Much-loved local vet Rich Hope decided to make a good old-fashioned rock record with I’m All Yours— which explains the gloriously greasy results.
You could say Rich Hope is a busy guy. The long-time local musician’s day gig is really two jobs in one: he’s not just a senior barber at the Belmont, he’s also the owner of the deliciously old-school Mount Pleasant shop.
He’s also a parent, which anyone with kids will tell you is a full-time vocation in itself.
All of which helps explain why it took him nine years to follow up his last long-playing album, 2009’s Rich Hope Is Gonna Whip It On Ya. Well, that and the fact that—as he admits when the Straight reaches him between haircuts—at first he didn’t see much point releasing another oldfashioned LP in the digital age.
“Just after 2009 the streaming services were really starting to happen,” he says. “I thought I should just do songs. We were getting back into the age of the single, you know, so it just felt like, ‘Let’s do a single.’ And then we were doing the Blue Rich Rangers project, my country thing. We just felt like making some songs for that, so we did, like, five of them. I wasn’t worried about making another album. I just felt more like making some songs and putting them out for people. After the Blue Rich Rangers stopped, I just thought, ‘Yeah, let’s go make a rock record.’”
Hence I’m All Yours, which came out in October. Across its 10 tracks, Hope indulges his love for the genres that have shaped him as an artist— witness the droning electric blues of “La Iguana”, the organ-fuelled garage-rawk rave-up that is “5 Cents a Dance”, the brassy vintage R&B of “Some Kind of Love”, the cosmic country of “Blow Away”, and the throat-shredding, foot-stomping carnal gospel of “Runnin’ Shoes”.
Stylistically, I’m All Yours might be all over the map, but it’s a map well-travelled by Hope and his crack sidemen, bassist Erik Nielsen, keyboardist Matt Kelly, and drummer Adrian Mack, whom Hope credits with encouraging him to bring all of his influences to the table: “When we were first talking about doing it, Adrian said ‘I think you need to make a Rich Hope record. You need to make one that’s all the things that you are.’ So, in an effort to do that, we didn’t try to do anything, you know what I mean?”
Hope and company made the record with Felix Fung at his Little Red Sounds studio. Fung has become a producer and engineer of choice for many in the Vancouver music scene thanks to his reputation for capturing the authentic sound of a band playing together in one room, and for getting the best possible performances from musicians by facilitating a relaxed and creative atmosphere.
“I’ve always kinda done stuff live off the floor,” Hope says. “But just the experience and the way we set it up was a little bit different than I had done it before. We just sort of baffled stuff and made sure there were spots in the room where it wouldn’t bleed too much, but if there was a little bleed we didn’t care. Just the way we were all in one spot, and he [Fung] was sitting right there, it was very comfortable.”
The next time Hope and his band hit the stage, don’t expect to hear anything from I’m All Yours. That’s because their next gig is the headlining slot at Keithmas, the annual celebration of both Christmas and the December 18 birthday of the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards.
The ninth edition of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank fundraiser will also feature performances by La Chinga, Little Destroyer, Sore Points, Oswald, Chris and Cora, the Rentalmen, Elliot Way and the Wild North, Ford Pier Vengeance Trio, and War Baby.
All will be performing songs by the Stones (or solo Richards numbers). By this point, Hope has worked his way through a big chunk of that catalogue; he has played every edition of Keithmas since the event’s inception. Fire up Youtube and you’ll find clips of him playing everything from “When the Whip Comes Down” to “Shattered” to “Far Away Eyes”.
As for this year’s set, well, Hope is keeping his lips zipped. “What songs are we doing? Oh, it’s kind of a secret,” he says. “There’ll be horns, though. I’ll tell you that much. And it’ll be greasy.”
Horny and greasy, then. Richards himself would surely approve.
answers the phone at a tour stop in Morro Bay, California, he’s still ensconced in that vinyl-spinning life from the ’70s. He and his mates in Band of Friends—guitarist Davy Knowles and drummer Ted Mckenna—have just returned from a local record store, where Knowles splurged on LPS by Greg Lake, Chicago, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, and—since Christmas is coming—perry Como.
“Davy likes his music,” notes Mcavoy, a 66-year-old veteran of the bottom end. “He’s a big vinyl fan, so we’ve got a little record player set up in the dressing room. Davy bought about 10 vinyl, so he’s looking forward to playing them tonight. We listen to everything, you know; it’s very diverse. My son turns me on to some new music every now and then. I can’t remember the names, but he does turn me on to them.”
The 31-year-old Knowles is the kid in the group. You may recognize his name from Back Door Slam, a band from the Isle of Man that drew raves from blues-rock fans in 2007 with its debut release, Roll Away. Mcavoy had played with Mckenna, 68, for many years—including on tour and in the studio with Gallagher on late-’70s albums like Photo-finish and Top Priority—but only recently hooked up with Knowles. So did the shit-hot picker just call Mcavoy up one day, profess a deep love of Rory, and ask if he could help re-create his tunes?
“No, it wasn’t that at all,” replies Mcavoy. “We were just looking out for some different guitar players, because we use a guy named Marcel Scherpenzeel in Europe, and it’s always nice to play with different people. But it was just by chance, because last year my sister saw this thing on Youtube, and it was Davy doin’ ‘Bad Penny’, one of Rory’s songs, just on guitar from his kitchen for Rory’s birthday. She sent it to me, so I just made contact with Davy and asked him ‘Do you fancy coming out and doing a bunch of shows?’ ”
Anyone lucky enough to have seen Gallagher in concert knows that one of Mcavoy’s strong points—besides delivering smokin’ hot bass—was his ability to motivate the Irish guitar legend, to push him to new heights on-stage.
“[We were] pushin’ each other,” recalls Mcavoy, “that’s the way it was. And that’s the way it still is. I push Davy, Davy pushes me. And Ted pushes both of us.”