Original members of folk-pop-rock band Grapes of Wrath are back making music again, as a reunited trio over the past 15 years (with Chris Hooper on drums) and also an acoustic duo featuring Kevin Kane and Tom Hooper on guitars.
The pair will perform some B.C. concert dates in April, including two shows at White Rock's Blue Frog Studio on Saturday the 5th and also Vancouver's St. James Hall on Monday, April 7.
"We're playing sit-down venues and stuff, tell some stories, play some songs," Hooper reported in a phone call from Salt Spring Island. "It's a little bit of everything, whatever comes to mind, lots of tour-experience stories, not scripted. Sometimes it should be scripted," he added with a laugh.
It's different, he says, "because this is just me and Kevin, not full-on Grapes.
"Last summer we played out in PEI and the Maritimes," Hooper added. "One night we did an early show, the acoustic thing. You know, Kevin and I play acoustically separately all the time but we'd never done Grapes of Wrath, and it went really well. So we've decided to do that some more, and basically it's in smaller places, and so far there's been some good excitement about it.
"Chris isn't playing these acoustic shows but we're still playing as a band, too. We have a bunch of gigs coming up in the summer."
Fifteen years ago at Holland Park, after an 18-year hiatus, the 2010 Surrey Fusion Festival is where Grapes of Wrath reunited for a concert that created a lot of buzz among longtime fans of the band, which enjoyed pop hit-filled years from 1983 until dissolution in 1992 — an era of "Piece of Mind," "You May Be Right," "I Am Here" and other killer-hook songs.
"I haven't done the math but it seems we've been together longer this time around, 15 years or so now, than we were at the start, which was about 10 years before we broke up (in the early 1990s)," Hooper figured.
"Before that (reunion gig in Surrey), Kevin and I had basically made up, or whatever you want to say," he continued. "We decided we wanted to play music again. He'd come over to Salt Spring and I'd go over to White Rock, where he was living at the time, then we started doing some duo shows, just like what we're doing now, actually, over there and in Victoria.
"I was playing keyboards with 54-40 for about five years, and then we got an offer from Fusion Fest for the full Grapes of Wrath to do that, and it was pretty good. (Chris) had been into playing for a while and I asked him, you know, 'There was a good offer, do you want to do it?' Yeah, OK. We got Dave Genn to join us on keyboards, and that's basically where it started again, and we went from there."
With Chris living back in Kelowna and Kevin in Nova Scotia, the band members are spread across Canada these days.
Grapes of Wrath would be a great fit for Barnside Harvest Festival in Ladner next September, with its focus on Canadian rock, but we'll have to see when the artist lineup is announced March 31. Check grapesofwrath.ca for the band's gig calendar.
The great thing about Grapes, Hooper says, is "I still feel pretty damn lucky to basically go anywhere in Canada, not playing stadiums or anything, but being able to sell-out a venue where people know the songs, and it's a great feeling. I play in the summertime here on Salt Spring, basically every night when not touring with Grapes, playing for a lot of tourists, and that's fine, but a lot of people in the audience don't realize it's a guy from Grapes of Wrath — you know, holy shit! We feel lucky to have had that kind of success in Canada."
