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The Tragically Hip Top Forty Countdown: Song Thirty-Eight – Lynn from MaineHey, it’s jD, and this week I’m joined by Lynn from Maine — a self-described “black-and-white music listener” who found her way to The Hip in full Technicolor thanks to a box of CDs, a pandemic, and a husband with very good taste.Lynn’s Hipstory is one of slow-burn devotion: twenty years of casual exposure through her partner’s fandom before a pivotal night during the Tiger King era unlocked something deeper. That something? Long Time Running — the doc, the music, the feeling of a country coming together. It all hit just right. From there, it was a deep dive through Hex and Kettle, live DVDs, YouTube rabbit holes, and eventually a Courage mask worn into cancer surgery — because if Gord could go on tour, Lynn could go get chemo and go to work the next day. Gord Fucking Downie, indeed.She’s got stories. About concerts she barely remembers (hello, elevator packed with 19 Canadians and one mouthy dietician). About using The Hip to reconnect after a hard stretch. About rediscovering beauty and grief, sometimes in the same verse. And about naming her pandemic cat after the man himself — full government name and all: Gord Effing Downie.🎙️ Next week: We’re heading north of Toronto for a chat with Devon from Stouffville — a teacher, poet, and fan who once swore off The Hip… and then came back like the rest of us do: hard and fast and all in.💬 Pull Quote“I wore my Courage mask into surgery. If Gord could do it, so could I.”👤 About Our GuestLynn from Maine came late to The Hip — but not too late. A John Prine fan at heart and a lyrics-over-melody type, she credits the band with helping her and her husband reconnect, survive the pandemic, and find something beautiful to share after 20 years of marriage.She listens to Trouble at the Henhouse in her car, has strong opinions about We Are the Same, and named her cat after Gord (with the full “effing” included). She’s a reminder that fandom doesn’t need to be loud to be life-changing.📬 Get Involved🎙️ Drop your hot take: castfeedback.com/tthtop40📧 Send your Hipstory: tthtop40@gmail.com💸 Support the show + join the membersHIP: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40📡 Follow + StreamListen on: Spotify | Apple | YouTube | dewvre.com/tthtop40Follow us: Instagram: @tthtop40Join the group: facebook.com/groups/tthtop40💸 Support ALS CanadaWe’re raising $25K for the ALS Society of Canada in honour of our friend Matt Rona. This countdown is more than a list — it’s a love letter. If you’ve ever been moved by The Hip, help us hit our goal:buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40📜 Transcript follows below.The Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown2025-05-23, 6:11 PMThe Tragically Hip Top 40 CountdownArtist: jDYear: 2025Transcript[0:00] A member of the DATC Media family. Previously on the Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown.Darren from Toronto, what did you think of You're Not the Ocean when you heard this kickoff trackthe first time? I loved the whole album from the beginning, the whole World Container album. It wasdefinitely more polished, but I loved the track. Like You're Not the Ocean was another in a long lineof amazing opening songs for hip albums. Oh, great. Great. It's uncanny, their ability. They had agreat ability to begin and end albums with great, great songs.[0:44] Music.[0:51] Hey, it's JT here, and welcome to the Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown. It is an absolutepleasure to be here with you week over week, where we're counting down 40 essential tracks bythe hip that you selected with your very own top 20 ballots. I then was responsible for tabulating theresults using an abacus and bottomless joe, bacon, hash browns, and three eggs, any way you likethem. How will your favorite song fare in the rankings? You'll need to tune in every week to find out.So there's that. This week I'm joined by TTH superfan Lynn from Maine. Lynn from Maine, how thehell are you doing on this hip-tastic day? Oh, we are doing great down here.[1:38] Fabulous oh no yeah oh gosh let's get right into this let's uh let's roll the die here and go rightdown to your origin story your tragically hip origin story all right well this is it's a bit long andconvoluted but my husband is from northern Maine which is all the way up in caribou so about Idon't know 20 minutes half an hour from the border so he is a hip fan and when we met in 1999, Iknew this about him and he had been trying...[2:11] To, you know, get me addicted as, as he was. Cause he lives, breathes everything, the hip.And I just don't see or hear music like, like you guys do. Like I hear music in black and white andyou guys hear it in Technicolor. And so, you know, I'm more of a John Prine kind of like BrandiCarlisle, just singer songwriter, kind of just basic music person. Um, and so, but the hip has beenfile:///Users/jd/Desktop/TTHTop40%20-%20603.htmlPage 1 of 8The Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown2025-05-23, 6:11 PMso instrumental in his life. He was always just trying to like, push on me or slip a CD in or, oranything like that. So for 20 years that went on for 20 years and then 2020 came. And, uh, youknow, during the tiger King portion of the pandemic, when there was nothing on television, uh, youkind of felt like the whole world was falling apart. Uh, you know, there was the anti-maskers antithis, and, um, we both worked for, um, um businesses that were straight out we were both so busyat work during the pandemic um.[3:15] Both i work for a closing attorney so we handled real estate transactions my husband spellssell electrical supplies we were like bombarded with work so we basically just came home, watchedtv and went to bed and then got up the next day went to work and you know we did that for monthsso we were out of things to watch and um we he said well can we watch long time running And Iwas just like, okay, because I had just gone to Netflix and did it.[3:44] And it just hit me at the right time. So I think it was just like the perfect moment where I justwanted to see people come together for something. Yeah. First of all, like, you know, we couldn'tagree on anything down here, probably a lot like that going up there. But down here, we couldn'tagree on anything. There was no country. It was just a bunch of different people disagreeing abouteverything. And what I saw on that is, first of all, a country getting together behind this group ofindividuals just for their joy. But also the friendship and the holding up of your friends. And you sawthat in the documentary repeatedly over and over again. And so that kind of started my spiraltowards, okay, well, what's next? I will listen to this. And so, you know, the following weekend.Yeah. So the following weekend, my husband comes down with his, you know, a box of stuff. Stuffand we watched hex and kettle and a couple other things he had and this and that and we endedup just going through his whole collection of everything um and that got me hooked and it gave ussomething to talk about as well because you know when your only communication is that oneperson.[5:02] There's not a lot to talk about after 20 years um and you know except work but the work is thesame you know we didn't go out or do anything so um so there was that and so that ended up, youknow for like a year that's what we did and um then this then may of 2021 came and we all hadthese hopes like okay it's gonna be over we're getting vaccinated um and then the day i gotvaccinated i also found out i had cancer and in my um there's a line in sorry yeah there's a line inlong time running when when gorge just goes and you know we're all ready for this and then braincancer and um luckily i did not have glioblastoma thank god um and it was breast cancer whichwas difficult um enough but at least it wasn't that right um.[5:55] But because of that, we also we remained isolated basically just ourselves for a whole notherfile:///Users/jd/Desktop/TTHTop40%20-%20603.htmlPage 2 of 8The Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown2025-05-23, 6:11 PMyear. And listening to the hip and having that to communicate kind of really cemented our marriage,which could have gone either way because a lot of marriages did during the pandemic.[6:10] But it yeah, but it really gave us something to talk about and sending memes. Or did you seethis in it?[6:15] Because, you know, there was all this information on TikTok and, you know, YouTube and allthat.[6:22] So it's like, well, did you see this interview? Did you see that interview? and you know justsending things back and forth to each other and you know listening to music and of course then themusic the lyrics itself kind of like bring you by so yeah um the before mask were readily availablethe first mask we bought we bought um the hip we're selling them on all the courage ones they hadcourage on the front and so when he dropped me off at uh to get my surgery because you get justdropped off at the door you can't go in um oh you know you're just going by yourself during thepandemic you know that's what i wore to surgery was my courage mask because you know you'rethere all by yourself um and i had amazing medical professionals like i can't get over how umphenomenal they were but still you're still by yourself because you don't even have your husbandor a friend there with oh that must have been so tough um it was tough but i mean we got through itand it you know it ended up being complicated as hell and this side effect and this thing went wrongand that thing went wrong but um but we got of it and part of the reason we got it got through it notonly for me was the hip because like I said the songs just kind of me through even if it was just so itwas just funny like you know Gus the polar bear like just cracks me up because you knowespecially where it was against Bush and I just uh I thought he was whole um I'd love to have himback but um yeah.[7:46] It just, you know, the funny parts and the funny bits and, you know, long time running becamemy, um, I would put it on when I, if I go, when I went to bed, I would just put it on and listen to it as Iwent to bed. And yeah, I mean, it's a horrible story of, you know, somebody dying, but on the otherhand, just has so many good moments of people being humans, good humans, you know, showinglove and support and the country getting together and, and whatever. And so, um, that's what gotus through the past few years. That's tremendous. That's my origin story. Did you? Oh, and also I, I,I, I would be, um, I have to mention that when we did get a cat during the pandemic, that was my,um, when things were going really crappy with the cancer part, we, my husband let me get a catand we did name him Gord the cat. Oh, that's spectacular. Official name is Gord effing Downie.And, um, so that way when my husband gets irritated, he can yell the whole name, but, um, he's,he's our little addition. Oh, that's really special. I love the name.file:///Users/jd/Desktop/TTHTop40%20-%20603.htmlPage 3 of 8The Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown2025-05-23, 6:11 PM[8:54] So what, what record do you go to at this point? Or are you still like indoctrinating yourselfwith the records at this point? Are you listening to singles? Like how, how do you go about, um,going from somebody who didn't really like the band to seeing a long time running and then, youknow, getting into them? Did you start at the start? Did you cherry pick? What did you do, Lynn?Yeah.[9:20] Well, so we did originally start at the start. So when we have to go to Caribou from here, it'sabout, I don't know, five, six hours, depending if we leave from here or work.[9:30] And like we'll put in like CDs the whole way. So, you know, we'll listen to it that way. And we'llstart from the beginning when we do that. But I kind of picked my, just picked random ones rightnow. Trouble at the Hen House is in my car. I still have a CD player in my car. So that's what I'mlistening to right now. but it changes whatever I have in there. I listened to it and that's my favoriteuntil I listen to something else. Um, getting my husband to part with his CD because I'm a klutz andI will break, like I will drop, you know, just the way I am. So like I have to get my own. So, um, Idon't have all of them myself. Um, I have to borrow his with, uh, barely, you know, touching it, but athome he'll put, different ones in and then we also went you know through all of gourd's stuff as wellso we're just kind of because it's kind of like you have to listen to it a bunch of times and every timeyou pick up something else so right now i have trouble at the house repeat and i do have your uhyour favorites and you know in there as well as like on constant rotation uh we we are the sameused to be my favorite which is really funny and i think it's just because you know the depressionsuite at home but it's like i always felt there was like it needed something more and now that i youknow watch the documentary now i can see why what's missing you know the lyrics are there butthe.[10:58] The soul is missing a little bit, I think. It doesn't feel like a hip album. But that's just me. Thesame way. Yeah, it's too much. It's too clean sounding. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think so. I'mnot the pro that you guys are with describing music, but it's a little too clean to me.[11:20] And it just doesn't have as much grit, I guess. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agreewith that. It's pretty. It's a very pretty album. but that's not really who they are it's one level insteadof multi it's funny though because there are no like bad hip albums it's just not in my upper tier youknow yeah i will still throw that on every once in a while though i will still totally throw that i'm withyou i like depression sweet a lot i guess it and it really and it's funny so it's like it is like a whole newdiscovery because it's not the music i mean again music has always been mostly in the backgroundfor me Like at work, I listened to, you know, um, show tunes or John Prine and now the hip, but Imean like that, my Spotify playlist is pretty boring. Um, it's not like, I'm not the person that's, Oh, didfile:///Users/jd/Desktop/TTHTop40%20-%20603.htmlPage 4 of 8The Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown2025-05-23, 6:11 PMyou hear this new band? You know, I mean, once in a while, like Chapel Rhone has really like hitme right now, but you know, but the hip, it's just always something different. Every time you sitdown and listen to it, it's, it's really rewarding music, isn't it? If you put in the time, like you getsomething larger out of the songs.[12:26] Than the songs themselves, if that makes sense. But I think you have to be like, I mean, Ithink I just had to be in the right space and yeah, it took 20 years to be able to settle down andlisten, but you know, Did your husband ever drag you to a show or did he ever get to see a show?Oh yeah. So that is a funny story. So back in the early days of our relationship, Um, when we stillwere trying harder to get into each other's likes, um, he actually, we went to St. John, NewBrunswick in 1999 in December, uh, 2000, excuse me, 2000. Uh, we went to, we went to St. John,New Brunswick. And so we drove there and his whole thing of getting me away for the weekendwas, oh, we're going to stay in a hotel. There's going to be a mall, you know, whatever. It was just amiserable trip. it was so cold it was so miserable and my anxiety was like 110 and um at that pointin my life anyway and it was just to be in a concert or whatever with all these uh very enthusiasticCanadians it was fine he enjoyed the concert but it…
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