Show Notes
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
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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.
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
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:
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
November 30th, 2012, Minneapolis, cold enough to hurt. Brian from Buffalo was there for 'Take Forever.' The stream tried to play it three times. It's track nine of eleven on "Now for Plan A," the Gavin Brown record that came out October 2nd, 2012. By the count on the stream, The Tragically Hip played it live eight times, starting months before the record was out, and it didn't crack the 169 songs ranked for the TTHTop40 Countdown. The poll in the Facebook group was kinder: 76% love it or like it, and one brave soul has never heard it. Jeff from Belleville has a theory about why, and it starts with where the song sits on the record. Then the tale of the tape turns up a chart fact about "Now for Plan A" in the United States that nobody on the panel believes. It checks out. So Brian from Buffalo, Jeff from Belleville, and Greg from Tacoma (late, and sentenced to sing it) take apart three minutes about a man trying to be a machine, a plane hurtling through the dark, and a promise to be there for as long as it takes. And Calgary. A lot of Calgary. WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE The icebreaker: a song by The Hip that sounds like fall. Brian bends the rules before he gives in, and Jeff lands on the same song jD played in the car on the way home. Brian's personal ranking of every song by The Hip, and why loving 'The Lookahead' costs this one a few spots. Calgary as the place to do it. Brian found the story behind the line, and Jeff found the newspaper by way of HipMuseum. What Gord told the crowd before 'Take Forever' at Kensington Market and in Minneapolis, pulled from The Tragically Hip Archive, and the Ralph Nader primer that follows. Jeff's reach of the night: Stampede Wrestling, the Saddledome, and the year 2001. He admits it's a reach. jD isn't so sure. Greg from Tacoma, the land of Boeing, and a guess about where this song was written. The news: a fan survey from the band, GEDfest crossing the border, and a musical opening in Kingston. Next week the wheel lands on 'Sharks,' from "Music @ Work." "I feel like it ends stronger than it begins." - Brian from Buffalo THE PANEL Brian from Buffalo. A teacher, which is why fall is not his favourite season. Saw the "World Container" tour at the Phoenix in Toronto in October 2006, then in Boston and Rochester in 2007, and keeps his own ranking of every song. Jeff from Belleville. Back after a while away, and on a panel with Brian for the first time. Lives among rows of red pine, which explains his icebreaker, and does the homework every time. Nothing to plug, he says. Greg from Tacoma. Showed up late, refused to sing, and still found the line nobody else had touched. Scored every record by The Hip for jD and docked the last two a point. Big thanks to Brian, Jeff, and Greg, and to a chat that kept the room going while the audio didn't. 'Take Forever' is one of the quieter corners of "Now for Plan A," and an hour with three fans who did the reading is a good way to hear The Tragically Hip and Gord Downie fresh. You won't hear it here. Go put it on. IT'S A GOOD LIFE - MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 TO FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 Five episodes, one a day. An oral history of the making of "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," the musical built on the music of The Hip, told by the people who made it. Subscribe: home.tthpods.com GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 Saturday night at the Horseshoe Tavern, nine years since Gord passed away, Grace, 2 plays for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, so follow along on the night: facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ. GEDfest Buffalo, the first American chapter, is Wednesday, October 21, and more cities celebrate on Saturday, October 24. Every city and every cause: gedfest.ca How it started: https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/9fc87037-23d5-4de2-8ed4-202f441bf759 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, a