Listening back to the tracks of Saskadelphia, Sinclair is surprised that none of them originally made the album. By the time the band arrived in New Orleans, they were armed with 17 to 18 songs and continued to write while recording Road Apples. In the midst of all their traveling, writing evolved into more of a collaborative effort, and Downie began chronicling all their individual fragments into songs. “It was a golden age in music, and we found ourselves in a really good place in terms of what we were trying to do and instructed by other groups around us,” says Sinclair of the time when Road Apples was made, just as a new alternative movement was igniting the early 1990s. Leading up to Road Apples, and following their extensive tour, the band were coming into their own as a stronger writing unit. “It’s the classic story where you have your entire career to write your first record, and then you have a year for the second,” says Sinclair. The songs of Saskadelphia capture The Tragically Hip at a prime moment, trying to offset the “sophomore jinx” of a second album. I missed that, but it’s been great going back and listening and reminiscing about that stuff with the fellas.” “It’s cool to hear us playing as young men and hearing Gord’s voice as a young man, just sort of when we were all coming into our own as a writing unit, and when five or six days a week we were packing ourselves into these sweaty rock clubs and having the time of our lives. “It’s been creative, and energizing and very emotional at the same time,” he says. Mining through all the lost recordings and hearing Downie’s voice again was bittersweet, says Sinclair. It does harken back to a time and place when it’s done right, which is really important.” “It was just a different time, but that’s the beautiful thing about making records for a living. “It was really hard for me to listen to without choking up the first time I heard it,” shares Sinclair of the EP. Saskadelphia captures a pivotal moment three decades earlier, one never forgotten by the band. The Tragically Hip (clockwise from top left): Gord Downie (holding mirror), Rob Baker (in window), Gord Sinclair (in window) In Mirror: Paul Langlois (reflection in mirror), Johnny Fay (reflection in mirror), Gord Sinclair (reflection in mirror) (Photo: Jim Herrington) Left with various versions of material that eventually made it onto the album, many were cut including the songs of Saskadelphia and alternate versions of Road Apples tracks like an acoustic version of “Fiddler’s Green” with just guitarist Rob Baker and Downie singing. “We had a deep emotional connection to that event,” shares Sinclair, “and it still resonates.” Returning to the original Saskadelphia recordings, the EP features fives songs recorded during the band’s 1990 Road Apples sessions in New Orleans, moving through the injectable funk and groove of opening “Ouch” through “Crack My Spine Like a Whip,” a track the band often used to open their set and unbridled “Reformed Baptist Blues.” A sixth track, “Montreal,” was recorded live during a 2000 concert at the Bell Centre, marking the 11th anniversary of the 1989 massacre at the École Polytechnique-the second mass shooting in Canada at the time-and a song the band continued incorporating into their setlist long after. In fact, I’m positive he would be into it.” “Then we started to think ‘now’s the time,’ and we discussed it amongst ourselves. “We feared that we lost all our material,” Sinclair tells American Songwriter. “It’s an excavation.”įirst retrieving the tapes in 2020, following a New York Times story the previous year that originally listed The Tragically Hip among the artists who lost their music in a Universal Studios fire in 2008, the band started searching for Saskadelphia and unearthed two-inch, unlabeled tapes, which were safely moved to Canada years prior to the fire. ![]() “We’ve been sort of describing it as an archeological dig,” says Sinclair. ![]() Now, three decades later, and four years following the ultimately passing of Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie, the surviving band members-guitarist Paul Langlois and Rob Baker, bassist Gord Sinclair, and Drummer Johnny Fay-recouped the songs of Saskadelphia. Working through the tracks of what would later get rechristened as Road Apples, at The Kingsways Studio in the French Quarter in New Orleans-a past Prohibition-era restaurant-turned-studio (by the 1990s) originally built in 1848 and known to house the spirit of its proprietor Germaine Cazenave Wells-The Tragically Hip recorded their 1991 sophomore album, cutting five songs from the final track list. Convened in a “haunted house” in New Orleans, The Tragically Hip were still riding the high of their 1989 debut Up to Here as they began working on a follow up, tentatively titled Saskadelphia, named after the band’s extensive touring-anywhere between Saskatoon, Philadelphia, and beyond.
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