Gord Sinclair - Taxi Dancers (2020)

Gord Sinclair, well known as the bassist and songwriter in legendary Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, is gearing up to release his debut solo record Taxi Dancers on February 28th via Pheromone Recordings.

Taxi Dancers is a farewell of sorts, fearlessly exploring Sinclair’s despair about losing a lifelong friend and bandmate. But it is also a clear-eyed survey of what’s good in the world, and a profound statement about why sorrow must be viewed in tandem with joy. Both are elemental aspects of living, and music – especially rock music, with its boundless capacity for nuance, shading, and sheer emotional heft – is perhaps life’s purest mirror.

“I never aspired to be a solo artist,” Sinclair says, “After Gord died, it was like, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I am ever going to do this again.’ But I really missed making music. I’d made music with The Hip since we were kids, and this was the longest period of time where I wasn’t making music. But we certainly were not going to carry on as The Hip without Gord. So it became essential to grab hold of the idea that Gord wouldn’t want any of us to stop making music. He was making music right up until the very end. This other group of people stepped in to help me. Gord would have wanted me to have something important to say. That’s what I tried to do.”