A familiar looking man – slender with well-coiffed hair and tattoos – is giving another man a dry shave in a vintage barber’s chair at The Belmont Barbershop. Located on Broadway just a block off Main Street, the space gives the impression that it’s been a well-preserved bomb shelter for the past 50-plus years.
From the seafoam green walls and classic coloured leather barber chairs to its fare of classic shave kits, soaps-on-a-rope, and enough tins of wax pomade to make George Clooney’s character in O Brother, Where Art Thou salivate, the basement barbershop is frozen in time as far as aesthetics are concerned.
As for the familiar looking man? Swap out the razor for a guitar and audiophiles in Vancouver recognize him as Rich Hope, the rockabilly king of Main Street.
“I reflect sometimes and I’m really happy that whatever I do, I trade my skills for money,” Hope tells the Westender at his shop, which he co-runs with master barber Dustin Fishbook.
Since opening in 2005, Fishbook took on Hope as an apprentice and the pair partnered up to bring Mount Pleasant dwellers a clean shave and an experience that harkens back to Coca Cola’s heyday.
“If you need me to cut your hair, you can give me some money. If you need me to sing you a song, gimme some money. And sometimes I might do either of those for free,” Hope laughs.
The Edmonton-born musician, known for his rock and roll acts Rich Hope & His Evil Doers and the Blue Rich Rangers, spent some time working in Whistler before making Vancouver’s Main Street his home in the late ‘90s. That, he says, is when his career really began to get traction.
“I wanted to snowboard for a while and I just used to play cover gigs for a living in [Whistler] bars,” he explains.
“Ground zero was ’97. I moved out to Main Street and put out a record right there and then, and that’s kind of when everything started to get going. The move to the city was that I wanted to actually write my own music and actually do this. Living in a ski town wasn’t particularly inspirational.”
Given the microcosm of musicians that gathered around Mount Pleasant, it didn’t take long for Hope to find a band to play in – and players to recruit. Hope’s longtime drummer, Adrian Mack, is the other half of the Rich Hope & His Evil Doers duo.
“I started meeting people who were kinda interested in the music I was doing. I ended up living in Mount Pleasant… and drinking coffee at Lugz, which is Kafka’s now, so every morning it would be the same people you’d see walking by, and all these musicians that all played together. This network was suddenly like before my eyes and that’s how I met everybody,” Hope reminisces.
“I always remember noticing Adrian’s drumming – and a lot of people notice this – he just has a great feel,” Hope says, explaining they both played in the Stones-esque rock quartet John Ford.
“When I went to make my solo record, it started out just being some acoustic stuff, and [I had] some of these one-chord blues songs in mind. It seemed natural; I wanted something that’s very feel-based and so I called him up and said, ‘Come and play on this.’ It’s kind of like Charlie Watts and Keith Richards. Keith always says when Charlie’s done with the Stones, then it’s done. We just have that thing together.”
The duo’s last full length record Rich Hope Is Gonna Whip It On Ya was released in 2009, with the singles “I See Trouble,” and “Can’t Get No Lovin’” following in years after.
Dropping the Evil Doers from the name, Rich Hope’s band has now expanded to fit two more: Erik Neilsen and Matt Kelly, who, coincidentally, Hope met around Main Street.
The foursome will be performing songs at the Biltmore Cabaret on April 9, which the singer plans to release on an upcoming full-length LP.
“When I went in the studio this time, I remember telling Adrian, ‘I just want to make a Rich Hope record, whatever comes out,’” he says, noting that the rock ‘n’ roll duo the Evil Doers and his country band, the Blue Rich Rangers were formed for different purposes but ended up playing much of the same songs.
“If the two bands were a Venn diagram, this record would be the stuff in the middle that gets caught up.”
Until the show, you can expect to run into Hope at his barbershop (111 East Broadway), browsing Neptoon or Red Cat Records, or chowing down on “out of this world Chinese street food” at the Sunny Spot Café.
Rich Hope performs at the Biltmore Cabaret on April 9 with Ben Rogers.
