In my mind I still qualify as punk, though I know four out of five punks would disagree..

No one else writes like Gord Downie, so it's difficult to compare him. He can work in the abstract and still somehow be really specific. He lets part….

I think of Gord Downie voice as Whitman-esque. He has a poetic voice that contains multitudes, both the suppleness of the instrument of his voice, an….

There are definitely parts of me in most of the protagonists I write, but I find a bit of distance can be useful, so I often find myself better able ….

I try to write lyrics that will be able to function on their own if they get separated from the music. But I wouldn't want to take anything away from….

I listened to lots of other kinds of music, but punk is what allowed me to actually play music..

John Berger once defined music by saying that it began as a howl, became a prayer, then a lament, and still contains the elements of all three. I thi….

I've always viewed my career with some suspicion, like I don't want to count on it to be the only thing I do. Partly that has to do with feeling like….

I think we all have a certain number of "coming of age" songs, and then a writer has to expand and grow into more varied and specific themes. And the….

That's something I've certainly taken from writers like Gord Downie is that there is a whole potential for breaking out of meter. Even if you don't d….

I still think of myself as punk, because the way I became empowered to play music is entirely due to punk bands..

One of the wonderful things about music these days is that it's less cliqueish..

I was listening to this interview with fiction writer George Saunders the other day, and he said something about how the role of a writer is to build….

A more detailed world is a more complicated and complex one, and therefore a more empathetic one. I feel Gord's Downie lyrics are exceptionally empat….

I do get a little shy about contemporary language and events, but I also enjoy the idea of dating myself, somehow, anchoring a song in a specific tim….

In this frightening, anxious time to be alive it can be liberating to remember that nothing lasts forever. That can focus and invigorate our hopes..

I would only listen to certain things, like a lot of teenagers do. But the Tragically Hip is a ribbon that's been with me pretty much my entire music….

I always go into listening to a new record by Gord Downie solo or The Tragically Hip and think, "Well, I know what this is going to be, lyrically." E….