The Tragically Hip Podcast Series

One question, asked of every person who built the show. On the last day, the answer goes to the people in the seats.
Every conversation in this series ended the same way. Same question, same words, read off a cheat sheet so jD wouldn't botch it: if this production does what you hope it does, what do the people in the seats walk out of the theatre feeling? He asked the producer. He asked the director, both writers, and the cast. And somewhere along the way it became clear that the people who made It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken can't really answer it (not from up on the stage). They can hope. Then the lights go down, and it's out of their hands and into yours.
So Day 5 of 5 hands the mic over. The company tells you what they were hoping for. Fans of The Tragically Hip tell you what they walked in with - excitement, nerves, a healthy suspicion of anybody who messes with an arrangement, and, in one case, two packs of tissues. Then opening night from the other side of the curtain, where it turns out everybody was sweating. Then the walk out. Then the whole thing heads home to Kingston.
On Monday, jD promised to stay Uncool and Underqualified to the bitter end. This is the bitter end.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
Talia Schlanger didn't answer the question. She brought a numbered list.
A co-writer who got through every preview just fine, then came apart on opening night - and what a friend told him at intermission.
The one rule Karim Butt gave himself fifteen minutes before curtain, guitar in hand.
Why 700 people can't all lie to you at once.
A joke both writers hate that the crowd can't stop laughing at.
A self-described live guy, wary of anybody messing with a song by The Hip, on what they did to 'Bobcaygeon'.
A fan who walked in with the whole show figured out, and how that went.
Brett Christopher of the Thousand Islands Playhouse on the moment Kingston is going to feel like nowhere else.
The last word goes to the person this whole thing started with.
THE COMPANY
Michael Rubinoff, producer
Mary Francis Moore, director
Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, co-writers
Talia Schlanger (Kate), Ali Momen (Waleed), Karim Butt (Sam), Tahirih Vejdani (Didi), and Rebecca Auerbach (Abigail)
Brett Christopher, Managing Artistic Director, Thousand Islands Playhouse
And the fans in the lobby, Jeff from Belleville, Leslie from Toronto, and Sarah from Buffalo among them
"It's a seed that we could hopefully plant inside of people, and they will have the choice to water it and to make it a tree." - Ahmed Moneka, co-writer
Big thanks to the cast, the writers, and the creative team, to Theatre Aquarius and the Thousand Islands Playhouse, and to every fan who let a guy with a microphone ask how they felt (most of them weren't strangers by the end). The people on the stage can only hope. A full house in the dark tells them whether it worked, all at once. That closes the run of It's A Good Life on The Tragically Hip Podcast Series. Kingston, it's yer turn.
KINGSTON - OCTOBER 22 TO NOVEMBER 8
The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken to the Kingston Grand Theatre. Opening night is sold out. The cast recording is out now, if you want the songs stuck in your head on the drive home.
Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026
THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN
You rank the records. The show starts January 4, 8pm, on YouTube. Ballots close November 30.
Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7
THE TIP JAR
Five episodes in five days. Editing is hard. Buy jD a coffee.
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MORE IT'S A GOOD LIFE
Setting the Scene, The Players, The Craft, and The Music
All episodes: redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474
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A percussionist who couldn't swing, a chart that changes time signature every bar, and basic tracks cut at the Bathouse in Bath, Ontario.
You know what these songs are supposed to feel like. jD has been carrying 'Courage' around since the fall of 1992, and he walked into this one bracing for jazz hands, a key change nobody asked for, and somebody belting 'Bobcaygeon' from the lip of the stage with their arms out like they were hailing a cab.
Day four of It's A Good Life is the one every fan of The Tragically Hip walked in nervous about. The music. Trust was yesterday. Courage and hope come back today, and all three have to hold. So jD went and found the people who held the songs in their hands: the music supervisor, the musical director, the man who wrote the Middle Eastern music, and the producer who made two records with The Hip and then made the original cast recording. One of them saw the band in Calgary in the eighties, back when he was playing bars there himself. None of them came at this lightly.
Gord Downie's phrasing is hard to write down. Steve Berlin says there's no such thing as swing in Arabic music. And 'Gift Shop' just goes - no verse, chorus, bridge to hang on to. This is how a theatre band learned to play them anyway.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• Bob Foster (orchestrations and music supervision) on the only way to treat this catalogue, and the nights he went down to the basement with a guitar and came back up with something.
• Richard Evans (music director) on notating Gord's melodies by ear, and why a singer who doesn't sound like anybody else is so hard to put on paper.
• Levon Ichkhanian (music coordinator and composer of the Middle Eastern music) on horizontal versus vertical, and why nobody can explain Middle Eastern music in five minutes.
• Steve Berlin on cutting the basic tracks at the Bathouse, finishing the vocals and the Arabic parts in Toronto, and the counting trick that got a percussionist swinging.
• A chart for 'As I Wind Down the Pines' that Steve says he couldn't read at all, and his story of how that song came together in the first place.
• Why 'Grace, Too' runs long on the record, and a session somebody was in and out of in about ten minutes.
• 'Fireworks', and a little nugget lifted from the way Gord used to close it out live.
• Jesse LaVercombe (co-writer) on the song he'd put up against any end-of-Act-One number in contemporary musical theatre.
• Jake Gold, manager of The Tragically Hip, on what the crowd almost did at 'Ahead by a Century', and Rebecca Auerbach (Abigail) on a standing ovation nobody saw coming.
• Levon at a CD table after an outdoor festival in Waterloo, and a couple who heard something through their balcony doors.
• Opening night, and the producer who went back the next night knowing exactly what was coming.

Also in the room: producer Michael Rubinoff, Ali Momen (Waleed), Talia Schlanger (Kate), and Sameer Cash (Fadi).
IN THEIR WORDS
"If you don't respect The Hip's music and want to do it for that reason, then just don't do it." - Bob Foster
"Everything through the lens of gratitude." - Levon Ichkhanian
Thanks to Bob, Richard, Levon, and Steve for handing over the songs and every story that came attached to them. jD came in braced for the worst and owns up, at the end, to exactly what he had wrong. Tomorrow: Curtain Up, in Kingston, in front of the people who know these songs best.
IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN - KINGSTON
The Thousand Islands Playhouse production, with songs by The Hip, runs at the Kingston Grand Theatre from October 22 to November 8, 2026. Opening night is sold out.
Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026

THE ORIGINAL CAST RECORDING
Produced by Steve Berlin, out the same day the curtain goes up in Kingston.

THE TIP JAR
Four days of this in one week. Editing is hard. Buy jD a coffee and help keep the battery charged.
buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

MORE IT'S A GOOD LIFE
Setting the Scene: LINK NEEDED
The Players: LINK NEEDED
The Craft: LINK NEEDED

It's A Good Life is part of The Tragically Hip Podcast Series.

Facebook group: community.tthpods.com | Instagram: @tthpods | YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods | Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com

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May 3rd, Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. Mary Francis Moore walks jD right up to the wings and stops, because of a rule he didn't know about.
Mary Francis directs "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," and the tour so far has been the design studio, the stage management office, and the green room where the cast can watch the stage between scenes. Then the wings. That's as far as jD goes. (Nobody wants to be the guy who breaks the magic.)
That's day three of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a day, all week, from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series. Yesterday was the cast. The Craft is everybody you don't see - the director, the choreographer, the guy who built the world on the stage, and the guy who lights it. jD went in braced for gear talk, cues, rigging, and words he'd have to look up later (he still couldn't tell you what a fly gallery does, and Mary Francis showed him one). There's a little of that. Mostly there's one word, from almost everyone he talked to. Trust.
Scott Penner had to hand in his set drawings with half a script and no ending, working from a brief for "something specifically ambiguous." Then one photograph turned up in a pile of 90s street art and photo collages, and it got two words from across the table. Jason Hand spends the first third of rehearsals not thinking about lighting at all, then goes looking for the colour of a sandstorm. Marc Kimelman films himself dancing to every song, works from one idea of Gord Downie's, and once got himself to the front row of a music video shoot for The Hip and kept thinking up questions until they called cut. Jesse LaVercombe calls himself a fountain of bad ideas, and he has the receipts: a script of about 75 pages, and a document of cuts that runs to 546.
Then the room itself. A final song swapped out days before the first preview, and how the new one was ready by Sunday. A rehearsal that was one show at ten o'clock and a different show by lunch. A producer who will tell you exactly how he is during tech (not at his best, his words). And for every fan who gets nervous about The Tragically Hip in a musical at all, somebody on the team who walked in on day one feeling the same way, and what he'd say to you now.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• Mary Francis Moore on more than a decade of shorthand with Bob Foster, and meeting Marc for the first time.
• Michael Rubinoff and Mary Francis on saying no to each other, and why the best idea wins.
• The song Marc calls his hardest to choreograph, and why it's a fever dream.
• Ahmed Moneka on checking in with Ali Momen along the way, and Ali on carrying every song that came before into the one he's singing.
• What's hiding in the paint once the first reveal settles, some of it in Arabic.
"You'll never see in this show where my work begins or ends." - Marc Kimelman, choreographer
WHO YOU HEAR
• Mary Francis Moore, director, and artistic director of Theatre Aquarius.
• Michael Rubinoff, producer.
• Scott Penner, set designer.
• Jason Hand, lighting designer.
• Marc Kimelman, choreographer.
• Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, who wrote the book.
• Plus Ali Momen and Talia Schlanger from the cast.
Big thanks to Mary Francis, Michael, Scott, Jason, Marc, Jesse, and Ahmed for letting a fan with a microphone stand in the wings and ask questions. What jD found back there wasn't everybody agreeing. It was a room full of people willing to say no in the dark until the right idea showed up, and nobody keeping score of whose it was. He's seen the show at least six times and still can't find the seams. So there's that. Tomorrow on It's A Good Life: The Music, with Bob Foster, and what it takes to make songs by The Tragically Hip that were never written for a stage sing on one.
"IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN" - KINGSTON
The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings the musical to the Kingston Grand Theatre, in association with Theatre Aquarius. First preview Thursday, October 22, and it runs to November 8. Opening night, Friday, October 23, is already sold out. Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026
THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN
A new show for 2027, and you set the order. Rate all fifteen records by The Hip before November 30, and the countdown starts Monday, January 4, at 8pm ET on YouTube. Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7
THE TIP JAR
Editing is hard. Help keep the battery charged. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40
FIND US
Home: home.tthpods.com
Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com
Facebook community: community.tthpods.com
Instagram: @tthpods
YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods
Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com
MORE FROM THE TRAGICALLY HIP PODCAST SERIES
It's A Good Life - Setting the Scene and The Players: days one and two, right before this one in the feed.
Yer Hipstories - Hamilton: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/fae76ee3-738f-4007-80c8-7140729bb295
Creative team credits via the Thousand Islands Playhouse and Stage Door. Run dates via the Kingston Grand Theatre and the Thousand Islands Playhouse.
#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHPods #HipHeads #CanadianRock

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May 1st, opening night in Hamilton. On jD's left, a fan of The Hip who doesn't do musicals. On his right, a woman who's never heard of them.
His buddy David is the first one, and he mentions the musicals thing on the drive in (great timing, David). The second is 82, the mother of a Theatre Aquarius subscriber, and she knows nothing about The Tragically Hip. Nothing. Then intermission. Guess which one of them ends up at the merch table. Two people, same row, opposite ends of the room, and when jD told that story to the cast, Brandon McGibbon said it was the whole job in one sentence.
That's day two of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a day, all week, from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series. Yesterday was where the idea came from. The Players is about the people who have to stand up there and carry it. Seven of them sat down with jD between April and May, and when he asked how they found The Hip, most of them didn't tell him a story about a band. They told him a story about Canada.
Ali Momen came here from Iran when he was three, and The Hip were the backdrop to how he understood "the canvas of Canada." Years before there was a script, he had a very specific note for the producer. Karim Butt came over from Pakistan, heard 'Bobcaygeon' and 'Poets' on the radio and thought they were pretty cool, then got booked for the workshop and went straight to one documentary. You can guess how that went. Tahirih Vejdani's first memory of the band runs through a high school teacher in Regina with a claim to fame. Rebecca Auerbach found out she knew a lot more of the words than she thought. Talia Schlanger calls the whole thing zero burden and pure joy. And Sameer Cash grew up calling Gord Downie Uncle Gord.
Then the harder part. Somebody behind the script asking if they were cool enough, rocky enough, grungy enough to touch these songs. A bar band voice on a musical theatre stage, and an apology to musical theatre for every bad thing ever said about it. The one song by The Hip a cast member could play at 18, learned on a trip to Nepal, and the day she found out where it was going. Why somebody calls The Hip the cast's emotional support animal. And a note from Gord that Sameer hadn't gone back to until now.
Most of them brought their own families into the roles. A mother's convenience store in Regina. A father and a brother-in-law. A country left behind for something better. One of them was in Kingston on August 20, 2016, and carries what Gord said from that stage into this show. And one cast member shares a story about their grandfather, the show, and a lot of gratitude. It's theirs to tell, so it's in the episode.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• A cast member who met Tom Thomson by way of 'Three Pistols' and kept on reading.
• The workshop audition Mary Francis Moore promised would not get them the job.
• 'Little Bones' cranked in the car on the way to a first audition, and the guitar hook that said this might work.
• Jesse LaVercombe on how fast they found Jonathan, and what Brandon did to the writing.
• Bob Foster's arrangements, Marc Kimelman's choreography, and a song at least one of the cast had never heard before.
"That's the two people that you're thinking about, and you want to do a show that's for both of them." - Brandon McGibbon, Jonathan
WHO YOU HEAR
• Ali Momen as Waleed.
• Talia Schlanger as Kate.
• Brandon McGibbon as Jonathan.
• Karim Butt as Sam, the narrator.
• Rebecca Auerbach as Abigail.
• Tahirih Vejdani as Didi.
• Sameer Cash as Fadi.
• Plus Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, who wrote the book, and producer Michael Rubinoff.
Big thanks to Ali, Talia, Brandon, Karim, Rebecca, Tahirih, and Sameer for giving a fan with a microphone their time this spring in Hamilton. jD went in to ask about a band and came out with seven people talking about what it feels like to find a home. Some found it in Canada, some found it in a song by The Tragically Hip, and most of them found it in both. So there's that. Tomorrow on It's A Good Life: The Craft.
"IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN" - KINGSTON
The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings the musical to the Kingston Grand Theatre, in association with Theatre Aquarius, October 22 to November 8. Opening night, Friday, October 23, is already sold out. Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026
THE TRAGICALLY HIP ALBUM COUNTDOWN
A new show for 2027, and you set the order. Rate all fifteen records by The Hip before November 30, and the countdown starts Monday, January 4, at 8pm ET on YouTube. Ballot: forms.gle/KdMfMuApxGb4Nf5w7
THE TIP JAR
Editing is hard. Help keep the battery charged. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40
FIND US
Home: home.tthpods.com
Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com
Facebook community: community.tthpods.com
Instagram: @tthpods
YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods
Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com
MORE FROM THE TRAGICALLY HIP PODCAST SERIES
Yer Hipstories - Kingston: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/c37eccb0-036d-45d0-827b-08582d3f8bba
Yer Hipstories - Hamilton: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/fae76ee3-738f-4007-80c8-7140729bb295
Cast and roles via the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Run dates via the Kingston Grand Theatre and the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Kingston, August 20, 2016 via setlist.fm.
#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #TTHPods #TTHAlbumCountdown #CanadianMusic

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April 19th, around four o'clock, outside Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. jD is about to sit with the whole creative team, with no idea what's coming.
The first preview is three days out. jD bought a ticket for April 22nd thinking it was the premiere. It wasn't (musicals have previews, it turns out - lesson one of about 400). That's the spirit of It's A Good Life, five episodes, one a day, all week, from The Tragically Hip Podcast Series: one fan, uncool and underqualified, let into the rooms where "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken" got made. It's the first musical built from the songs of The Tragically Hip, and it's moving to Kingston.
Setting the Scene starts at the start. Where the idea came from, who said yes, and how a story about a man who can't go home again ended up in Kingston, of all places. But first, the question nobody wants to ask out loud: what is a musical, anyway? Jen Towndrow, Armand, and Autumn McDonald love them, and they make the case. One fan who walked out of a jukebox show wondering what just happened makes the other one.
Then the people who built it. Michael Rubinoff, the producer, knew exactly where he wanted to be if Y2K took the world down at midnight, and he knew one thing about this show before he had the rights to a single song. Jake Gold, manager of The Hip, had two conditions. A month later came a phone call, a radio story out of Afghanistan, and the song that played once the plane was in the air.
Ahmed Moneka shouted his love for an Ontario town off a bridge, and somebody told him which song to go home and play. Jesse LaVercombe found The Hip somewhere "in the ether" and came aboard late, which meant sprinting. Mary Francis Moore offered up the room at Theatre Aquarius partly so she could watch. And Brett Christopher in Kingston had been dreaming about this for fifteen years before anyone else got the rights. That news landed hard, at first.
Somewhere in all of it the story leaves Toronto for a smaller city with prisons on one side and universities on the other. You'll hear why that move mattered. And on April 23rd, at a talk in the theatre, somebody asks for the whole show in one word.
WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE
• What "the book" of a musical is, for anyone who assumed it was a book.
• The Zoom where Michael asked the band for three minutes before getting down to business. And what he told them first.
• Friends whose fathers came from Iran and Peru, and the band they learned Canada through.
• Lindsay Pereira's CBC story, and why Jake told Michael he had to read it.
• Kensington Market, Kingston, and why a small town makes you earn it.
"If I had one kick at the can with this music and there was one way I could use this music to tell the story, I did always believe that this was the story to tell." - Michael Rubinoff, producer
WHO YOU HEAR
• Michael Rubinoff. Producer of "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," and the originating producer of "Come From Away." A fan first.
• Jake Gold. Manager of The Tragically Hip.
• Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe. Co-writers of the book, ten years making theatre together, "King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild" included. Jesse on moving north: "Sometimes I feel like as an American living up here, it's like living in a really low-stakes Twilight Zone."
• Mary Francis Moore. Director, and artistic director at Theatre Aquarius, the National Centre for the Development of New Musicals.
• Brett Christopher. Managing artistic director of the Thousand Islands Playhouse, the show's Kingston co-producer. He lives in Kingston.
• Jen, Armand, and Autumn. The crash course in musicals.
Big thanks to Michael, Jake, Ahmed, Jesse, Mary Francis, and Brett for letting a fan with a microphone into the room three days before the first preview, and to Jen, Armand, and Autumn for explaining it all first. A lot of new Canadians found their way in through The Tragically Hip. This is the story of how that ended up on a stage. Tomorrow on It's A Good Life: The Players.
"IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN" - KINGSTON
The Thousand Islands Playhouse brings the musical to the Kingston Grand Theatre, in association with Theatre Aquarius, October 22 to November 8. Opening night is Friday, October 23. Tickets: kingstongrand.ca/events/TIP2026
THE TIP JAR
Editing is hard. Help keep the battery charged. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40
FIND US
Home: home.tthpods.com
Email: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com
Facebook community: community.tthpods.com
Instagram: @tthpods
YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods
Yer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.com
MORE FROM THE TRAGICALLY HIP PODCAST SERIES
Yer Hipstories - Hamilton: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/fae76ee3-738f-4007-80c8-7140729bb295
Yer Hipstories - Kingston: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/c37eccb0-036d-45d0-827b-08582d3f8bba
Run dates via the Kingston Grand Theatre and the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Lindsay Pereira's story via CBC.
#ItsAGoodLife #TheTragicallyHip #TheHip #TTHPods #CanadianMusic #HipFans

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