With illusions of someday
Casting a golden light,
No dress rehearsal,
This is our life.

If somehow, you hear that phrase above as the lyric to one of your favorite songs, then like me, you know of and love The Tragically Hip. There are a fair few of us here in the United States.

Up in Canada though, it’s not necessary to explain who The Hip, as they are commonly known, are: from 1996 to 2016 The Hip were the biggest-selling band in the whole country. And while they sold out shows in smaller venues in the US, appeared on Saturday Night Live, and played a set at the infamous Lollapalooza 1999, they weren’t America’s band the way they were Canada’s own.

The band, led by charismatic frontman and lyricist Gord Downie, decided to call it quits when Downie lost his life due to brain cancer in 2017. The year before, The Hip went on a 15-show tour that allowed them to say goodbye to their home country fans in sold-out shows throughout the provinces. The final show, in Kingston, Ontario, where they began their careers, was televised and garnered the second-highest television viewership of anything, ever, in the entire country.

When Gord passed, it was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a friend of the band, who announced it on television. The nation mourned. I mourned. I had been a fan of the group since its early days; though I have always lived in the US, by living in northwest Ohio I was Canada-adjacent as far as radio and television coverage was concerned, and The Tragically Hip quickly became my favorite band that hailed from our neighbor to the north.

This roundabout introduction to a band you may never have heard of (but should listen to!) is my way of introducing a review of a four-part documentary about the band that premiered on Prime Video this past week. The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal as it is fittingly called, chronicles the bands formation and early days with an astounding amount of footage from their first gigs at bars in Kingston, some of which was shot before the band even changed their name. (The Tragically Hip moniker came from Mike Nesmith’s long-form music video Elephant Parts, in case you were wondering.)

From those inauspicious beginnings, the band, through a combination of relentless gigging, memorable performances (Downie didn’t play an instrument initially and his showmanship was truly otherworldly, in a good way) and original songs that were damn good, came to the attention of the right people in the music industry. They were given a recording contract, sold a lot of albums, and eventually went national.

Although most of the talking heads in No Dress Rehearsal are members of the band, their friends and family members, and managers, agents, and other members of The Hip’s support team, Mike Downie does interview a few celebrities and fellow musicians, like Will Arnett, Jay Baruchel, Bruce McCulloch of the Kids in the Hall, for their tributes to the band.

Through chart-topping success and the inevitable (if slight) dip in popularity, Mike Downie’s documentary doesn’t pull any punches by looking at only the good times – The Hip’s growing pains and in-fighting is presented in full; Gord Downie is missed but never martyred. He’s allowed to be a human being, fully, completely.

The last episode of the documentary was one I nearly dreaded watching, as it covered Gord’s illness and death, the mourning period afterwards, and eventually looks at how the surviving band members, Gord’s family, and the nation have worked through their grief. If you feel anything close to what I do about this band, you will cry. But in a cathartic way.

There are some superlative moments in this amazing documentary, which earlier this month won the audience-voted People’s Choice award for documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). After The Hip had issued a couple albums of songs co-written by the band, Downie told his bandmates he didn’t want to sing anyone else’s lyrics anymore – he would take over all songwriting duties. But, when it came to the song royalties, he insisted that the band share them equally; in the ledgers of the music publishing companies, the earnings would be split five ways.

Another moment involved the story behind the song “Fiddler’s Green,” which appeared on the band’s Road Apples album. At first listen, this song seems to be about a young sailor lost at sea. But the documentary tells the whole story: Downie’s three-year-old nephew died of a congenital heart condition and this song is an elegy to his memory.

After Gord’s death, we see how the rest of band copes, or doesn’t. It’s easy to forget that they lost not only their friend, but their vision of the future. They would never again play together like they had in the past. And for reasons even they don’t understand, they all grieved separately for years before finally coming together in 2020 to discuss preserving the band’s legacy.

Mike Downie is obviously intimately acquainted with all of these moments, but through his film generously shares the story of his brother, his family, the band of brothers that formed the group so beloved by an entire country (and many of us in other countries!), and the triumph and tragedy that we all have experienced.

As a companion to the documentary, the previously unreleased tracks “Wait So Long” and “Get Back Again” are now available. Both are part of the reissue of their first studio album, 1989’s Up to Here, which will be out November 8th of this year.

The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal is simply an outstanding piece of work.