{"id":33335,"date":"2023-07-20T17:51:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=33335"},"modified":"2023-07-20T17:51:09","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:51:09","slug":"from-the-hip-aims-to-capture-magic-of-downie-and-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/from-the-hip-aims-to-capture-magic-of-downie-and-company\/","title":{"rendered":"From The Hip aims to capture magic of Downie and company"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andrew Muia and Nick Foti are, according to Muia, \u201cself-proclaimed superfans\u201d of The Tragically Hip \u2013 but, as the two musicians honed their craft together, they graduated to a next level of fandom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muia and Foti, along with CJ Ashley, Gianluca Mauro, and Steven Piersanti, have pooled their musical talents to further the legacy of one of their favourite bands as From the Hip, a group that is rapidly gaining a reputation of one of the best tributes to one of Canada\u2019s favorite bands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, they\u2019re set to bring the sounds of The Tragically Hip back to Town Park next Wednesday, July 26, as part of Aurora\u2019s Concerts in the Park series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although relatively new on the tribute circuit, the band has deep roots for Muia and Foti going all the way back to high school. The duo brought on friends, who, in turn, continued recruitment, and the band hit it off right away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe lyrics, for me, were always the thing they brought me in,\u201d says Muia. \u201c[Late Tragically Hip frontman Gord] Downie was such a unique writer in the way he told a story; he was not just a songwriter, but a storyteller. For live shows, he would have stories in between the songs and going back to listen to old concert footage, you can hear the start of a song. What really pulled me in were the performance aspect, the writing, the painting of a picture and the creating of an atmosphere and a mood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it takes a lot of work to get into the \u201crhythm\u201d of such an iconic group \u2013 and it\u2019s often a fine line between impersonation and paying tribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe try to balance imitation vs. honouring,\u201d he says. \u201cThe best way coming in is just doing things here and there that Gord would do, and, at the same time, do my own thing. I think we do a pretty good job of bringing that energy back. I say it all the time in shows that I am lucky enough to surround myself with some of the best musicians I think that are out there. Sometimes when Gianluca is doing something on his pedal board, I\u2019ll think that is so close to the album\u2026 it is a great way to honour them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 2020, From the Hip booked a gig for September of that year at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts. By March, COVID-19 had other plans, sidelining bands the world over. But rather than waiting to simply see what happened, the pandemic proved to be From the Hip\u2019s time to shine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe thought we had to create our own opportunities,\u201d says Muia of the myriad cancelled bookings. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t sit back and wait for the bookings to happen because they weren\u2019t going to happen and even if they did, they could get shut down at any moment. We found the Markham Fairgrounds, where the Hip had played a couple of times, and spoke to them about doing an outdoor drive-in show. We knew we might not be able to fill the whole place, but we put on a festival called GrungeFest and invited a few other bands to join us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe realization [we had clicked] came that night when we looked out into the crowd and there were just rows and rows of headlights, people who came to watch us in their cars and listen to it on the radio. That was the moment we thought, \u2018We can really do this. This is going to be good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helping, of course, were the deep roots The Hip have in the Canadian psyche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s that Canadiana thing,\u201d says Muia. \u201cWe\u2019re really dealing with a large group of people who are just really captured by the music. I know I am captured by the music; I can still put on any album and listen to it front to back and not get bored, even songs that we have been playing over and over. For audiences [I think they are] reminders of their youth. The songs evoke memories, feelings that we\u2019ve had, bad and good, and the way that we could relate to the lyrics, the way that we could relate to the music, the way it made us feel, the people we were with when we were listening to it, the people we were in love with, the people who broke our hearts when we were listening to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor a lot of people, it\u2019s really that trip down memory lane that keeps everyone in touch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To rekindle old memories and create new ones, come to Town Park next Wednesday for From the Hip. Concerts begin at 7 p.m. For more information, visit aurora.ca\/summerconcerts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Muia and Nick Foti are, according to Muia, \u201cself-proclaimed superfans\u201d of The Tragically Hip \u2013 but, as the two musicians honed their craft together, they graduated to a next level of fandom. Muia and Foti, along with CJ Ashley, Gianluca Mauro, and Steven Piersanti, have pooled their musical talents to further the legacy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8FF","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 22:07:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}