Gord Sinclair Shares Unreleased Tragically Hip Song for Charity

The bassist wrote "Get Back Again" over 30 years ago

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished May 26, 2020

After making his solo debut with Taxi Dancers earlier this year, Tragically Hip bassist and co-founder Gord Sinclair has unearthed and rerecorded a rarity from his old band for a charitable cause.

Sinclair and his Taxi Dancers backing band have reworked "Get Back Again," a song the artist had written for the group in their early days that "never made it onto a Hip record but somehow...managed to stick in some people's minds."

As he recalled to the Canadian Press, "We were transitioning from being a cover band to an original band, and we really needed material and we were each kind of writing songs to try to get into the set."

While song was never given a proper release by the Tragically Hip, the band had been known to work it into early setlists.

Sharing a video of himself and the band in-studio, Sinclair reflected on how the recording was born out of a final Taxi Dancers photo session at the Hip's Bathouse studio in Kingston, ON.

"In retrospect, given the tectonic shift the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to all our lives, I couldn't have imagined this would be our last opportunity for the foreseeable future to assemble and do what musicians love to do, play and record together," Sinclair wrote. "Now, more than ever, the song's sentiment rings true for me. I miss the life I knew and loved as a recording artist; as a performer. I miss my friends and family. I miss life. I think that's a sentiment we all share in this time, wherever you are and whatever you do."

Sinclair told the Canadian Press that proceeds from the single will benefit the Kingston Food Bank and the Unison Benevolent Fund, which provides counselling, emergency relief and benefit programs for those in the Canadian music community.

"This is a song that really only existed in kind of really raw live recordings available on the internet and yet it has a resonance with people," Sinclair told CP. "It's quite astounding to me. It was a very innocent attempt at songwriting by a very young me. But it's cool. It's cool that way."

You can hear "Get Back Again" below.

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