Tragically Hip to play four Artpark shows

The Buffalo News
By Jeff Miers
NEWS POP MUSIC CRITIC

The Tragically Hip — Canada’s most popular rock band and a huge fan favorite in Western New York — will perform four shows in five days at Artpark this June, The Buffalo News has learned.

The band, which sold out two shows at the Lewiston venue last summer, will launch its tour there at 7 p. m. June 2 and continue with shows at 7 p. m. on June 4, 5 and 6, according to promoter Fun Time Presents. Fun Time’s Artie Kwitchoff and Donny Kutzbach will announce the concerts today.

Tickets for all four shows are $59.50 apiece and will go on sale at noon Friday through Tickets.com and the Artpark box office. All seats are reserved pavilion seating.

The tour is to promote the Hip’s 12th studio album, “We Are the Same,” to be released April 7.

The Tragically Hip performed its first area show within the relatively intimate confines of Nietzsche’s in Allentown back in 1989. The band, led by Gordon Downie, has been performing here ever since, in venues ranging from the Town Ballroom, to Darien Lake Performing Arts Center to HSBC Arena, building a sizable and incredibly loyal Buffalo audience in the process.

Since its formation in Kingston, Ont., where it cut its teeth in a manner similar to many Buffalo groups — covering the songs of famous acts in tiny bars and gradually sneaking in more and more of its own material — the Tragically Hip has grown into one of the most successful bands ever in Canada, selling out arenas from Vancouver to Toronto.

Buffalo has long mirrored Canada’s Hip-mania. And though the Hip has amassed a vast fan base here and in other border cities such as Detroit, in most other parts of the United States, it remains more of a cult act, routinely playing in midsize clubs.

“We in Buffalo know what Canada knows,” said Kutzbach. “This is one of the last great rock bands of our era. There is a definite artistic side to the band; they’re great musicians, and Gord Downie is a wonderful poet. But there’s also always that salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar aspect to what they do. It’s real, genuine rock ’n’ roll, and that’s something to value, because it’s so rare today.”

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