03-15-2011, 07:45 PM
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Some on the side
Tragically Hip guitarist reconnects with old friends
By Mike Bell
Most people, when they take a vacation, they take a break from work and do something they love.
But what if work is what you really love? You take a break. And keep on working.
That's Rob Baker's philosophy, anyway, and also seems to be the attitude of the rest of the members of iconic Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip.
"The Hip was always about making music and having fun with your friends," says guitarist Baker from a hotel bar in Toronto. "When the five of us aren't doing that together it seems that all of us are seeking out friends to make music and have fun with."
In Baker's case, that hiatus usually sends him back to friend and fellow Canrock veteran Craig Northey and their sideproject Strippers Union, which has just released its second album, and first in six years, The Deuce. His relationship with Northey is one that's remained strong since the pair first met and hit it off immediately in 1992 when Northey's group, pop act The Odds, were opening for Baker's band at the Moore Theatre in Seattle. They are, he says, "like brothers from other mothers."
"I feel very much that way. There are certain people you connect with in your life and you feel that you're closer with them than you are with your own family. Certainly (Hip bassist) Gord Sinclair, he and I have been together since we were little, little kids -we were four and two, I think, when we started hanging out. I'm much closer to him than I could ever be to anyone, really. I feel a similar sort of bond with Craig and it's a little different because we met much later in life."
Which is why, Baker says, it's so easy for the pair to make music together in the Strippers Union -which also features Odds members Doug Elliott, Pat Steward and Murray Atkinson, as well as former Doug and the Slug keyboardist Simon Kendall -despite lengthy times away from the band.
In fact, most of the songs on the straight-up, sweet melodic rock and R&B record were conceived over the past few years by Baker in his Kingston home studio, Bhaji Bakery -named after an in-joke between he and the rest of his Hip mates, which plays off of his love of Indian food -and then brought to Northey's Vancouver studio, The Doghouse of Thunder, where the pair worked out detailed blueprints for the material. The guitarist says he and lead vocalist Northey share the same language and have a shorthand in place when they work together, meaning they can always find a musical common ground, despite months apart and different ideas and experiences.
"I think artistically, or particularly musically, you carry your past with you," he says. "You never make a clean break with your past. . . . Your past is part of you. Musical influences, Craig and I certainly bond over things like the Stax/ Volt catalogue. And with the Hip it was bonding over the early British R&B scene.
"Everyone has different interests, though. I remember Gord Sinclair coming to me and saying he really liked this new album by this great band Duran Duran. And I was like, 'You are so full of s--t, that's a terrible record -I hate that.' You don't have to like everything that everyone's into, but there's common ground."
Of course, you have to be standing on ground that's a little more common when actually recording the music, which, with schedules and monetary constraints, proved difficult to work out for some time. Baker finally used an invitation for the Strippers to play last year's Ottawa blues festival to assemble the band, which then led to a session at the Hip's farmhouse studio The Bathouse. All of the songs on the disc came from that quick and easy seven-day session, with the exception of album closer, The Circle Is Small, a wonderful, moody, Leonard Cohen-like cover of "the great Gordon Lightfoot" classic.
"I just kind of worked it up in my basement as something, a little project for me to do, just a way for me to keep busy, I guess, and exercise a creative muscle," Baker says with a laugh, noting it was the first time there was no common ground with the music.
"Late in the Strippers Union session I played it for the guys and they were all quite insistent it go on the record, and I was insistent that it not go on the record. I don't really need to hear myself sing that much. In the end I sort of agreed that it brings something different to the record, that it's one of those songs that will be some people's favourite song on the record and it will be more people's least favourite song.
"There's something in it that's going to tweak some people, I think."
Some on the side
Tragically Hip guitarist reconnects with old friends
By Mike Bell
Most people, when they take a vacation, they take a break from work and do something they love.
But what if work is what you really love? You take a break. And keep on working.
That's Rob Baker's philosophy, anyway, and also seems to be the attitude of the rest of the members of iconic Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip.
"The Hip was always about making music and having fun with your friends," says guitarist Baker from a hotel bar in Toronto. "When the five of us aren't doing that together it seems that all of us are seeking out friends to make music and have fun with."
In Baker's case, that hiatus usually sends him back to friend and fellow Canrock veteran Craig Northey and their sideproject Strippers Union, which has just released its second album, and first in six years, The Deuce. His relationship with Northey is one that's remained strong since the pair first met and hit it off immediately in 1992 when Northey's group, pop act The Odds, were opening for Baker's band at the Moore Theatre in Seattle. They are, he says, "like brothers from other mothers."
"I feel very much that way. There are certain people you connect with in your life and you feel that you're closer with them than you are with your own family. Certainly (Hip bassist) Gord Sinclair, he and I have been together since we were little, little kids -we were four and two, I think, when we started hanging out. I'm much closer to him than I could ever be to anyone, really. I feel a similar sort of bond with Craig and it's a little different because we met much later in life."
Which is why, Baker says, it's so easy for the pair to make music together in the Strippers Union -which also features Odds members Doug Elliott, Pat Steward and Murray Atkinson, as well as former Doug and the Slug keyboardist Simon Kendall -despite lengthy times away from the band.
In fact, most of the songs on the straight-up, sweet melodic rock and R&B record were conceived over the past few years by Baker in his Kingston home studio, Bhaji Bakery -named after an in-joke between he and the rest of his Hip mates, which plays off of his love of Indian food -and then brought to Northey's Vancouver studio, The Doghouse of Thunder, where the pair worked out detailed blueprints for the material. The guitarist says he and lead vocalist Northey share the same language and have a shorthand in place when they work together, meaning they can always find a musical common ground, despite months apart and different ideas and experiences.
"I think artistically, or particularly musically, you carry your past with you," he says. "You never make a clean break with your past. . . . Your past is part of you. Musical influences, Craig and I certainly bond over things like the Stax/ Volt catalogue. And with the Hip it was bonding over the early British R&B scene.
"Everyone has different interests, though. I remember Gord Sinclair coming to me and saying he really liked this new album by this great band Duran Duran. And I was like, 'You are so full of s--t, that's a terrible record -I hate that.' You don't have to like everything that everyone's into, but there's common ground."
Of course, you have to be standing on ground that's a little more common when actually recording the music, which, with schedules and monetary constraints, proved difficult to work out for some time. Baker finally used an invitation for the Strippers to play last year's Ottawa blues festival to assemble the band, which then led to a session at the Hip's farmhouse studio The Bathouse. All of the songs on the disc came from that quick and easy seven-day session, with the exception of album closer, The Circle Is Small, a wonderful, moody, Leonard Cohen-like cover of "the great Gordon Lightfoot" classic.
"I just kind of worked it up in my basement as something, a little project for me to do, just a way for me to keep busy, I guess, and exercise a creative muscle," Baker says with a laugh, noting it was the first time there was no common ground with the music.
"Late in the Strippers Union session I played it for the guys and they were all quite insistent it go on the record, and I was insistent that it not go on the record. I don't really need to hear myself sing that much. In the end I sort of agreed that it brings something different to the record, that it's one of those songs that will be some people's favourite song on the record and it will be more people's least favourite song.
"There's something in it that's going to tweak some people, I think."
"We're forced to bed, but we're free to dream"
Dana