band in the Netherlands who reached out, and the language barrier standing between them and a chapter.
• How Neil got Edmonton, and how a guy from Manulife got Kelowna. Neither one involves a job posting.
• Keith on the secret sauce, which is a two-word answer and is not the music.
THE PANEL
• Keith Dyck, co-founder of GEDfest and the drummer in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Reads 'the present' in "The Never Ending Present" as a double entendre, which is a level of thinking jD readily admits is above his pay grade.
• Julie Johnson, founder of GEDfest, from Calgary. Keith's wife, and the one who was standing in the crowd the first night. Went way off the board with 'Fight' as her current favourite, and had a reason at the ready.
• Jaime McNichol, GEDfest director, from Calgary. Julie's parents live next door, which is how she heard about a band called Trickle Down in the first place. Missed the first one because of the weather and has never quite gotten over it. Did three GEDfests last year.
• Darcy McLeod of DC and The Struggle, from Calgary. Opener, after-party act, ambassador, and self-described jack of all trades. Came to The Hip through a friend in junior high who put on 'New Orleans Is Sinking' and was, in his words, the coolest cat.
GEDFEST 2026
GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, and in its ninth year it runs in twelve chapters across Canada and, for the first time, in the United States. Every chapter picks a cause in its own community and raises money for it. Find your city at gedfest.ca. jD runs the Toronto chapter, playing the Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, October 17, with Grace, 2 on stage, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets and details at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.
THE HIP HANDBOOK
The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances lives at thehiphandbook.tthpods.com.
YER LETTER
One email a month, no filler. Sign up at subscribe.tthpods.com.
THE TIP JAR
If you want to throw a couple of bucks at the shows, the jar is at buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.
FIND US
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June 6th, 2000. Track six on "Music @ Work" opens on tabla, and the album credits name the player as Mr. Hussein. That's the whole credit.
'The Bastard' sits between 'Stay' and 'The Completists' on the record The Tragically Hip made with Steve Berlin and Mark Vreeken, the one that took the 2001 Juno for Best Rock Album. It was never a single, and Chris from Seattle has a theory about why. It finished 119th of 169 on the TTHTop40 Countdown, and Hipbase and setlist.fm log it live just fourteen times (submitted set lists only, so the real number runs higher). Then the live poll in the Facebook group came back 36 percent love it, 46 percent like it, and 13 percent tolerate it, one of the highest tolerate numbers the show has seen.
The panel spins a 2000 recording out of Cleveland, Gord singing his heart out, and Chris hears Godzilla in the rhythm section. Then the lyric sheet comes out. Crepuscular rays. Winged elephants. Purple Italians. A fire-and-brimstone preacher shouting about Philadelphia. One panelist thinks he's cracked it after twenty-six years of not reading the words. Another thinks Gord just liked how they sounded. Nobody's sure Gord would side with either of them.
Underneath all of it sits a record the band never quite got behind. Steve came in calling "Music @ Work" his least favourite record by The Hip and walked out rediscovering it. Chris has it in his top five and has defended it on this show more than once. And jD once asked Johnny Fay about a "Music @ Work" box set. His reaction is in here, and so is Greg's reaction to his reaction.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• The icebreaker. One song by The Hip each they never got to hear live, and a pair of Calgary tickets from 2009 that Steve sold and still thinks about.
• September 23rd in The Hip Handbook. A busy date, and two of the shows on it have somebody on this panel attached.
• Steve's first time seeing The Hip was at a zoo. Yes, a zoo. Gord took the setting to heart.
• "If this song was a car it would be a V8 with a manual transmission." Chris from Seattle, and he has the downshifts mapped.
• Billy Sunday. Chris has a theory about Philadelphia, and Steve adds a layer from the ballpark.
• Pell-mell, augurs, and augers (the ice fishing kind, per the chat). Greg's read on what's about to blow.
• Steve hears another song of theirs hiding in this one, and it's one he doesn't care for at all.
• Search for this song on YouTube and you might land on a Replacements cover at First Avenue instead. Steve did.
• Next week the wheel lands on 'Radio Show,' from the "Fully Completely" sessions, the one that stayed in the vault until the 2014 deluxe reissue.
THE PANEL
• Chris from Seattle. Back again, and the loudest defender of "Music @ Work" this panel has had. Saw The Hip three times at the Moore Theatre, and first saw them with Greg, who he's known since they were both 18. His band is Loud Flowers: loudflowers.band
• Steve from Toronto. Back again, a week ahead of schedule, and his plug this week is impending fatherhood. Originally from Thunder Bay. Heard 11 of the 14 songs on "Music @ Work" live. Not this one.
• Greg from Tacoma. Back again, once his audio caught up with him. Wore this record out on a portable CD player while painting his deck in the summer of 2000, and he's the one who turned Chris on to The Hip in the first place. Makes music as Hadees Market Music.
Big thanks to Chris, Steve, and Greg, and to a stacked chat. Twenty-six years in, 'The Bastard' still sounds like Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip with the pedal on the floor.
GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17
The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ. Twelve chapters across Canada and into the United States at gedfest.ca.
THE HIP HANDBOOK
The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances, and where every tale of the tape starts: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com
YER LETTER
One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com
THE TIP JAR
Greg dared you. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US
Home: home.tthpods.com
Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com
Facebook community: community.tthpods.com
Instagram: @tthpods
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Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com

MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM
'Just as Well': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/ddf96225-1bd4-468b-881a-aa091a7e6148
'Putting Down': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/6cfb0a5e-5909-40ec-8559-62ca0acd580e
'Tiger The Lion': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/718fe20e-83d6-4c69-86eb-cc2b4af02834
Live play counts come from Hipbase and setlist.fm, and the countdown rank and poll numbers from the show itself, as cited on the stream. Release date and the tabla credit come from the "Music @ Work" credits as listed on Wikipedia.
#TheTragicallyHip #MusicAtWork #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #HipFans #CanadianMusic

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1990. The Misty Moon Cabaret in Halifax, MuchMusic cameras rolling, and Gord doesn't dress it up. It's a rock song. Two and a half minutes, and then gone.
'Just As Well' is track five on "Saskadelphia" (May 21, 2021), the six-song surprise that landed on the May long weekend. It was cut in New Orleans during the "Road Apples" sessions, with Don Smith producing and Bruce Barris engineering, and then it sat in the vault for more than thirty years. setlist.fm has ten documented live plays, every one of them in 1990, and nothing after. The live poll in the Facebook group came back 46 percent love it and 44 percent like it, plus 3 percent asking what in the hell 'Just As Well' even is. jD's gut says that 3 percent might be a single vote.
The panel isn't buying the ten. Patrick from Newmarket has the 1990 tour itinerary out of the "This Is Our Life" book in his head, and Glenn from Melbourne can't see a song they were workshopping on stage stopping at ten nights. Then comes the harder question: where did this one ever belong? jD hears it as a Baby Blue EP song that missed its bus. Glenn has a timeline that says otherwise, and a theory about whose pen the opening lines came off. Ian from Maple Ridge turns up halfway through, blames the West Coast clock, and still lands the comparison nobody else had.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• The icebreaker. One song each they wish they'd heard live. Patrick's answer comes with a pair of near misses that still sting, and Glenn's pick has his own surname in it.
• The Misty Moon version, spun in full. Glenn calls it the definitive take, and the line he points to is the angriest one in the song.
• "Are you ready, Bruce?" Who Bruce is, and what Ian hears in the way Gord asks.
• Pig heaven, "Animal Farm," and a crossroads with a certain bluesman waiting at it. Glenn's reading of the lyric is the most ambitious thing anyone has said about a two-and-a-half-minute bar song, and jD needs a second to recover.
• The boots. Patrick ties one line to what Gord did to a pair of boots at Molson Park a few months later.
• The 1970 hit they used to drop into the middle of it live, and what Glenn thinks that says about how seriously they were taking it.
• "If the Ramones did a Lynyrd Skynyrd song." Ian, on what this actually is.
• Patrick puts his NPS hat on for the poll, then admits where 'Just As Well' ranks among the six on "Saskadelphia."
• The one song Patrick still skips, even though it's shorter than this one.
• "I'll never skip it because it's too short to skip." Glenn from Melbourne, making the lazy man's case.
• Next week the wheel lands on 'The Bastard,' from "Music @ Work."
THE PANEL
• Glenn from Melbourne. Met 'Just As Well' when "Saskadelphia" came out, from a corner of the world without many bootlegs, or many people to talk about the band with. He's a photographer who leads photo tours to far-off places, with India and Bangladesh on the calendar next year. He says he's the only Glenn Lavender in the world, so look him up.
• Patrick from Newmarket. Freelance journalist and photographer, the tall guy at Toronto shows with the pro gear or the iPhone, and you'll see him at festivals across Simcoe County next year. Showed up in a 9:30 Club shirt from the one time he saw The Hip in DC. His ear for the pre-"Road Apples" material goes back to tape trading, long before Napster.
• Ian from Maple Ridge. Sings in Gift Shop, a West Coast tribute to The Tragically Hip, with an October 17th date at Club 240 in Crescent Beach. The big one is Saturday, October 24th: Gift Shop headlines GEDfest Vancouver at the Biltmore.
GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17
The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out right now, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first. Drop him a line at jd@tthpods.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.
THE HIP HANDBOOK
The free discography, lyrics, and live-performance archive behind the tale of the tape every week: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com
YER LETTER
One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com
THE TIP JAR
jD asked for a caribou or two in the hat on mic. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40
FIND US
Home: home.tthpods.com
Email: jd@tthpods.com
Facebook community: community.tthpods.com
Instagram: @tthpods
YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods
Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com

MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM
'Vaccination Scar': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/5fa3fc7c-f01b-4eae-a3de-5cadc658b9f9
'Putting Down': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/6cfb0a5e-5909-40ec-8559-62ca0acd580e
#TheTragicallyHip #TTHOnShuffle #RoadApples #UpToHere #HipFans #TTHPods

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A Thursday night in October. A narrow bar on 8th Avenue in Calgary. A pile of crumpled fives and tens that added up to $7,000.
That is where GEDfest starts, and this is the episode where the people who were standing in that room tell you how it happened. GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, a celebration of the life and music of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip, and in 2026 it runs in twelve chapters across Canada and into the United States. It began with a handful of guys in a basement in Crestmont learning "Road Apples" front to back, and one sentence from Don Martin that changed everything: the only way we could play this live is if we had a charity.
Trickle Down is the band at the centre of it, and their origin is not a music story, it is a birthday story. Don picked up a Squier starter kit in his mid-forties with a $300 work bonus burning a hole in his pocket. A 50th birthday jam. Then a 60th birthday jam ten years later, with a singer who had a great voice and never once learned the words. Keith Dick sat down behind a kit and learned to play drums, more or less, that afternoon. Everything that follows - the Legion, the Palace, the Big Four, Buffalo - runs back through that room.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• Keith on the phonetics problem. GEDfest has been pronounced just about every way a person can pronounce it, and he is quietly keeping score.
• Don's version of the origin story does not match Keith's version of the origin story, and the gap between them is the best five minutes of the episode.
• Jeff Hiscock could not get his own gear through the front door of the first GEDfest, because the room he was about to play in was already full. What he did about it involves reloading the car.
• A tax lawyer in Toronto that nobody in the organization had ever met, one link on The Tragically Hip's website, and the donation that made Don think this thing might actually have legs.
• Kevin McKay and his wife Tracy were the first two people to walk into a GEDfest that Keith had not personally invited. How they found out about it is a very Calgary answer.
• Ian Martin's opening move after seeing Trickle Down play a Canada Day gig was to walk up and start hugging the band. His second move was the website contact form, and Keith still remembers opening it.
• A man in his twenties sang every word from the front row of a packed room last year, then asked Jeff to sign the set list and told him why he was there. Jeff still gets goosebumps telling it.
• Ken Bellis on the thing about The Hip's bass parts that you do not hear until you sit down and try to play one.
THE PANEL
• Keith Dyck, co-founder of GEDfest and the drummer in Trickle Down, from Calgary. He is a partner in a wealth management firm by day, which has nothing to do with any of this. His favourite song to play is 'Blow at High Dough', and he has a confession about 'Courage' that he saves for the next episode.
• Don Martin, founding member of Trickle Down, from Calgary. Keith's father-in-law. Came for 'Scared', stayed for 'Nautical Disaster', and once had WestJet lose his luggage and find it again on the morning of a podcast taping.
• Ian Martyn, board director of chapters, from Calgary. Twelve cities this year, and he can tell you a story from most of them. Describes his own involvement as a bromance, and he is not wrong.
• Jeff Hiscock, guitar player in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Favourite to listen to is 'Fully Completely'. Favourite to play is 'Nautical Disaster', for a reason involving singer Dave Harris's shoulder that has now become a nightly ritual.
• Kevin McKay, OG GEDhead, from Calgary. Works in the medical industry, which is part of why this one landed the way it did. Currently on a 'Poets' kick, and he is right to be.
• Ken Bellis, bass player in Trickle Down, from Calgary. Went with 'Grace, Too' inside four seconds, as a bass player is obliged to do. Also wore the wrong shirt.
GEDFEST 2026
GEDfest is Gord Edgar Downie Fest, and in its ninth year it runs in twelve chapters across Canada and, for the first time, in the United States. Every chapter raises money for a cause in its own community. Find your city at gedfest.ca. jD runs the Toronto chapter, playing the Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, October 17, with Grace, 2 on stage, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets and details at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.
THE HIP HANDBOOK
The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances lives at thehiphandbook.tthpods.com.
YER LETTER
One email a month, no filler. Sign up at subscribe.tthpods.com.
THE TIP JAR
If you want to throw a couple of bucks at the shows, the jar is at buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.
FIND US
Home: home.tthpods.com
Email: jd@tthpods.com
Facebook community: community.tthpods.com
Instagram: @tthpods
YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods
Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com
#TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #GEDfest #podList #Fundraising #HipHeads

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July 16th, 2005. Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland. The Tragically Hip played 'Vaccination Scar' for the fifty-ninth time, and never again.
Track four on "In Between Evolution" (June 29th, 2004), the ninth studio record of thirteen, cut at Studio X in Seattle with Adam Kasper producing, and the album landed at number one in Canada in its first week. 'Vaccination Scar' was the first single off it. It finished 66th on the TTHTop40 Countdown, nowhere near the top 40. Then the live poll went up in the Facebook group and came back 64 percent love it, 33 percent like it. jD's read on the leftover one percent: that's the margin of error, not three actual humans.
Which brings up the thing the panel cannot get past. Fifty-nine live plays, and forty-two of them were show openers. The band walked out and led with this song more nights than not. On the record, it sits fourth. jD calls that a missed opportunity and wants to put the question to the band directly. Jeff from Newmarket has a baseball-lineup theory. Brian from Buffalo thinks there's no way it shouldn't open the thing. Nobody defends the sequencing, and everybody agrees the band was going to do exactly what it wanted anyway.
It is also a political record, made in an election year in an American studio, and Tracey from LA says the song reads different now than it did in 2004. Underneath all of it: the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a word that turns out to have nothing to do with the bridge at all, and one line in the album booklet that settles an argument the internet has been having for twenty years.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
The icebreaker. One song each they never got to hear live. Brian's answer comes attached to a number that stings.
jD did some housekeeping in the shuffle machine before the show. The odds for every future episode just changed.
The lap steel argument. Jeff's case for why the slide lines on this one hit differently than every other Hip song with a slide on it, and the earlier song he says is its cousin.
The American word. Gord never says it out loud, and Jeff has a guess at what it is.
Forgetting, or for getting. Greg from Tacoma has the album booklet open in the chat, and the answer is better than either one.
Wobbly, and the Wobblies. What jD found when he stopped looking at the bridge.
The broken guitar string tour. Brian's name for this stretch of shows, and what he thinks Gord was taking out on those strings.
A story about Eddie Vedder and the cutting room floor that nobody in the room can quite confirm.
Where Brian ranks it out of every song the band ever recorded, off a list he sat down and made the week Gord died.
"It's three chords with attitude. It's like garage band, punk." Tracey from LA, on why the simplicity is the whole point.
Next week the wheel lands on 'Evelyn,' from the debut EP, the Baby Blue album.
THE PANEL
Tracey from LA. Back again. Came to the band late and is making up for it with bootlegs and live recordings, and she would take any of it live, though 'Grace, Too' is what she would ask the jukebox genie for. Hears Gord's phrasing as cards coming out of a magician's mouth.
Brian from Buffalo. Back again. 54 shows deep, an honorary Canadian who reckons he learned most of his Canadian history off Hip lyrics. Saw this song four times, all four in a row, three of them as the opener, and never again after that. Go Bills.
Jeff from Newmarket. His first time in the chair, originally out of Belleville, which makes him the second Jeff from that town to sit on this panel and the reason jD is coughing into his hand all episode. Plays guitar, bass, and sings in a cover band with a January 16th date at the Monarch in Toronto. Not a Hip tribute act, but The Hip rotates into the set often enough.
GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17
The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2. Every dollar goes to Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets through facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.
THE HIP HANDBOOK
The free discography, lyrics, and live-performance archive behind the tale of the tape every week: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com. Built on setlist.fm and Hipbase, with every source credited on the page.
YER LETTER
Once a month, one email, the whole network in one place. What went out across all eight shows, what is coming, what jD has been listening to, and the odd thing that never makes it to a microphone. It is free, it is a letter rather than a broadcast, and it goes out to the community first. subscribe.tthpods.com
THE TIP JAR
Editing is hard and the battery needs charging. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.
FIND US
Home: home.tthpods.com
Email: jd@tthpods.com
Facebook community: community.tthpods.com
Instagram: @tthpods
YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods
Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com
MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM
'Putting Down': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/6cfb0a5e-5909-40ec-8559-62ca0acd580e
'Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/68d2991b-9074-43ef-bd71-aa832c59a787
Live play counts and the retirement date come from setlist.fm and Hipbase by way of The Hip Handbook, as cited on the stream. Album credits and the release date come from Wikipedia and the "In Between Evolution" sleeve (see Block C).
#TheTragicallyHip #InBetweenEvolution #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #TTHPods #CanadianMusic

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy