There's an alley near the corner of King and Princess Streets in Kingston Ont. where someone has written "The Hip Live Between Us". The graffiti appeared in the Spring of 1986, and at the time it was the biggest thing that had happened to us. 'Too cool', we thought, to be immortalized on a wall. Someone actually cared enough to deface private property with our name. The thought didn't enter our minds until a few years later that it was our sax player at the time who had painted this as a message to his ex-girlfriend. A less than sober testament that nothing comes between a man and his music. Davis didn't last long in the outfit, replaced by Paul that summer. But his legacy, like that piece of graffiti, lives on. Since the days of our young blood-brotherhood, we had always thought that The Hip Live Between Us would make a great album title someday, a clever homonymic play on words that would beguile our fans. Is it 'live' or 'live'? What does Tragically Hip mean anyway? As in the case of the latter, I'm sure we'll grow tired of the question.

Ten years later, in November of 1996, we began our most ambitious concert tour to date. Twenty four arenas across Canada and the United States in support of our sixth record, Trouble at the Henhouse. For a month and a half, along with the tons of staging and sound equipment, we dragged a portable 24 track recording studio along with us. The ever-present Mark Vreeken, along with Andy Bishop, would diligently set it up side-stage day after day to capture the evening's festivities. We'd taken a cue from the late great Frank Zappa that if you can isolate instruments live, there is always the chance that you can capture that certain elusive 'vibe' from a gig and build a track later in the studio. That was the original idea...

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