A Black Halos reunion at the Rickshaw proves that, indeed, time does heal almost all wounds.
➧ BLACK HALOS guitarist Rich Jones likes to keep busy, he tells the Straight.
It seems an understatement. He lives most of the year in Ontario. His main gig is with the Michael Monroe Band, based in Finland, where he’ll be flying right after the upcoming Vancouver Black Halos reunion gigs; and their tours often take them to Japan—subject of Monroe’s new single, “Last Train to Tokyo”, which Jones wrote. And besides all that, and raising his son, he does the cover art for his bands’ albums and merch, in what he calls his “downtime”.
That sideline began in the mid1990s, when Jones worked at Sam the Record Man on Seymour Street.
“I was the marketing-advertising guy,” he explains on a call from Toronto, “so I set up all the in-stores, and I’d do the ads that ran in the Straight every week. That was pretty much my first taste of it.”
For an example of Jones’s style, take the art for “Geisterbahn II”, the new Black Halos single: the demonic cartoon kitty on the cover is Jones’s work. Looks a bit like a tattoo, no?
“That is a kind of influence,” Jones acknowledges. “I wanted a vintage, pop-art trash kind of look to it—sort of a camp-Halloween, cheap-but-cool look. I have a lot of friends who are tattoo artists—and I have a lot of bad tattoos, as well,” he says with a laugh.
The Black Halos formed when Jones placed an ad in the Straight, which only singer Billy Hopeless answered. (Coguitarist Jay Millette, whom Hopeless calls “everyone’s favourite Halo”, came later.) In a city gripped by grunge, Jones, Millette, and Hopeless’s glammy, snotty mixture of the Dolls and Dead Boys didn’t win them many fans.
“It was definitely very uncool back then,” Jones says. “The first band
I actually joined in Vancouver was Flash Bastard, and they were doing the same kind of thing, a New York Dolls glam thing, and people would just throw bottles at us. I remember a guy coming out of the crowd and punching Donal, the singer, right in the face. I was like, ‘Wow, people hate this stuff.’ But it kinda gave me this drive to do it even more: ‘If we’re doing this, and it’s provoking such a strong reaction, this is the way to go!’ ”
The Black Halos getting signed to Sub Pop helped to get more Vancouverites onboard—and they got plenty of respect outside of Vancouver—but Jones left after their second LP, 2001’s The Violent Years.
There was some bad blood for a while between Jones and Hopeless, but that’s all water under the bridge. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but it’s small stuff, and as you get older, you realize it’s not important,” Jones acknowledges. “He’s his own guy, and he’s eccentric. But that’s important in a frontman—they need to be compelling, and have something that makes them not just a regular guy. Maybe he’s not to everyone’s taste, but that’s what I think is great about him, y’know? I love the guy. I wouldn’t be doing this with him, otherwise. Life’s too short for that.”
As for balancing two bands, it’s working out okay so far, Jones says. And the flip side of his frenetic schedule is that Jones doesn’t have to work 9 to 5.
“I haven’t had a real day job since I worked at Sam the Record Man,” he says. “And because of that, you’ve got to keep your plate full. I go a little bit crazy if I’m not doing something creative, not outputting something, because if I’m not doing this, I’m gonna be old and looking for a job, and I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, my job experience is that I worked at Sam the Record Man in 1995!’ ”
The Black Halos play two shows on Friday and Saturday (February 7 and 8) at the Rickshaw Theatre, with the Spitfires and Sore Points opening on Friday and Chain Whip and Bishops Green on Saturday.
GEOFFROY IS HAPPIEST WHEN REACHING FOR UNKNOWN
➧ THERE’S A LINE of thinking that, to truly live life to its fullest, you need to step out of your comfort zone. Montreal’s Geoffroy has bought into that on multiple fronts.
The singer-songwriter’s sophomore release, 1952, was written on piano and guitar, two instruments that he knows well. But rather than shoot for candlelit coffeehouses or a seat at the beach bar next to Ben Harper and Jack Johnson, Geoffroy pushed himself on the album’s 12 downtempo tracks, layering on neonbathed synths and chill-wave beats.
It’s his music videos, however, that
really make a statement on getting the most out of one’s time on Earth. Ask anyone who’s hooked on travel what they like best about boarding planes for foreign lands, and they’ll tell you the little moments are just as important as the big ones, whether it’s eating feta cheese and olives for breakfast in Turkey, or watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat. The importance of this isn’t lost on Geoffroy. That’s how he ended up communing with a Mexican shaman in the clip for “Sleeping on My Own”, and hanging out with the locals on a Bollywood movie set in “21 Days”.
“I really do try to push the limits— to always reach for the unknown, and to have a sense of curiosity,” he says, reached on his cell at home. “That’s what drives me. I love being home and I love coming back home, but there’s always some new place to discover. It seems like the list is endless, and the time you have on Earth isn’t.”
Tellingly, he suggests that immersing yourself in a country is more important than running around attempting to see everything.
“A genuine beginner’s mistake when you start to travel and get excited by it is that you want to go to every country on the planet,” he says. “But the most important thing to do is spend long enough in a place where you can acclimatize yourself and learn about the people and how they live their lives.”
The finite time we have is something that hangs over 1952. In many ways, the album is about remaining centred in the face of trauma, as Geoffroy himself had to do while his mother battled hard against cancer, which she succumbed to in 2017. Almost half of the record’s songs are inspired by his mother’s fight and the impact it had on him, all of which is evident in “Closer” lyrics like “Lying awake selfmedicated/I picture you singing to that ’60s love song” and “Still watching over your son/Still fighting your war.”
“I put my life on hold because I wanted to be at home to devote a lot of time to my mom and my dad,” Geoffroy notes. “After, and even before my mom passed, I was writing for this record, so naturally some of what I had to say was about her fight. I couldn’t really focus on anything else for a long time.”
A relationship of a different kind colours the other half of 1952. Songs like “By the Water” (sample line: “Strong independent woman crying on the bathroom floor”) and “Come Around” (featuring lines like “Let it go, let me walk out in peace”) accurately suggest Geoffroy was also working through some relationship drama. But instead of anger or bitterness, what shines through on 1952 is that he’s above all philosophical. Importantly, the album ends on a celebratory note, with “Fooling Myself” finding the singer repeating, mantralike, “Gotta believe in something/Gotta believe there’s something more.”
“Hard as it is to say, after my mom passed it was a relief because of all the pain and suffering that not only she was going through, but all of us,” Geoffroy says. “Around the same time, I got out of a toxic relationship, and that also comes out on the record. But a big part of 1952 is the fact that I wanted to leave people with a feeling of hope, not a feeling of sadness.”