Gordon Downie of the Tragically Hip has often pondered why his band -- the most popular rock act in Canada for nearly a decade -- has yet to crack the American market. It's not that the matter particularly troubles the frontman, but he's faced with the question nearly every time he submits to an interview.

"I used to spend a lot of time trying to nail it, because I'd be asked so often," he admits. "The person would usually feel that they had to tip-toe into it, and an editor would be breathing down their neck to make sure they got the elbow of the story -- which I guess is that one."

Case in point, this time around, he's asked if "the America thing" has ever worked its way into a song. "I don't think so," he says after a moment. "Any time I've tried to deal with it, or talk about it or answer it, it's always been inadequate. Without exception.

"At this point in time," he continues, "I feel mercifully kind of non-plussed about it."

And not without reason. Although the Hip doesn't move units in the States like they do on their own turf, they have nonetheless steadily established a healthy American cult audience while remaining bonafide monsters of rock back home. Make all the Canadian jokes your heart desires, but say this much about them -- Canadian rock fans stick by you. While great American rock bands like R.E.M. and Pearl Jam have seen their sales shrink in the last few years, the Hip's ninth album, Music@Work, debuted at No. 1 last week on the Canadian album chart. Coming in at No. 2 and 3? A couple of also-rans named Eminem and Britney.

The Tragically Hip's following is so loyal, in fact, that when advance copies of Music@Work leaked onto the Web and eBay weeks before the album's release, it was the fans -- not the band -- that started a campaign to report the offending parties. Metallica would kill for fans like that.

"There were people who were stepping in on our behalf, buying it and then squashing it or blocking it or hiding it, or putting it away without listening to it," Downie says with no small hint of wonder. "That kind of stuff, I guess it's unheard of, and dare I say typical when it comes to us. And I guess that makes me proud in a sort of way. Our fans know what to do."

One good thing about the leak of band's music on the Web, notes Downie, is that it allows the numerous Tragically Hip cover bands in Canada to keep up with them. "I suppose they're all boning up and rehearsing as we speak," he says amusedly, though he swears he's never had the desire to check them out. "I've had friends who come back from them and tell me it's like being on acid, and the last time I did acid, it was a very, very lousy situation. There's too much moral complexity in my life to risk it any more."

Bar a couple of stand-out anthems ("My Music at Work" and "Putting Down"), Music@Work finds the Hip navigating moodier territory than they did on their last album, 1998's Phantom Power. That album, which like Music@Work was produced by Los Lobos' Steve Berlin, was hook-for-hook the Hip's most accessible outing since their breakthrough 1992 effort, Fully Completely. By contrast, Music@Work leans heavily towards the dark and mysterious, with guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay winding their way through rhythmic jams almost as hypnotically convoluted as Downie's famously impenetrable lyrics. Well, almost. In "Tiger the Lion," Downie juxtaposes a theory on the nature of art borrowed from John Cage with an image of fighter pilots addressing each other by their nicknames while discussing the great unknown. Downie laughs readily when asked if the rest of the band ever calls him to task, demanding, "What the hell does that mean?"

"I can get caught up with meaning," he admits. "Does it have enough meaning? What is the meaning? Is there a meaning here, and if asked by someone, which is really the only time it comes into play, what can I say? But all you're really striving for is one decent line per record. That's advice I gave someone once, and now I'm trying to take it myself."

On Music@Work, that line may well be the nugget in the last verse of "Train Overnight": " . . . if it's not a Canada of a pain / we'll entertain the idea of a train." A "Canada of a pain," Downie elaborates when pressed, is "pretty goddamn big. It's the second largest pain in the world, next to China. But China doesn't have an extra syllable, and I don't want them mad at me."

Not that Downie has ever been shy about alluding to Canada in his lyrics, be it via geographical citations or hockey references. But he insists he's never been a nationalist. "I can say that with a straight face," he says. "If I do believe in a country, it's the country of me. At the risk of sounding immodest of self-obsessed or overly concerned with my identity, I can't help it -- that's sort of a national past time." Perhaps to that end, Downie's recently recorded his first solo album, an endeavor he sees as an "obvious, logical conclusion of learning how to be a songwriter."

"I think it's beautiful," he says a little shyly of the effort. "I mean, that's what people close to me tell me." But before he sees it released, there's Music@Work to work, as the Hip set out on their American tour this week. "The theory is that I will be refurbished and reinvigorated," he says of the road ahead. "And I think that will probably be true. It's a strange thing. I'm just sort of blissfully confused by it all. But it's a good confusion."

So how does the frontman of the biggest band in Canada spend his time when he's not at work with his music? Hockey, of course, though not the NHL variety, which he says he's soured on of late. These days he's more likely be spotted watching a women's hockey game, or playing incognito at the outdoor rink near his Toronto home. The kids there know him only as "The Goalie Who Lives Across the Street."

"I'm never seen without my mask, and I don't talk to anybody," Downie laughs. "And these kids, they come up to my thigh and they're shooting at you from all directions, asking you how much your head weighs with your helmet on. There's birds flying overhead and it's beautiful. That's hockey."

RICHARD SKANSE
(June 28, 2000)