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Courtesy Rich Hope
Not everything I wrote about Rich Hope made it into the Straight piece I just did... and not everything in the piece is, in fact, mine: the anecdote about seeing the Beat Farmers live at the Town Pump is 100% Mike Usinger, livening up the piece with some eyewitness testimony. (I've only ever heard stories; thanks, Mike!).
Some of the outtakes include my asking Hope about the more memorable shows John Ford, his four piece band with Mack, Read, and Jones, played during their early 21st century heyday. He immediately went to the year 2000, opening for the Tragically Hip at the Commodore. “It was a secret charity show and we got the call to open. We were pretty thrilled to play in front of them, to say the least. Their audience would famously shout ‘Hip! Hip! Hip!’ over the openers, but we shut them up halfway through the first song.”
And (revered, departed Hip vocalist) Gord Downie dug them, too. “Gord really liked the band and complimented our cover of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sway’. He wore our T-shirt the next night at the Pacific Coliseum show and gave us a shout out. He really championed bands he dug. He was a kind man and I was very fortunate to have crossed paths with him.”
The band name, which Chris Read came up with, may have been a contributing factor in John Ford’s relative obscurity, alas. If you’re a film geek, you get the reference to one of America’s earliest auteurs, but many people would misunderstand. “People literally would come up to me after shows and say ‘Hey Johnny, great set!’” Hope recalls, adding that his own favourite John Ford film is The Searchers.
Not that anyone is keeping track here but I'm more of a The Grapes of Wrath/ The Hurricane/ The Fugitive kind of guy, though The Searchers is one interesting (and pretty-to-look-at) film.
John Ford tunes figure in Hope’s setlists to this day, like “Ocean” and an unreleased song called “Fallen Angels and Cowboy Kings,” which Hope says may be the best song John Ford wrote together. Yet another unreleased song from the band factors in the new live album, “3 Minute Song,” which Hope dedicates to his wife, Nicole.
People might recognize that one from a cover of it done by Big Sugar. In fact, Gordie Johnson of that band--who has an enthusiastic blurb for the new album on Hope’s bandcamp, produced Bullets for Dreamers.
“We became friends and he covered a few John Ford songs in the early 2000’s. ‘3 Minute Song’ was recorded by the band but never released. This version is a return to the tempo I had originally conceived the song in.” It's a cool tune either way, though I had to toggle back and forth between the versions, because they're remarkably different.
Of course, it was Adrian Mack, initially, who got me into Rich Hope, when he was an Evil Doer, sometimes the only other member of Hope's band. I first saw the two of them at Richards on Richards, opening for the Modernettes almost 20 years ago, in 2007. Cindy LeGrier took photos:
It is Mack that deserves credit for that crazy video for "Golden Clouds," which, by the by, includes cellphone footage I shot at a Keithmas. Mack liked it because the zoom on my cell phone reminded him of Jess Franco, I think. (I miss Mack! He's off on Salt Spring these days... haven't talked with him in awhile).
I asked Rich if he had any favourite "WTF Mack?" moments in the video. This was his reply!
“The whole thing was ‘WTF Mack?’ In the best way though. I didn’t have any money for a video so he just cobbled that together and what the fuck are videos anyway? Something to look at when you’re listening to music. Too much information anyways. We could all use less of it, to be honest!”
I don't think that made the Straight feature, so there it is here. See you Saturday at Green Auto!
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