Sometime in the early summer of 93, while planning a European tour, an idea popped into my head. We had an open period of four days between the Halfweg Festival (in Amsterdam) and the Glastonbury Festival in England. Instead of traveling to northern England before Glastonbury (as was proposed) why not remain in Amsterdam, find a small studio and work on some song ideas? The prospect of hanging out in one of our favorite cities was considerably more appealing than a few quick gigs across the channel and, fortunately, reason prevailed.
So, we found ourselves at the Sleep In part nightclub, part youth hostel with a small studio in the basement perfect for making demos. I don't know whether this session was the very first for what would become Day for Night but, it was one of the earliest and was certainly productive. Three or four days is not a great amount of time to produce fantastic, spot-on recordings but, it's just the right amount to get the ideas down on tape and that was the main reason for these sessions. Of course, some ideas were more complete than others (Nautical Disaster was taking shape while Scared was still a happy melody on Paul's guitar) and some ideas never surfaced beyond the Sleep-In sessions. However, any idea, riff, tune or whatever, if on tape, is fair game for future poaching and a great deal of tape was run in those few days. Mark Vreeken, our live front-of-house engineer, was at the helm and would remain there for every session save those co-produced by the band and Mark Howard. Dave Koster (aka Billy Ray) acted as the ever-present studio assistant/whipping boy. That allowed me to roam the streets of Amsterdam in search of musical supplies or whatever else we may have needed. I did spend some time in studio each day but, not being well-versed in the art of recording it was best for me to stay out of everyone's way.
After our few days in Amsterdam we spent another twelve touring northern Europe, playing festivals for the most part. Schuttorf, Roskilde, Torhout and Werchter; these are the festivals that make Europe a fantastic place for a good band to tour. Not a great deal of bullshit, just a group of smart people doing a good job. European promoters, and certainly the fans, are broad-minded enough that a bill featuring Sugar, Faith No More and Metallica is the perfect gig for The Tragically Hip. One result of our European experiences was the confidence to put on our own festival style tour in Canada. We called it Another Roadside Attraction, the name being stolen from a Tom Robbins novel. The Hip headlined a bill that included Midnight Oil, Crash Vegas, Hothouse Flowers, Daniel Lanois and on the west coast, World Party and Pere Ubu. The twelve dates on that tour were twelve of the best concerts anywhere, anytime. Some of the fun can be seen in a feature-length video directed by Gord Downie's brother, Mike. Called Heksenketel (a Dutch word for witch's cauldron), it runs about 70 minutes. The title comes from the original name of Another Roadside Attraction. Aside from the filming and live show, the band was also jamming backstage almost daily and new songs were taking shape as the tour progressed.
Thugs existed as a near-complete song but, would change radically with the passing months. Fire in The Hole, however, was being born out of the various dressing room jams. Everyone referred to the riff as "pointy teeth." Nautical Disaster was being jammed both backstage and onstage; it evolved in the middle section of New Orleans is Sinking from night to night. Once this tour ended we spent the last weeks of September in the U.S.. By October 2nd, the touring for Fully Completely was finished.
No longer worrying about visas, laundry or where the hell we were, we returned to the scene of many favorite crimes, the Woolen Mill. An old burlap mill in the north end of Kingston, the mill was a perfect rehearsal space but, also much more. For one, it was my home for two of the three years the band used it for rehearsals. And it was also, essentially, an impregnable fortress perfect for keeping away prying eyes and those with ears too big for their own good. With no one to hassle us (sometimes a problem in a small town), the work progressed. The months between the end of the road and Christmas were busy ones. Grace, Emergency, Inch an Hour, Impossibilium and various versions of Thugs, were either written in their entirety or re-written entirely. Various other ideas were being thrown around, including early versions of Daredevil and Greasy Jungle. We took a break for the holidays.
During the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, the band was back at the mill, this time working with Mark Howard. We had known Mark for a while; from back in the days when Road Apples was recorded and on Another Roadside Attraction, where he was Dan Lanois' front-of-house engineer. It was this week that gave the band the confidence in Howard that would result in his co-producing the album. This was the week when Thugs finally found its sound. This was also the session that captured Titanic as it appears on the album. A number of passes would be made at Titanic later in New Orleans but, none would match the atmosphere the winter lent the song. January would give rise to Yawning or Snarling and The Inevitability of Death and February provided a chance to play some of the new songs live. Sure, some of the new material had been played live before: Thugs on Another Roadside Attraction, Nautical Disaster at the Kumbaya Festival (to benefit people living with AIDS) in Toronto but, it was the College Earth Summit at Yale that saw the first performance of many of the songs. It was a small gig at Toad's Place but, the new songs were received well and it was only a month before the band would be in the studio. That month passed (and none too soon, winter was kicking the shit out of eastern Ontario) and it was time to head down to the Crescent City.
Kingsway Studio, New Orleans La., is the kind of place The Hip can work. The house is a studio or the studio is a house, either way a large mansion on the edge of the French Quarter that is both familiar and practical. The Tragically Hip is not a band well suited to isolation chambers and by-the-numbers recording. Though that can be educational and productive, their best work has always come from a more fluid approach and environment. The bulk of *Day for Night* was recorded at the base of a large stairway, with the band within five feet of each other most of the time. Set up an amp, mike it and throw a blanket or a pillow over it, turn it up and play. Over time, patterns developed. Much of the day would be dedicated to listening and listening again to what had been recorded with the night reserved for new ideas, new tracks or new songs. Along the way, a shadow record emerged; spacey jams, old ideas reworked , generally a chance to blow off some musical steam. This music is not on the record but, it is as much a part of the recording process as anything else and much musical cannibalism will be its legacy. So Hard Done By is a perfect example. Played in concert a very few times over the years, it finally found an arrangement everyone liked. Many songs have been picked at over the years and as long as there are tapes to listen to, that will continue. When it came time to leave New Orleans, most of the recording had been done but the album was not complete. The band headed for home.
Three weeks after returning to Kingston, the band packed up again and headed for Morin Heights, a small town one hour north of Montreal in rural Quebec. There, with the two Marks and Billy Ray, the band began to mix everything and of course, tinker further. For two or three weeks they fiddled and mixed and generally put all the tracks together. With Morin Heights being only four hours away, the band also had the luxury of getting home once in a while and everyone took turns spending time up at the studio. It was a good choice of location for the mixing because, while relatively close to home, it was in the hills and isolated enough to allow everyone to concentrate on the songs. However, the mixing did not end in those hills and our adventures would continue into the summer.
By now, it was June. As well as the recordings to work on, we had to get ready for some live gigs. Our first big show in some time was a Canada Day concert on, of course, July 1st. It was an all day, open air show with some of our favorite Canadian bands on the bill. Change of Heart, Odds and Spirit of the West were among the nine other acts that day. 35,000 people showed up, it didn't rain and no one was killed; so, we all had a good time. The rest of the summer yawned in front of us and we hit the road.
Whatever life a song might have in the studio, or on record, can be measured by the final product only. But on the stage, any song can have one hundred lives. Some songs really come alive only when an audience breathes life into them and thus, the purpose of the road is revealed. No matter how shitty a gig, how horrid the travel, how unpalatable the food, the songs continue to save our skins night after night. And when the gig is great, and the club within walking distance from whatever conventioneer-filled hotel we can't wait to leave, then the songs become an unstoppable juggernaut of compressed ear drums, rattling teeth and frayed nerves. Some nights we teeter between the two extremes, but the road is unending.
And so, when *Day for Night* is released in America in the new year, we will find ourselves in the midst of a Canadian tour and in the grips of whatever weather the Great Lakes might throw at us. For the same reasons we might tour Texas in July, we will tour Canada in the dead of winter; the songs demand to live, no matter how extreme life may be. Since the release of the record in Canada and Europe this past fall, we have seen both extremes again and again. We bounced around America for 19 more shows after the 20 we had played in the summer, prior to the album's release. We then trundled off to Europe for 14 shows in 6 countries. Along the way we made friends with all in the Blues Traveler organization. Another rare bonus from the road; like-minded souls who have many tales of their own.
"In the end, the days and nights blur together into a seamless river of misadventure and near-insanity anchored only by the music that comes from soundchecks, concerts and the uncounted beers drained in Brussels or Oklahoma City. The songs don't know where they are, and some nights neither do we. But above all the noise we might make about ourselves, or how hard the road might be, the music has always been louder."
David Powell, Road Manager, December 19, 1994
"We're forced to bed, but we're free to dream"
Dana
