Maybe I'm not giving people in the audience enough credit for actually thinking about what they're singing, but it's awesome when a rock'n'roll groove and melody can transport something from Barometer Rising or whatever [ed: it's from 1958's The Watch That Ends the Night] into [Toronto's] Molson Ampitheatre and have people just owning it.

My friend worked at a record store in Burlington and I really liked R.E.M. and a lot of music, but I didn't go to see much. I was 16, so I wasn't in bars unless I knew the band and could get in.

My drummer right now, who was also the first drummer in Weeping Tile, Jon McCann, told me that [Hip drummer] Johnny Fay took drum lessons from [McCann's] dad, who taught a lot of the drummers in Kingston. He said that when he was in Grade 9, the Hip were the model; the goal was to get an agent and gig as much as possible.

[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.

Ah come on, these streams of light are not so subtle. All along the ditch, signs of life in sinking puddles!

No offence to Hugh MacLennan, but you don't even have to know or understand any deep philosophy that's being espoused, you can just have the feeling of those words together, and that you know them and can sing along with that melody with your fist up in the air. It's a wild vehicle for sentiment, because it's so powerful on the musical front.

Maybe I'm not giving people in the audience enough credit for actually thinking about what they're singing, but it's awesome when a rock'n'roll groove and melody can transport something from Barometer Rising or whatever [ed: it's from 1958's The Watch That Ends the Night] into [Toronto's] Molson Ampitheatre and have people just owning it.