Gord Downie, late frontman of The Tragically Hip, will be immortalized with a special double album of his last recorded works.
Entitled Away Is Mine, the posthumous release is “a contemplation on Gord’s life, written with his deft hand and forever inscrutable sense of humor, even as he locked eyes with the Great Inevitability,” reads a statement announcing the new album.
Downie recorded the ten songs in July 2017 at The Tragically Hip’s studio in Bath, Ontario, shaped by guitarist and co-writer Josh Finlayson and with Bathouse in-house engineer Nyles Spencer at the mixing desk.
Sadly, these sessions were Downie’s last. “This won’t be his last release, but these are the final ten songs Gord sang before he passed away. The last time he ever sang into a mic,” brother Patrick Downie wrote in a statement. “That’s pretty special to us.”
Away Is Mine will spread across two discs and 20 songs in total, with each track presented in electric and acoustic versions.
Starting the celebration of his life and work is the release today of two new album tracks, “Hotel Worth” and “Useless Nights”.
Away Is Mine is slated for release Oct. 16 via Arts & Crafts, almost three years to the day since he lost his battle with brain cancer.
Downie was 53, but his legacy was significant. The Hip, known affectionately as “Canada’s Band,” recorded 14 albums with Downie at the mic, won 16 Juno Awards, and filled stadiums across their homeland.
During his lifetime, the band scored seven No. 1s on Billboard’s Canadian Albums chart, the third-most among all acts and a record among groups. Also, they nabbed eight entries on the (U.S.-based) Billboard 200 albums chart.
“There really wasn’t a plan to make a record,” says Finlayson of the Away Is Mine sessions. “The whole thing was that I knew this was a great way to spend time with Gord, listening to music, talking about music, talking about things that we’d always talked about. And this just evolved pretty organically.”
Gord Downie’s “Away Is Mine” Tracklisting
Disc One:
1. Hotel Worth
2. Useless Nights
3. I Am Lost
4. About Blank
5. River Don’t Care
6. The Least Impossible
7. Traffic Is Magic
8. Away Is Mine
9. No Solace
10. Untitled
Disc Two:
11. Hotel Worth (Acoustic)
12. Useless Nights (Acoustic)
13. I Am Lost (Acoustic)
14. About Blank (Acoustic)
15. River Don’t Care (Acoustic)
16. The Least Impossible (Acoustic)
17. Traffic Is Magic (Acoustic)
18. Away Is Mine (Acoustic)
19. No Solace (Acoustic)
20. Untitled (Acoustic)