Man Machine Poem Tour
| Tour by The Tragically Hip | |
Tour poster
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| Location | Canada |
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| Associated album | Man Machine Poem |
| Start date | July 22, 2016 |
| End date | August 20, 2016 |
| No. of shows | 15 |
The Man Machine Poem Tour was a concert tour by The Tragically Hip in support of their thirteenth full-length studio album Man Machine Poem. The tour consisted of 15 shows, the first held on July 22, 2016, in Victoria, British Columbia, and the last held on August 20, 2016, in Kingston, Ontario; the Kingston performance was televised nationally by CBC Television as The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration.
The tour was announced on May 25, 2016, a day after the band revealed that lead singer Gord Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. A portion of the proceeds of the tour were donated to the Sunnybrook Foundation, the independent fundraising arm of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre; in addition to the ticket sale proceeds themselves, both Sunnybrook and the Canadian Cancer Society reported a significant increase in direct donations, totalling over one million dollars, from the public during the tour.
Although generally reported by the media as such, the band have refrained from officially labeling the concerts as their farewell tour. During the tour, they communicated the hope that Downie's health would remain stable enough for them to tour again in the future, although subsequent reports on Downie's health have seen Downie himself acknowledge that this may not be possible.
Throughout the summer, the nature of the tour resulted in a considerable volume of analysis of the band, the tour and its impact on Canadian culture appearing in the media. This included a number of international outlets which had never before devoted significant coverage to the band, including CNN,BBC News,The Guardian and The New Yorker.
Canadian media outlets which would ordinarily only publish reviews of local concerts published an ongoing series of reviews of every stop on the tour, including unusually thorough analysis of the setlists.
The newsmagazine Maclean's published interviews throughout the summer with other musicians and cultural figures who had been friends, fans, collaborators or tourmates of the band, including Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo,Geoffrey Kelly of Spirit of the West,John K. Samson of The Weakerthans,Dave Bidini of Rheostatics,Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, novelist Joseph Boyden, singer-songwriters Joel Plaskett and Sarah Harmer, and record producer Steve Berlin.
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