The Tragically Hip is a Canadian rock band from Kingston.
It consists of Paul Langlois (guitar), Rob Baker (guitar), Gord Sinclair (bass), Johnny Fay (drums), and singer Gord Downie until his death in 2017. The band's name comes from a skit from Michael Nesmith's Elephant Parts movie. The group is highly popular and influential across Canada. In 2005, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
The group was formed in Kingston in 1984, Gord Sinclair and Rob Baker were students at the Kingston Collegiate and played together as The Rodents at the KCIV Variety Show. Then Sinclair and Baker joined Gordon Downie and John Fay, giving concerts all over Kingston. Subsequently, guitarist Paul Langlois joined the group in 1986 while saxophonist Dave Manning left the same year. The band's name came from an excerpt from Michael Nesmith's Elephant Parts of 1981.
In the mid-eighties, after playing in small Kingston theaters, they performed at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, which was attended by then-President MCA records Bruce Dickinson. They signed a long-term record contract and produced their first album, the EP Tragically Hip in 1987. Two singles came out of this first effort, Small Town Bring-Down and Highway Girl.
In 2005, the New Orleans Is Sinking song, released on Up to Here in 1989, was removed from the air following the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. The chorus contains the following sentence: "New Orleans is sinking and I do not wanna swim" ("New Orleans is sinking and I do not want to swim").
