Whether he’s writing or recording in the studio or playing his songs live, Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Rich Hope enjoys living in the moment and getting energized by the energy of a performance.
“The actual practice of songwriting is to just be in that moment and take the things as they come,” says Hope during a recent interview. “To me, that’s the total modus operandi of doing it.”
Earlier this month, he released his live album Live At The ANZA Club, a collection of rock, blues, Americana country, punk rock and soul songs spanning his decades’ long career which began in the ‘90s.
The album draws from recordings from a pair of concerts he did with his band last April at Vancouver music venue ANZA Club. He was joined by City & Colour’s rhythm section, Leon Power and Erik Nielsen (who also oversaw the recording along with the legendary Howard Redekopp), as well as Scott Smith (electric and pedal steel guitars) and Darryl Havers (keyboards).
“I have always been at my best live, and we wanted to capture what this version of the band is doing,” Hope explains in the album’s press release. “Since we didn’t have the luxury of extended touring and recording every show, we decided on finding the best venue and taking two nights to capture lightning in a bottle. The ANZA is a venue where I played some of my first shows in a neighbourhood where I lived for many years, so I feel a personal connection to the club.”
Below, you can watch the music video for the album single “It Come Alive”:
You can find more about the song and album via Alex’s Single Spotlight feature.
The release chronicles his DIY journey. In the ‘90s, he formed his first band, the Taxicrabs, a name suggested by Country Dick Montana of The Beat Farmers. The success of that project gave him confidence to move from his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, to Vancouver in the late ‘90s, where he joined the band John Ford and started a solo career.
As a solo artist, Hope has shared stages with acts such as The Flamin’ Groovies, The Black Crowes, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Charles Bradley, Social Distortion and Reverend Horton Heat.
We caught up with the songwriter recently to discuss his emotional experience recording the live album, what he looks for in a live record, his favourite experiences performing live, and why he’s not concerned about evolution as an artist.
First of all, what are some artists and songs you’ve been digging of late?
Well, I went on a real Nick Lowe tear for a while last spring. He had a record he put out, [Indoor Safari], I guess it was last year, but somebody put me onto it, and I just couldn’t stop listening to it. And then I just went down this rabbit hole of the stuff that he’d been doing over the last 20 years that I’d sort of heard, but not really. And I just loved it, but I don’t listen to much new stuff.
I think some people are interested in really new stuff, and I’m just more interested in probably stuff I liked when I was younger or that comes from that time, and I’ll go and find things.
What are some of your favourite artists from when you were growing up?
I wouldn’t say I’m stuck in stuff that I grew up with. I love the blues and reggae. I’m still digging around in piles of that and finding inspiration there.
I’m not stuck in stuff or anything, but there’s always the offshoots of that stuff: blues and reggae and all that. And I find a lot of inspiration in just that, but suddenly got stuck in his later period material from the nineties on, I discovered a Nick Lowe record called The Impossible Bird that he put out in ‘94 that I probably would’ve liked, but I never heard it. So, to hear it now, it might as well be new anyway.
Your songs pull inspiration from a handful of music styles. How would you characterise or describe your music and sound?
I always say it’s rock and roll, because to me that rock and rolls, I mean, we’ve been over this for a hundred years now. I mean, it’s like blues, country, and punk rock. I think I just kind of live in the middle of that world, probably. Years ago, when I was starting out in the nineties, I wrote songs, and I had a band, but I couldn’t call myself a singer-songwriter [in the way that] Bruce Springsteen’s a singer-songwriter, and for that matter, so’s Joe Strummer. There are some of these weird ideas when you put a label on something, that’s what you do, only. And maybe one or two songs come off like that, but I mean, sometimes you get called blues rock. That’s not really accurate either. So, it’s kind of like an amalgamation of all those things, I would say.
What about dabbling in different styles do you like so much?
I think it’s probably more like I dabble in different styles because my brain just takes me there. I’ll be into one thing. I just think that as a songwriter, you can be influenced by anything. So, you should feel the freedom to be influenced by anything and not be afraid to write in a certain style. So, I like that. I’m good with that. And I’m not afraid of doing that at all.
You just released a live album. Can you talk a little bit about how the opportunity to perform those songs came about? What led you to want to record them?
Well, my buddy Nick, who’s helping me put out the record, he had sort of been putting the bug in my ear about doing a live record. He thought that the band was just really cooking, and somebody should sort of capture that. And my first thought was, how are we going to do this? We don’t play a hundred shows a year. You can’t record them all, and how are we going to actually get it? And when we were sort of thinking about how to do it, we just came up with the idea, why don’t we maybe do almost record it with a studio audience. So really, really small. And we ended up setting up in a room that was small enough to keep it intimate, but big enough to sell enough tickets to help make some money to make it viable. So, the idea was just take two nights and do the same thing twice and see if you can catch the lightning in a bottle.
And it worked. I think when we listen back to the two things, both nights are really good, but there’s certain tracks that they just really cooked on the second night or whatever, and those had the vibe. So, I think the experiment was like, just do 20 songs Friday, do 20 songs Saturday, and we’re sure to get enough stuff. We played together enough that we knew that we would get the performances out of it, and it was fun to do it in the room. We did it in just because, like I said, it was a room that held about 120 people, so we kind of kept this intimacy about it. So, I think that the audience felt very much a part of the show as well.
What are some live albums that have inspired you?
Bruce Springsteen put a live ’75 to ’85 box set compilation back in 1985 [called Live 1975–85]. I had that box set, and I listened to it all the time. And of course, it’s really cool because it had everything from his really, really early career to his current career in 85. So, shows in little halls and then shows in stadiums, and just the power of his performance would always come through in everything. So that’s the thing that I loved, and I’ve always loved Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous. That’s great. But probably I would say the main influence on this really is Jerry Lee Lewis did a record called Live at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, and it literally is lightning in a bottle. The joke is that the band that played with him is still trying to catch up to him to this day. And I think when we thought about how we wanted this to come off, the Jerry Lee record was really the actual template.
What qualities do you think separate a great live album from a good live album?
Oh, I think it’s probably being able to capture that energy or some semblance of that energy that you feel when you’re at the show. And I think some records give you that experience when you listen to them, and other ones just sound like you recorded the band. So that to me is the line.
You have a really talented backing band. Can you talk a little bit about how you assembled the band? Can you give a quick sound bite for each member and what they add to the music?
Eric played bass and actually produced and engineered it. I met Erik [Nielsen] when I was working on a record back in 2009 called Rich Hope Is Going To Whip It on Ya. And Eric was the assistant engineer on that album, and we’ve been friends ever since and always been around. And when we started kind of a fun country side band years ago, we used to do this just monthly honky tonk gig. Eric was the bass player in it. So, as I started to flesh out the band, he just has always been the guy. And then he brought along the drummer, Leon Power. They both play in a band called City and Colour.
Leon came aboard and has kind of been with me for a couple of years. Scott Smith is on guitar. I’ve known Scott for about 25 years. He was just a guitar player in the Vancouver music scene who I really, really admired, and he’s had bands forever. And we started doing things together about 10 years ago, again when we were doing that country thing. And Darryl Havers is on keys. We joke that he’s like the old guy in the band, and I couldn’t even list the amount of people that guy’s played with. He’s been everywhere, and he can play anything. So, Darryl’s always the first choice on keys as well.
So, we kind of did that country band for a few years. I had been playing in a really sparse setup with just a guitar and drums for a while, and when I made my last record in 2018, I wanted to make it with a bit more of a fleshed-out band. So, I wanted guitar, bass, drums and some keys. And the songs eventually needed a full band to be played with. And these guys just were the guys that I kept around. And that said, they play with everybody in town. They’re kind of like Vancouver’s Wrecking Crew, if I’m being honest.
For those who aren’t familiar with Vancouver, can you talk a little bit about what the music scene is like there and how it’s influenced you?
I’ve lived here almost all of my adult life, so the only comparison I have is here. I haven’t been in other cities, but it occurs to me that there are probably other cities, there’s a lot of little different scenes. There’s a really heavy country scene, people playing country music. There’s a lot of world music. It’s all there. But I would say this: when you want to get something going in Vancouver, it’s really DIY, and it’s always been DIY. It comes from a very DIY heritage. When you go back to sort of the punk rock days, you got D.O.A. and the Subhumans, you ended up doing some work out here, but Vancouver probably really thrives on the fact that when something gets closed down, another venue opens up and people just make shit happen. But I suspect rock and roll in a lot of cities, it’s only supported by the community around it. And as long as there’s a venue, it’ll get going. And if it gets going enough, then bigger clubs start to get on board and support it. But I would say that’s being in Canada, we are very close to the border, so we do get bands coming up and playing, but the bands here definitely have to make their own. They kind of got to make their own luck, and they got to make their own scene.
You are coming from a pretty DIY background, so I imagine Vancouver was very appealing to move to.
Yeah, I mean, mostly I stayed here because it’s just lovely, the climate is favourable. I just like living here. I was thinking about back in the nineties that if I was thinking about career first, maybe I would’ve moved out to Eastern Canada and lived in Toronto, where all the businesses are, and that’s where it happens. But I just couldn’t live out there, man. And I figure as a songwriter, I should probably live where I want to live.
What was your strategy for determining the set list for the shows and then the track list for the album?
The set list strategy was, again, we wanted to play a whole bunch of songs. So, my thought was, why don’t I dig quite far back in my catalogue and sort of work through everything and see what works and hopefully have kind of a career retrospective, almost. So, Scott, the guitar player, and I sat down and just, I’d written down a list of things I thought would work, and we would just play through them together and decide if they were worth doing. So, I went back, even as far as my old band that I was in, that band was called John Ford, named after the Western Film Director from the USA.
I pulled out some of those old songs. I pulled out stuff from my Evil Doers records, where I was just playing as a guitar and drum duo. And we sort of tried everything, and we just decided if it doesn’t feel right, we’re just not going to do it, and if it works, let’s keep it on the list. And once we kind of come up with the list, we played through a few things with the rest of the band, and it just kind of took shape organically like that. And then, as far as the actual distilling of the 20 songs, Scott and I and a couple of guys from the label, we just listened to it, and we all made a list of the things we liked the most, and we kept the ones that everybody seemed to take. But I would say that the first impressions of everybody were pretty similar. The good ones really jumped out. But that said, I think if we were lucky enough to have a good response from this, we could do a volume two because we really did get a lot of good stuff.
Looking back at your career, was there anything that you learned about yourself or realised about yourself and your songwriting?
Well, it’s me, and it’s cohesive. When you talk about all those influences like blues or country and all this, sometimes I think maybe as an artist, I can think that those styles are all very separate, but when I listen back to it, I’m like, no, the common thread is that it’s me. So, it comes out as just my style. I think when here’s a country song, here’s a rock song, but there’s someone like you listening to it, and you’re like, “Well, that’s just a slight variation on the same thing.” And I think I realised that about myself that my styles are not that different from each other, which is maybe just maturity, playing it for a long time. Just develop, your voice just comes through.
There’s a quote in the press materials where you mention that you’re not sure that you’ve undergone any musical evolution. You said, “I’m just the same guy playing music that I have always been. I don’t know if I have undergone any real musical evolution. I have always loved playing live and putting on a show with my friends.” It sounds like it’s more of a feeling-type approach.
Yeah, I suppose it’s just evolving as a human being. I guess a lot of your life is how you’re raised. When you start writing songs and playing songs, I feel like they were me. And then I’ve just matured, and they’re just better songs, that’s all. But I wouldn’t say some of them would look back at my early stuff and be like, “Whoa, he is really kind of 180 here.” Just me. There are little stylistic changes or maybe moods. But no, I think you just mature.
Growing up, what was the moment when you realised you wanted to perform professionally?
Well, I always say I remember the day that I put on Give Them Enough Rope by The Clash, and the opening drum hit from “Safe European Home” came on, and I don’t know what it was, but it just set like a bolt of electricity through me, and I just knew I wanted to do this.
Your first band, the Taxicrabs, you played in your hometown of Edmonton, and you found some pretty early support through that group. How did that experience give you confidence as a musician and inspiration to go out on your own after?
Up until that time, I played the guitar around people and hadn’t really done any real shows as an artist. I played covers, played around a campfire and shit like that. And then I got in that band, and we’d start playing gigs around the university, and I got hired, I could play guitar, and I really liked it.
It’s exciting. You’re working with other people, you’re making music with other people, and you’re playing mostly. We were playing mostly covers, but I think what gave me confidence is I started to sing a couple of the songs, and I always felt when I stepped up to the mic to do them, the crowd really got going. And I don’t know if it was my choice of songs or just the way I was doing it, but suddenly the dance floor would be full. And I remember thinking, I can do this. I know how to do this. I can entertain people. And that gave me the confidence when I ended up moving away from Edmonton to start just gigging on my own to make a living. I definitely think that experience showed me that I had the ability to perform it. It proved it to me. So, it was quite influential.
And Country Dick Montana was a big early supporter.
Yeah, I suppose he was. I mean, I don’t know if he even knew the band, but our bass player might’ve been the biggest Beat Farmers fan in Edmonton, at least. When Country Dick would step up to the mic at some point in their show, somebody would carry him across the bar, and he’d have this a hundred-foot mic cable, and he’d end up getting a tequila shot at the bar. And he’s a huge dude. So, our bass player was always the guy in Edmonton that would put him up on his shoulders. I don’t know if he was a huge supporter of the band, but he certainly recognised Leon as his biggest fan. So, I guess he just told him that he was starting a band, and he said, “Well, you need to call them the Taxicrabs.” That’s kind of the story as I remember it.
What are some of your favourite stories performing Live or just in general? Live shows?
I would say back, 15 to 18 years ago, there was a club in town called The Railway Club, and it was the place where it was always live music that was our live music spot, and it was a kind of cool upstairs room, and it was the kind of place where even out of town bands that were really big, if they were playing at some or some bigger club, they’d often come down there after and hang out for a beer, and sometimes they’d get up and jam and do shit. So, it was really the musician’s club. And about 10, about 15 years ago, we were playing there a lot. And we would just have shows there that would, I mean, the room would be full from 10 o’clock on and the openers would play, and then we’d get on right before midnight, and we’d just played at three in the morning because the crowds were just so into it, and there’d be lots of drinking and lots of playing, and I don’t know, I was younger then, but we’d just, we’d play for two, two and a half hours nonstop till the fricking lights came on.
It was just a big party. That’s definitely one that I remember very fondly. And that happened on more than one occasion, probably culminating when the Olympics were here in 2010. It was just mayhem in there. And then, we toured all over Canada for years, way back in the early 2000s. And I think some of my favourite memories are honestly the really good shows and the really bad ones, or the ones that nobody was at because they’re just hilarious. They’re just funny memories because every band in the world has had to do them. They just make for, honestly, a good laugh around the table when you think back about it.
You’ve gotten open for a number of big-name musicians. What are some of your favourite memories?
I got to play with, well, I got to shows with Black Crowes in a couple of different venues, and that was a cool one just because I hadn’t seen them play in years. And they were just really good dudes, and it was just a great show. We hung out with them a little bit after, and they told stories about Jimmy Page, and it was like, wow, you guys were really on top of the world. And then I’ve gotten to play with, I got to do a Bluesfest with Sharon Jones, and I got to open for Charles Bradley at the Commodore Club here in Vancouver. And I just think maybe the point I’m trying to make is I’ve gotten to play with artists from just all different backgrounds. What I remember that was really great was years and years ago, I played with Texas songwriter Billy Joe Shaver, and then Waylon Jennings. And I played a show with him, and he was just so amazing, and he signed my acoustic guitar for me because I had been a Waylon Jennings fan since I was a little kid. And he had written, of course, the whole Honky Tonk Heroes record. So, it was pretty thrilling to play with the guy that had written all these songs that I loved. And he was kind enough to, well, he reluctantly signed a guitar because he thought it was too nice to be writing on, but I didn’t care.
I imagine that there are a lot of lessons that you learned getting to play with those guys.
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that when any bands you play with or any bands you go to see, if they really get to you, there’s probably some element of where you’re almost like a kid, and I’m like, oh, I want to be as cool as that guy or that guy. And so maybe just a little bit of what they do rubs off on you, if you know what I mean. Not that I’m going to go out and imitate what someone else does, but what I mean is everybody’s got their own style.
And I think that it’s just fun to see someone do what they do, and you’re always a little bit in awe of it as a fan. So, I think you do learn a lot when you see bands or you tour with bands, and then you learn so much just by, as I said before, playing those gigs where the entire crowd’s with you and then playing those gigs when you feel like you’re playing into an empty room. It develops you as an artist. You have to be able to do, you have to just be able to deliver a show in whatever circumstances you’re in.
Going back to the live album, what were your favourite moments doing the songs?
I definitely was really, really excited to play the old material from my band, John Ford, because some of that I hadn’t even ever played outside of that band. So, these songs that I had written or co-written with those other guys here, I was playing them with my band. So, I was really excited to hear how those would just come off. So, that was really fun. There’s a couple of songs that make the album that originally were written as a guitar and drum duo, so very stripped down, kind of very bluesy material, and the ones that we thought worked with the band we played. And I was excited to hear how those would sound a little bit different, maybe with a full band behind them as opposed to that stripped-down sound. That was also pretty fun.
And then lastly, there’s these moments in the show, and I wasn’t thinking about this while we were playing the show, but there’s a couple songs where I get the crowd to sing along or participate. And I think it was exciting to hear when we got the mixes back, how that audience participation would come off when you’re not at the show. Would it translate to just audio? And I’m happy to say that it translates very well. And so that was another kind of exciting experiment, if you will, or at least it was exciting to see the result and that it worked
What’s next for you?
I’m working on writing some new songs. So, I’d say the plans for the winter are to start to try to get some of that new material going with the band. And I would really like to get out on the festival circuit again this summer. We did a little bit last summer, but now having a new release behind us, I hope that we can get out and do a bunch more live shows in some different cities and just get back on the road a little bit.
How would you describe how the new material is shaping up?
It’s pretty much a sketch right now, but just probably more of the same. I’ll sit down and write kind of a country song one day and a soul song the next day, or whatever. My mood takes me.
Exciting to shake it up every day like that.
No, I don’t try at all. I just listen to what’s in my head, and I try to get it out of me.
But imagine it’s exciting to have that diversity, that you’re not always doing the same thing every time.
Well, yeah. I just, I don’t know if it’s anything you could plan. You listen to some bands, they stay the same, and other bands don’t stay the same. And I don’t think one is better than the other. It’s just how you write. If you’re really being true to yourself and if you’re producing your art authentically, you’re just grabbing songs that come floating by, and you write them down. It’s like if you have your antenna up, the songs will come by, and you’ve got to grab them and put them down, you’ve got to record them. You’ve got to put them on paper, and then you’ve got to work on them. Generally, at least not for me, I’m not really intentional one day about, I’m going to write this kind of song. You know what I mean? I think some artists are able to do that, but I don’t really do that.
I imagine it’s exciting to be in the moment, let things come naturally.
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the practice, the actual practice of songwriting is to just be in that moment and take the things as they come. Absolutely. To me, that’s the total modus operandi of doing it.
You can connect with Rich Hope at the following links:
- His website: Richhope.ca/
- Facebook: Facebook.com/richhopemusic
- Instagram: Instagramcom/RichMHope
- Bandcamp: Richhope.bandcamp.com
- Apple Music: Rich Hope on Apple Music
- Amazon Music (Canada): Rich Hope on Amazon Music (CA)
- Spotify: Rich Hope on Spotify
Check out his website for upcoming shows and tour dates.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
