Rich Hope

"It seems the rock and roll gods are displeased with us. So they sent us Rich Hope’s Live At The ANZA Club that we may be redeemed. Some would call Rich’s original compositions “roots” music but these live performances are the full green branches laden with blues, country, punk rock and soul. The audience devoured the fruit that night. Hearing this record makes us wish we were there."
Gordie Johnson, Big Sugar

​For two nights this past April, Rich Hope ruled Vancouver. Setting up shop at the ANZA Club on W 8th Ave, he and his band blazed through their original repertoire of blues-boogie and Americana, with the highlights now preserved on what’s increasingly becoming an endangered species: the live album.

​However, making Live At The ANZA Club only seemed natural for Rich Hope, considering he plays with some of Canada’s best musicians, including City & Colour’s rhythm section, Leon Power and Erik Nielsen (who also oversaw the recording along with the legendary Howard Redekopp). The other band members are Vancouver scene mainstays Scott Smith on electric and pedal steel guitars, and Darryl Havers on keyboards. But it is Rich Hope who leads the mayhem right from the opening notes of “It Come Alive,” a garage-rock stomper that should give Little Steven chills.

​“I have always been at my best live, and we wanted to capture what this version of the band is doing,” Rich explains. “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.”

​Devoted fans will recognize “It Come Alive” from Rich’s previous 2018 studio album I’m All Yours, and “The Ballad Of Black Eyed Suzy” and “Can’t Get No Lovin’” from the 2013 EP of the same name. As well, Rich’s 2009 classic “Whip It On Ya” makes a most welcome appearance before things climax with a cover of The Long Ryders’ “Looking For Lewis And Clark.” There’s also “3 Minute Song,” which dates back to Rich’s criminally underappreciated turn-of-the-century band John Ford, and later recorded by Big Sugar as a bonus track for their 2003 greatest hits collection Hit & Run.

Live At The ANZA Club is in some ways Rich Hope’s own career retrospective, but it’s also a new beginning. He formed his first band, the Taxicrabs—the name bestowed upon them by Country Dick Montana of The Beat Farmers—in his hometown Edmonton, Alberta, before moving to Vancouver in the late Nineties where he recorded a solo album and soon after joined John Ford. Retaining drummer Adrian Mack, he returned to a solo career, which found him sharing stages with everyone from The Flamin’ Groovies and The Black Crowes to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Charles Bradley, Social Distortion and Rev. Horton Heat.

​However, reflecting back on that time, Rich remains surprisingly humble. “I’m just the same guy playing music that I have always been,” he says. “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. So I guess that doing this live album is where I am in the evolutionary process. My main goal was to capture something like Jerry Lee Lewis’s Live At The Star Club—loose, reckless and joyful.”