| "Bobcaygeon" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single byThe Tragically Hip | ||||
| from the albumPhantom Power | ||||
| Released | February 1999 | |||
| Recorded | 1998 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 4:55(album version) 4:12(radio edit) | |||
| Label | Universal | |||
| Songwriters | Rob Baker Gordon Downie Johnny Fay Paul Langlois Gord Sinclair | |||
| The Tragically Hip singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"Bobcaygeon" is a song by Canadian rock bandthe Tragically Hip. It was released in February 1999 as a single from their sixth album,Phantom Power, and has come to be recognized as one of the band's most enduring and belovedsignature songs.[1]
The song is named afterBobcaygeon,Ontario, a town in theKawartha Lakes region about 160 kilometres (99 mi) northeast ofToronto. The song's narrator works in the city as a police officer, a job he finds stressful and sometimes ponders quitting, but unwinds from the stress and restores his spirit by spending his weekends with a loved one in the rural idyll of Bobcaygeon, where he sees "the constellations/reveal themselves one star at a time" in contrast to the city's "dull and hypothetical" skies that are "falling one cloud at a time".
In live performances, Tragically Hip singerGord Downie typically explained "Bobcaygeon" as a "cop love song," though the identity of the narrator's beloved changed from performance to performance. In the original video, the male cop's partner is female, but Downie sometimes introduced the song in concert as being "about a couple ofgay cops that fall in love".[2][3]
According to Downie, the song was not specifically written about the town itself, but rather any small town would have worked for the theme[1] and he settled on "Bobcaygeon" primarily because it was the only place name he could find that came close to rhyming with "constellation".[4]
A secondary theme of the song addressesracism andanti-Semitism; Downie has sometimes introduced the song with "This one asks the question: evil in the open or evil just below the surface?",[5] and Rob Baker's guitar has "This machine kills fascists" written on it in the song's video.[5] In the song'sbridge, the British rock bandThe Men They Couldn't Hang are performing a concert at Toronto'sHorseshoe Tavern ("with its checkerboard floors"); when they begin to perform their song "Ghosts of Cable Street", which is about theBattle of Cable Street riot inLondon in 1936, in an "Aryan twang",[6] a similar brawl or riot appears to erupt betweenfascist and anti-fascist activists in the audience, which then weighs heavily on the officer's mind as he drives back to Bobcaygeon in the final verse. (In the video, however, the brawl is visually depicted as occurring at a concert by "The Constellations".) A common interpretation is that the lyrics obliquely reference theChristie Pits riot of 1933, which arose from tensions between Toronto's working-class Jewish community and anti-semitic Swastika clubs following a baseball game;[7] although the song's otherwise contemporary setting leaves this interpretation in question, a similar albeit less famous public brawl between theHeritage Front andAnti-Racist Action did occur in Toronto in 1993 just a few years before Downie wrote the song.[8]
The song won theJuno Award for Single of the Year in 2000.[9]
Much of the "Bobcaygeon" video was filmed at a house inScarborough, Ontario on Beare Road, a location formerly used in Canadian television productions includingAnne of Green Gables andRoad to Avonlea. The house burned to the ground in a fire in 2007.[10]
Former MuchMusic and CBC personalityLaurie Brown made an appearance in the video as a TV reporter.
The song resulted in the town of Bobcaygeon coming to occupy what has been described as a "mythical" place in Canada's collective imagination, as the archetype of a Canadiancottage country paradise.[4]
In 2011 the band performed their first-ever concert in Bobcaygeon, a town ordinarily too small to hold a concert by a major touring rock band;Toronto Star music critic Jason Anderson described their performance of the song at that concert as "a moment of Canuck-rock significance that's roughly equivalent toRoger Waters doingPink Floyd'sThe Wall inBerlin."[11]
Following the band's announcement in 2016 that Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, both theToronto Star andMaclean's sent journalists to the town of Bobcaygeon to write about the residents' feelings about the song and the announcement.[1][4] On the final night of theMan Machine Poem Tour, which saw the band's concert inKingston broadcast nationally byCBC Television, the town held a public viewing on its main street;[12] in addition to local residents, the event was also attended by a significant number of people who had made a "pilgrimage" to view the concert there because of the song.[12] The "Concert Under the Constellations" was the largest public event in the town's history,[13] garnered more widespread media coverage than any other public viewing party anywhere in Canada outside of Kingston,[12][14] and a fundraising initiative during the event resulted in the largest single tour-related donation to theCanadian Cancer Society.[13]
Zoomer Media called it one of the ten best Canadian songs of all time.[15]
The song is on the soundtrack forTrailer Park Boys: The Movie.
Pop singerDamhnait Doyle covered the song on her 2007 albumLights Down Low.
Singer-songwriterJustin Rutledge recorded a cover of the song on his 2014 EPSpring Is a Girl. It was originally recorded for his studio albumDaredevil, which consisted entirely of Tragically Hip covers, but was held back for the follow-up EP.
During his 2016 tour,Dallas Green (City and Colour) regularly performed "Bobcaygeon".[16] In a tribute to Downie at theJuno Awards of 2018 ceremony, Green,Sarah Harmer andKevin Hearn performed a medley of "Bobcaygeon" with the title track from Downie's posthumous solo albumIntroduce Yerself.
AtBlue Rodeo's concert inToronto on August 20, 2016, which was occurring at the same time as the final concert of the Hip's Man Machine Poem Tour, Blue Rodeo performed a rendition of "Bobcaygeon" as video screens around the venue displayed scenes from the concurrent Hip concert in Kingston.[17] Longtime Blue Rodeo guitarist and mandolinist Bob Egan, who was retiring from music and performing his final show with the band that evening, had been a guest musician on the original Tragically Hip recording of the song.
The Canadianindie rock bandPaper Lions posted an a capella rendition of the song to theirYouTube page in August 2016.[18]
On the January 1, 2017 episode ofCBC Radio 2'sThe Strombo Show, a special Tragically Hip tribute episode in which other Canadian musicians performed live versions of Hip songs, "Bobcaygeon" was performed by both Blue Rodeo andRheostatics as the opening and closing song.[19]
ForCBC Music's "Juno 365" project, a promotional initiative for the Juno Awards of 2018 which featured contemporary artists performing covers of past Juno-winning songs,Scott Helman andMidnight Shine both performed covers of "Bobcaygeon".[20]
In 2018, Canadian indie folk bandReuben and the Dark recorded a cover of "Bobcaygeon" as a charity single to benefit theGord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund.[21]
In 2022, sibling singer-songwritersT. Buckley andMariel Buckley released a cover of the song.[22]
At a May 2024 concert inVancouver, American rock bandPearl Jam interpolated parts of "Bobcaygeon" into their own 1993 single "Daughter".[23]
In 2024, country singer-songwriterOwen Riegling covered the song as anAmazon Music exclusive.[24]
On September 5, 2024, it was one of three songs, alongside "Ahead by a Century" and "Grace, Too", performed byChoir! Choir! Choir! in a public singalong following the premiere of the documentary seriesThe Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal at the2024 Toronto International Film Festival.[25]
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Downie introduced the next song as one "...about a couple of gay cops that fall in love. One lives in the city, and the other lives in the country. You can see the dilemma... the commute," and the band started playing "Bobcaygeon".
