The Tragically Hip’s Rob Baker

by Michael Austin

Since their formation in Kingston, Ontario in 1986, the Tragically Hip have grown to become one of Canada’s biggest bands. With a reputation for remarkable live performances, they are finding loyal new fans every day. The Tragically Hip’s most recent release, Phantom Power, is the band’s eighth studio release.

I had a chance to speak with the Tragically Hip’s lead guitarist, Rob Baker, while on a break from their tour. They will be at the Palace of Auburn Hills on Friday, February 12th, and are guaranteed to give you your money’s worth.

Michigan Review: How long are you in Kingston?

Rob Baker: Early next week we head out to Toronto for a video shoot, then we go out to St. John’s New Brunswick for an arena tour.

Have you found a lot more success in the United States with the new album?

We’ve certainly gotten more radio play, and all the shows have drawn well. I think on our last leg, only one show drew fewer people than the previous one.

What do you think about playing bigger arenas now? I heard that you guys prefer smaller venues.

I don’t really have a preference. One thing with the United States is that we bounce around in venue size, so one night you’re playing an arena, the next night the State Theater, and a 400 person bar after that. It keeps you honest, it doesn’t allow your head to get too big. As far as what we do on stage, we don’t really change much. With a bigger arena, you have to put on a longer show, around two hours. You know, you have more lights, more PA, but what the 5 of us are doing on stage is essentially the same. I don’t really have a preference.

Who starts the creative process for a song?

It can come from anywhere, all five of us write. Gord [Sinclair] writes almost all of the lyrics, and all five give song ideas out. It used to be one person would come up with a whole song, but we’ve kind of gotten away from that. Now everyone gives little snippets for ideas and we go from there. That’s the way we write, sort of an organic process. In fact, Johnny [Fay] came up with a guitar riff, and our drummer, so he doesn’t even play guitar, but that became “Thompson Girl.” I had a little two-bar riff that eventually became “Poets,” so a whole song came from one little idea.

What’s the best thing you give to a person that goes to a show?

Respect. We don’t get up and give note for note versions of our songs. We get up there and try to perform a unique and intense version every time. Another thing is that for someone going to see us two nights in a row they won’t see the same show twice. We just wouldn’t do that. Not only would we not do it, we're incapable of it. I’ve been disappointed by lots of bands that you go see three times and you find out they say the same things in between the same songs, and there’s not much difference from one live show to the next. So I guess our shows have a lot of spontaneity that a lot of other shows don’t.

It seems that you guys have built your name mostly from touring, instead of radio and video.

Playing is how we do it. If we get some radio play it’s great, and it’s the same if you have a hit video, but you can’t do that to spread the word about your band. We’re certainly not tracking how many spins we get, or where we are on the charts. For us, you see the people at the show and that tells you whether people like you or not. The record company is doing a good job. There's so many things that a lot of bands do, like autographs or playing in stores, and we’re not really comfortable with that. We’re not very good at it either, so we just don’t do them, probably to our detriment.

Do you think the focus on live shows builds a stronger fan base? Lately you see a lot of groups with a hit single, but when the next album comes out everyone has forgotten about them.

What happens is people become fans of a song, not fans of a band. When you see someone live and you like them, you become a fan of the band. Most of the bands we admire are like that also. If you look at the Rolling Stones, they’ve certainly had success on the radio, but they’ve always been a live band. They’re not that big of an album selling band, but they’ve been the number one touring act for the past 30 years. That’s because people know when you go see the Rolling Stones, you’re going to get a good show. I’m not comparing us to the Rolling Stones, but we certainly emulate them in that respect.

Why has so much talent come out of Kingston?

I don’t really know. It’s a big place for hockey. Kingston’s the birthplace of hockey, and we’ve had a lot of hockey players come out of here, Doug Gilmour, Kirk Muller. Kingston is halfway between Toronto and Montreal, East and West; and halfway between Ottawa and Syracuse, North and South. So you’re able to go to a lot of big cities not far away, and that’s a pretty wide range of cities. Kingston is a small town, mostly a University town. I guess you’d compare it to a Harvard or Princeton, kind of the snooty upper-class type schools. It also has eleven penitentiaries, so you have both sides of the coin rubbing against each other. It makes things interesting in the bars across town. As a band coming out of Kingston you can’t just appeal to the college kids, you also have to appeal to the bikers and social workers. It's a pretty interesting cross-section.

What's the typical group of fans you usually get at a show?

I think it’s a huge cross-section. We don’t get too many young kids, but there’s a lot of college kids all the way up to people in their 30s and 40s. We kind of have a bad reputation that our fans are the thick-necked ball cap wearing type. They certainly exist, but I think they’re just the most vocal, so people remember them since they’re the most visible. The same thing happens in the States. We’ll be playing to 1000 people, and maybe 50 of them will be Canadian. But they’re all drunk as hell and waving Canadian flags and screaming and yelling, so after the concert people say, “Man it was packed with Canadians.” It's funny, Canadians are so non-nationalistic at home. Some of these people become Captain Canada as soon as they cross the border. We certainly appreciate them driving and making the effort to see us, but back home nobody would care for that. If some Americans went to see an American band in Toronto and they were waving U.S. flags, people just wouldn’t tolerate it. So I think what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Nine out of ten of our fans will behave. They’ll come looking for a good time and cheer and everything and they’ll get it. But there’s always that tenth guy who gets so excited that he drinks a two-four before the shows and makes an idiot of himself, and that’s the Canadian. People like that are kind of a national embarrassment.

Why have you stopped putting your pictures on the front of the album?

None of us really like looking at ourselves, so we don’t really have a desire to do it. We’re not really into the whole promotional thing with getting our pictures taken and all that. I can’t imagine someone looking at our faces in a record store and saying, “Oh that looks interesting.” It should be the music that speaks for the band. It’s mostly the labels, they like to have your picture on the early records. When we changed labels over to Sire we were worried they’d want our pictures on a cover. So we put out a live album, which has pictures all over it for our first release, which made them happy.

So you get to control the look of the CD and the booklet now?

Yeah. Every one of us has his own little job in the band, I get to be the art director. I guess since Road Apples, I’ve been doing all that. MR

This article was published in the 20 January 1999 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 17, Number 6).
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