The Tragically Hips’ Road Apples turns 30, and to celebrate we are having a Tragically Hip Weekend.
You’ll hear songs from all their albums, plus we’ll throw the spotlight on Roxy & Elsewhere during the Saturday Night Concert Series and crank out every note from Road Apples on the Sunday Night Vinyl Series. For now, here are some fun facts about the album:

1. Road Apples came out in 1991, becoming The Tragically Hip’s first No. 1 on the Canadian charts. It’s their third album to have Diamond certification.

2. The band initially wanted to call the album Saskadelphia, but the name was rejected by their American label for being “too Canadian”. They then said, “…we’ll call it ‘Horseshit.” And they did, Road Apples is a term referring to horse poop. However, they recently released Saskadelphia, which is comprised of six unreleased tracks they discovered, mostly from studio sessions for Road Apples. You can hear the single “Ouch” from those recordings, below.

3. It was during the Road Apples tour that Downie became recognized for his ranting and story telling during songs like “Highway Girl” and “New Orleans is Sinking”.

4. The 11th track on the album, “Fiddler’s Green”, was written for Gord Downie’s young nephew, who unfortunately passed away during the album’s production. It was very rare for the band to play it live, until their final tour. 

5. Road Apples references Shakespeare four times. “Cordelia” is one of them, the song is named after a character from ‘King Lear’. Gord explained that the song ‘Cordelia’ has very little to do with ‘King Lear’ itself.
“Except for the fact that Cordelia was his third daughter who, when asked how she felt about him, she said she felt as she always had. That was the basic premise of the song, to say that I’m not like her, I’m not gonna be patient and hang around.”

 

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the album, The Hip have released The Road Apples 30th Anniversary Edition Vinyl Box Set. You can check out an unboxing below.