By Jim Kelly
Photos by Richard Beland

For Canadian rock bands, touring across this vast country presents its own set of challenges and rewards, spawning no small share of road stories and legends. Many of those are captured in Dave Bidini's recent book, On A Cold Road: Tales Of Adventure In Canadian Rock — which documents Bidini's touring experiences as his band, Rheostatics, opened for The Tragically Hip across Canada in the winter of 1996. Presently, The Hip are in the midst of their biggest Canadian tour to date: The Phantom Power tour will hit 28 cities between late January and early March. Joining them for this outing is Toronto band By Divine Right. I sat down with The Hip's Gord Downie and BDR's José Contreras to discuss life on the road and the view from various stages of the Great Canadian Rock 'N' Roll Pilgrimage.

You've gone out of your way on this Canadian tour to play several places The Hip have either never played before, or haven't played in many years…

Downie: Yeah, Charlottetown. Never played there. A big oversight. We got drunk there on St. Patrick's Day once… The St. Patrick's Day Massacre, we call it. We had played Summerside and had a layover on St. Patrick's Day in Charlottetown. We were pouring beer on each other's heads in a bar. It was awesome. What a night! One for the books.

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