On Wednesday, October 18, 2018, as the country remembered Gord Downie following the one year anniversary of his passing, Kingston radio station KROCK received a special package.

The announcer said the song showed up, presumably on CD, in a blank envelope without any notification or identification. A poster on Reddit followed up to say the station got “special permission from the band to play it” on Wednesday. One of the Hip’s first managers confirmed that the band did have a song called “Wait So Long” during the time they were working on 1989’s Up to Here. The song is also listed on the Hip’s official list of 61 unreleased songs. Listen to “Wait So Long” below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=222&v=ttI7CVn_xa8

Since Gord Downie’s passing, the band has said that they have recorded material they plan to share. Guitarist Rob Baker told the Toronto Star that at the time of Downie’s passing, the band was in the middle of recording an album and that they have a “double album’s worth of unreleased material.”.

Listen to Forever Hip. SONiC Remembers Gord Downie here. 

Filed under: Gord Downie, The Hip, The Tragically Hip