A Quote by Steve Berlin
I can't think of very many people who work as hard at the craft of songcraft as Gord Downie does. It was life or death. Every syllable was important.
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Gord [Downie] does so much Waterkeeper stuff. They were involved in [protesting clearcuts at] Clayoquot Sound [in the early '90s]. It's hard sometimes to use the capital you have as a beloved rock band and put it to various causes, especially when they're a bit more controversial, like energy issues.
I always go into listening to a new record by Gord Downie solo or The Tragically Hip and think, "Well, I know what this is going to be, lyrically." Every song starts and then I think, "Oh, I have no idea where that comes from." He has this entirely original voice, both literal and metaphorical.
For me, I'll think about Gord Downie every day. Every day until I die, probably. I think about him, I listen to him and he's one guy I'll think about all the time. He's that powerful and, yeah... just The Man, what can I say?
My favorite song he ever wrote was 'Cold Cold Heart.' If you think about it, the lyric to 'Cold Cold Heart,' see how many two syllable words are in that song. Very, very few. ... Verses and the choruses have very few two syllable words. 'I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my everything.' One three-syllable word.
Another hard thing that Gord Downie makes easy: singing ironically. If you don't do it right, you come off like a snarky asshole or the whole thing just falls apart on its own. He has the ability to imbue something ironic with great seriousness, which is the only way to really make it work.
No one else writes like Gord Downie, so it's difficult to compare him. He can work in the abstract and still somehow be really specific. He lets parts of his consciousness in that most writers aren't able to do, myself included. I don't feel like I have that access to the surreal and the somehow beautifully meaningful non-sequitur - that fits perfectly. I can never figure that out, how he does that.
Gord Downie is extraordinary. It's safe to say there's nobody like that guy that I've ever come across.
I think of Gord Downie voice as Whitman-esque. He has a poetic voice that contains multitudes, both the suppleness of the instrument of his voice, and just the lyrical boundaries that he pushes, which are really always thrilling to me.
It seems silly, but it mattered to Gord Downie. I don't know if I necessarily felt like it had to be one or the other, but he really wanted that engagement: "If you think it should be 'the' then tell me why it should be 'the.' " 'Uh, okay, well...' He was really serious.
I do love writing. It doesn't come to me as readily as I think acting does. I think acting is in my instincts. Writing is a craft that I work very hard at. And I have to train and continue to develop.
I was listening to this interview with fiction writer George Saunders the other day, and he said something about how the role of a writer is to build a more detailed world. I think it applies to what Gord Downie is doing with his body of work, which is to build a more detailed world and there's something really political about that.
The competition, the naysayers, the owners who talk too much. The people who don't think a 36-year-old can do what I do. I take a lot of pride in my craft, I work really hard at my craft everyday, and I'm a true professional.
I would only listen to certain things, like a lot of teenagers do. But the Tragically Hip is a ribbon that's been with me pretty much my entire musical life. Every mix tape I ever made had at least one Hip song on it. Right from the outset I feel like Gord Downie built so much room into his songs. There was so much space in them that he created. He made me think of songwriting as full of boundless possibilities in a way that - well, that a lot of songwriters do, but that was the first time I thought a song could really contain multitudes.
[Gord] Downie has become more animated than the early days, but he's still the same charismatic performer. And as a whole, that band is really the result of each individual member. If one member was not a part of it, it wouldn't be the Hip. They're all crucial to the whole thing.
That's something I've certainly taken from writers like Gord Downie is that there is a whole potential for breaking out of meter. Even if you don't do it, you're permitted to. He gave a lot of writers permission to do that, to expand and push out the borders of what a rock song can contain.
A more detailed world is a more complicated and complex one, and therefore a more empathetic one. I feel Gord's Downie lyrics are exceptionally empathetic, or that's what they accomplish. The fact that they can cross all those cultural cliques and boundaries really amplifies that, to me.
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