Interview: Tragically Hip Guitarist Paul Langlois Talks Life After Gord

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Guitarist Paul Langlois is best known as the solid rhythm guitarist and raspy-voiced backing vocalist for The Tragically Hip, the legendary Can-rock group that lost its enigmatic singer, Gord Downie, when he died of brain cancer in 2017.

Langlois and Downie were best friends for decades, and Langlois said he was left in a fog after his bandmate’s death. Then came the pandemic. He slowly found his way back to music, as he explains in this interview, and began writing songs, including a stormy, screeching song called Do n’t Leave Me Brother.

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Langlois now performs with a band made up of musical friends from the Kingston area and is touring as part of a double bill with Skydiggers. Some shows are planned in Ontario.

In this lightly edited interview from his home in Kingston, Langlois also shared some memories of Downie during the Hip’s final tour and weighed the possibilities of reviving the band with a new singer.

Q: You wrote and released Guess What, your first solo album in a decade, last year. Where did the inspiration for that come from?

A: Well, it took inspiration because it certainly wasn’t on my mind at all. A couple of years ago I was offered a gig by a guy I know who needed a band. I hesitated and sputtered but decided to do it. It was August 2022, I had my friends (from Kingston) in the band and everything went well. We had a lot of fun so I thought I’d take a couple of months to write. I had to set a deadline because it’s the only way I can write songs. With deadline.

Q: What was going through your mind when you were writing the songs?

A: Everything that goes through the head of a 58-year-old man. It was the passing of time, the death of Gord (Downie), the children growing up and moving away. And some signs of commitment to the relationship and sticking to it. I have been married 33 years this June. I will be 60 this year.

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Q: The song Don’t Leave Me Brother is about your relationship with Gord. Tell me about that one.

A: I ended up helping take care of Gord in the months leading up to the tour, and the song is about how everything fell apart. I walked in one winter night (I hadn’t seen him in two months since his diagnosis, he’d had a couple of brain surgeries and had a big beard) and we were both kind of a revelation to each other. I stayed because he wanted me to and I was happy to do it. It was a true gift. You are truly in the present when you care for someone who is so sick.

Q: That was before the final tour. How did he recover enough to perform?

A: He really wanted to do the tour so I called the other guys and told them. It was starting from scratch, but we discovered that he could still sing. He didn’t remember names or letters, which was sad for him because that was his thing, he remembered everyone’s name. But we came up with a solution: we put a bunch of teleprompters on stage. He could hang a melody and he had the phrasing. That didn’t leave him. It was amazing that he recovered enough to be at his best on tour, and that’s only because he was able to take four treatments of this tumor-stopping drug for a month and a half. Then he had a good year, finishing the Secret Path (album), doing a couple of shows with them and doing a lot of stuff with the Downie-Wenjack Fund. He wanted to do that so badly.

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Q: How did his death affect you?

A: When he died, the rest of the guys in the band, including me, were just left in a fog. As we all know, grief is a monster that is in control. You don’t control it. We didn’t really go through this together. None of us had any enthusiasm for the band. I had no enthusiasm to do anything because our big vehicle was gone. That lasted for a couple of years and then gradually everyone went back to it.

Q: Are you in touch with others now?

A: Yes, we met a few years ago and we maintain fairly constant communication. Everyone does their own thing musically, but there are a lot of modern things, like reissues and finding old recordings, so that keeps us going. For the box sets, we’ve been looking for extra songs that never made it onto the albums, sending them out and everyone gets to hear them. Jonny (Fay, drummer) takes the lead because he’s in Toronto and that’s where most of the old tapes are located.

Q: Can you imagine a time when Hip could continue with a new singer?

A: Mmm, I don’t think so. We did two songs (with other singers), one with Feist on the Junos and one with William Prince for Buffy Sainte-Marie’s 80th birthday. They were two very unique opportunities. One might even think that the four of us could make an instrumental album, but I think everyone is pretty okay with not doing that. With Gord there was always consensus. Now everyone says, “Never say never,” but at the same time, doing it on a large scale makes everyone feel repulsive. We spent over 30 years with the same guys and everyone feels comfortable following our path because that path was very special to all of us. It was just a lot of luck, commitment, tough times and really great times, and we all worked hard for it, so it feels like, ‘Let’s leave that behind us.’ For now anyway.

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Q: What’s next for the Paul Langlois Band? Are you back in the music business?

A: We are not going to leave. We’ll make another record sometime in the next year or two and keep playing. Festivals are my favorites. We really enjoyed the festivals we did last summer, so we’ll keep trying to be on those bills.

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