Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Gord Downie inhabits an enviable place in Canadian culture. At concerts, thousands of fans chant his lyrics as if they were mantras. They hang on his every move with the rapt attention of a church congregation. Yet the Tragically Hip’s charismatic front man has never seemed altogether comfortable in the role of shaman. His first allegiance has always been to the band and the friends with whom he formed the group more than 15 years ago in Kingston, Ont. Now, with Coke Machine Glow, 38-year-old Downie is stepping out on his own with a poetry book and his first solo album. Released jointly by Universal Music Canada and Vintage Canada (they will be sold as a single package for the first two week...

Last summer, Canada tuned in to watch the Tragically Hip’s last concert and bid adieu to its charismatic poetic frontman. Now Gord says goodbye with this poignant collection of 23 deeply personal songs. Like David Bowie’s and Leonard Cohen’s final recordings, the album is almost unbearably sad and made more powerful because the artist knew the end was coming. “Each song is about a person,” Gord explained before his death from brain cancer on Oct. 17. Some numbers are love letters to childhood buddies, former girlfriends and his bandmates in the Hip. “Bedtime,” a tender piano lullaby, describes the nightly ritual of putting one of his four children to sleep. “You and Me and the B’s,” with per...

Well after midnight, on a cold stretch of highway somewhere in British Columbia's Cascade Mountains, a party is in progress. It's mid-November, and members of the Tragically Hip, fresh off a successful tour opening in Vancouver, are celebrating as their bus whisks them northeastward overnight towards the Okanagan Valley. The air is thick with smoke. "Pass me a beer?" asks drummer Johnny Fay, slipping a CD by the Asian Dub Foundation into the stereo system. As heavy rhythms flood out, heads nod appreciatively. The hypnotic instrumental number suits quiet conversation or zoning out. Several beers and too much David Bowie later, guitarist Robby Baker puts a more eclectic spin on things, playing...

As the frontman of the Tragically Hip, Gord gives the beloved Canadian group a poetic depth not normally associated with rock bands. On his third solo album, the head Hipster gives full vent to his literary muse, quoting poet Al Purdy and referencing the western novel The Ox-Bow Incident among other things. But the album, whose title is taken from a term for desertion used in a General Custer biography, boasts a lively, indie-rock spirit, full of peppy songs about fatherhood, the environment and what it means to be Canadian.