Learn How to Play The Tragically Hip’s ‘New Orleans Is Sinking’ With Guitarist Rob Baker
The latest installment in the band’s tutorial series breaks down one of their most enduring anthems.
The Tragically Hip guitarist Rob Baker has shared a new guitar tutorial, offering instruction on how to play “New Orleans Is Sinking,” the highly improvisational blues-inspired track that became one of the band’s most enduring anthems. The clip was filmed at The Tragically Hip’s legendary Bathouse Studio.
In this in-depth tutorial, Rob walks fans and aspiring musicians through his guitar part, sharing the origins of the riffs, his approach to rhythm, and how the song evolved in the early days of The Hip. The video closes with a fan Q&A, where Rob answers questions about his musical inspirations, his gear, and how he achieved that iconic tone.
Baker begins the clip by talking about the band’s rehearsal space in the 1980s. “Sometime in the late 80s, maybe ’87, ’86, we had a rehearsal space in the west end of Kingston, in an old abandoned meat locker,” he explained. “When we weren’t playing gigs, we were jamming. One night we were jamming with the song ‘Shaking All Over,’ which we never really played on stage as a band…When you play a song for 20 minutes it transforms into something entirely different. It morphed into something and then Gord [Downie] started singing lyrics. The song kind of wrote itself: ‘New Orleans Is Sinking.’”
A cornerstone of 1989’s Up to Here, “New Orleans Is Sinking” helped put The Tragically Hip on the map. Up To Here marked a major breakthrough for the band, spawning two No.1 radio singles: “Blow At High Dough” and the aforementioned “New Orleans Is Sinking.” The record earned the group—comprised of Baker (guitar), Downie (vocals), Johnny Fay (drums), Paul Langlois (guitar) and Gord Sinclair (bass)— a nomination for “Most Promising Artist” at the 1990 JUNO Awards.
Although Gord Downie’s tragic death in 2017 closed the curtain on the band, in recent years they’ve worked to reissue and restore highlights from their early career, like the debut they recorded in Memphis’ legendary Ardent Studios. These tutorials of classic tracks continue to add to the band’s unimpeachable legacy.
