Gord Downie And The Country Of Miracles

Gordon Downie first gained recognition as the lead singer of the Tragically Hip. A Canadian singer and songwriter born February 6, 1964, in Amherstview, Ontario, he helped establish the Tragically Hip in 1983. The group issued its initial commercial recording, the MCA-backed EP titled The Tragically Hip, in 1987 and followed with the full-length Up to Here two years later. Road Apples arrived in 1991 and reached the summit of the Canadian charts; the five subsequent studio albums likewise topped those rankings, establishing the Tragically Hip among the decade’s most commercially dominant Canadian acts and earning the band ten Juno Awards.

Downie stepped out on his own with the 2001 solo debut Coke Machine Glow, issued by Zoe alongside an accompanying volume of poetry and featuring support from Julie Doiron, Josh Finlayson, Atom Egoyan, Dale Morningstar, and Dave Clark. Battle of the Nudes, his next solo effort, appeared on Rounder Records in 2003. He then rejoined the Tragically Hip for In Between Evolution (2004), World Container (2006), and We Are the Same (2009) before returning to solo work with The Grand Bounce, credited to Gord Downie & the Country of Miracles. Although the billing had changed, the record again drew on essentially the same circle of musicians; Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie handled production, and the album climbed to the Top Ten of the Canadian charts while generating the single “The East Wind.”