The final single from their 1989 debut album Up to Here, “38 Years Old” was not one of The Tragically Hip‘s biggest hits, just missing the Top 40 in their home country of Canada. (The Tragically Hip are an institution in Canada. For multiple generations, they are “Canada’s Band.” Culturally if not commercially, they were bigger than Nickelback, Barenaked Ladies, Justin Bieber, Drake – outside of Toronto, anyway – Bryan Adams, maybe even Shania Twain. One third of all Canadians watched their televised final show. Nine years after lead singer Gord Downie’s death, they arguably loom larger in Canada than a number of those artists. They were not yet that institution in 1990.)
Over time, this ballad about a man escaping from Millhaven Prison just outside of Kingston, Ontario only to get caught when he visits his little brother has become one of their most popular songs. It’s their sixth most streamed song with nearly 30 million streams.
At least according to Second Hand Songs, it doesn’t have any covers though. This is likely because it’s far more likely to be covered by a Canadian bar band live than it is to be recorded specifically for release. As Cabin Fever’s lead singer Kyle Faulkner jokes at the end of their new cover of “38 Years Old,” “You are not legally allowed to play music on a weekend in the summer time [in Canada] without playing at least one Tragically Hip song.”
And so that’s what this trio from outside of Sarnia, Ontario did last month. Originally performed by The Hip with a distinctive detuned acoustic guitar part, but otherwise played as a rock song with a prominent electric guitar, Cabin Fever drop the drums and they replace the bass and electric guitar with stand-up bass and mandolin.
But the biggest change is reserved for the tempo. If you’ve heard a bar band play “38 Years Old,” or really any Canadian musician fulfilling their obligation to play a Hip song at an outdoor show in the summer, they pretty much play it the same way The Hip did, only with more or fewer instruments. But Cabin Fever slow the song down to a crawl. Faulkner plucks his guitar part instead of strumming and Jess McKay joins him on the chorus and the ends of the verses.
If you’re a Canadian, you’ve heard this song more times than you can count, so this very distinct arrangement makes the song feel fresh. Check it out:
