The Way Up

Anniversary box set edition of Tragically Hip’s major label debut, ‘Up To Here,’ belongs in every Hip-head’s collection

They were kids. Fresh-faced. Hopeful. Eager. And, in their laid-back manner, loaded for bear.

In September of 1989, Bobby Brown was at the top of the Billboard charts, Milli Vanilli were friggin’ huge, and Guns ’n’ Roses were doing their level best to out-Aerosmith Aerosmith. Fashion was still embracing absurdly vibrant colors, lethal amounts of hairspray, and shoulder pads. And, of course, people who made their living speaking loudly on topics they knew nothing about were proclaiming that guitar-based rock music was dead, sounding a one-note symphony of stupidity that we are still being asked to listen to today.

Enter into this milieu the major-label debut of a scruffy Canadian quintet whose members had apparently never received the memo about any of the above.

From our current vantage point, it’s not hard to view the Tragically Hip’s Up To Here as a mission statement for a band that would become one of the most popular and culturally significant ensembles in the history of Canadian rock. It’s an album stuffed with tunes we fans consider classics - “Blow At High Dough,” “New Orleans Is Sinking,” “38 Years Old,” “She Didn’t Know,” “Opiated” among them - songs that would be a part of most set-lists for the entirety of the band’s magnificent run.

Up To Here offered a blueprint, a glimpse of all the gifts the band would exploit and develop moving forward - the indelible hooks, the brilliant blasts of lyrical imagery and observational poetry, the subtle brilliance of the twin-guitar interplay, the relentless drive of the rhythm section, the ability to balance widescreen acoustic balladry against snarling and strident rockers, are all already present and accounted for in this 1989 salvo.

But one of the many gifts this deluxe reissue of Up To Here offers us is the opportunity to view this album in its proper contemporaneous context. Whether they meant to or otherwise, the Hip were making a statement about the enduring significance of rock bands - gangs of like-minded players who’d grown up together, shared dreams together, and subsumed their individual egos into a whole that was surely greater than the sum of its individual parts. (For proof of just how deep this shared bond ran, check the startlingly intimate 4-part documentary No Dress Rehearsal, on Prime Video now.)

So Rob Baker, Paul Langlois, Johnny Fay, Gord Sinclair and Gord Downie had honed an organic sound that embraced the members’ idiosyncrasies and eccentricities by the time they arrived at the famed Ardent Studios in Memphis to track this debut, with a producer who’d prove to be the perfect man for the job - Don Smith, whose resumé included work with Keith Richards, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, and Lone Justice, among many others.

Because they’d been touring extensively, the Hip arrived at Ardent with a group of fully developed songs they’d throughly road-tested. Smith liked to track his projects with the band playing live in the studio, minimal overdubs added later when deemed necessary, and this approach suited the Hip just fine, thanks. Most fans will argue that the Hip is best in the live format, and Smith captured them in a muscular but nuanced manner, ably serving the band’s blend of edgy roots rock, Stones-y shuffles, alt-rock leanings, and folk-based abstractions.

The result is an album that handily transcended its immediate milieu, reaching toward the timeless in a manner that lacked self-consciousness. Time’s passage has only underscored the depth of the material and the subtle brilliance of the production.

The expanded reissue of Up To Here is spread across four LPs or three CDs, with a beautiful book documenting the history of the era, featuring abundant rare photos and liner notes penned by Bruce Dickinson, the A&R man who signed the band to MCA records; engineer Chris Warden, who oversaw the the 1988 demos included in the box; and Hip guitarist Rob Baker.

The reissue includes a newly remastered version of the original album, plus four cuts that didn’t make it - including the “white whale” of Hip tunes, “Get Back Again,” a gorgeous, lambent piece of Downie lyricism with a poignant melody. (“She’s Got What It Takes,” “Rain, Hearts And Fire,” and “Wait So Long” round out the previously unreleased selections, and they’re all worthwhile additions to the Hip canon.)

There’s also the Wardman demos, which offer a fascinating snapshot of the material’s development, and stand as an album in their own right.

A recording of Live At Misty Moon, the concert special filmed for Canada’s MuchMusic in 1990 at the Misty Moon Cabaret in Halifax – with an accompanying one-hour concert film on Blu-ray – rounds out this embarrassment of riches, one that no long-serving fan should be without.

On Monday, December 9, we’ll be celebrating the enduring brilliance of Up To Here with a special edition of the Classic Vinyl Live with Jeff Miers series at the Sportsmen’s Tavern in Buffalo, beginning at 7 p.m. I’ll host a chat to kick things off, and then we’ll screen an exclusive video interview I conducted with Hip bassist Gord Sinclair, covering Up To Here and the band’s documentary, No Dress Rehearsal. Following the chat, The Strictly Hip will perform Up To Here, plus a few perennial fan favorites. And someone will go home with a copy of the deluxe Up To Here box set, as an early Christmas gift.

See you there.