Fruitful reunion

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This article was published 28/07/2016 (3663 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than 20 years after its dissolution — and six years after its reunion — Canadian alt-rock trio the Grapes of Wrath finally returns to Winnipeg tonight.

Kevin Kane and brothers Chris and Tom Hooper grabbed the nation’s attention in the late 1980s and early ’90s with their folky, alternative sound, a sound that had been developing since the three guys first picked up instruments together at the tender age of eight in their hometown of Kelowna, B.C.

“We’ve been playing together that long,” says Kane. “When we say we’ve been playing together since the mid-’70s and people are like, ‘Yeah right,’ it’s like, ‘No, no, we’ve been playing together since we were children.’”

Kane’s connection with Chris Hooper was cemented in junior high, when Chris wore a Beatles T-shirt that caught Kane’s attention.

“Immediately it was like, ‘OK, I gotta know this guy,’” he says with a laugh. “At the time, everybody else was into Meat Loaf and Supertramp.”

Fast-forward to 1984 — the band had recorded its first EP and moved to Vancouver. One year later and its first full-length, September Bowl of Green, was released; a handful of singles were on regular rotation at alternative radio stations and MuchMusic, but it wasn’t until their third album, Now and Again, that things really started to take off.

For that album, the band spent half a year in seclusion in upstate New York and added keyboardist Vince Jones, who went on to become a permanent member. The single All The Things I Wasn’t became the launching pad for tours in Europe and Canada and solidified their spot as Canadian indie stars. (Fun fact: the Canadian tour for the album featured then-unknown opener Sarah McLachlan.)

“Now and Again, that was the album with All The Things I Wasn’t on it, and that was the song that kind of crossed over, or at least it felt like it, into a different realm,” says Kane.

But, after just one more album, “personal and musical differences” caused the band to split in 1992, though all the members continued to record and produce in the years following. Kane and Tom did, however, release an album in 2000 under the Grapes of Wrath name.

After nearly two decades apart, the opportunity arose to perform a full-band set at a festival in Surrey, B.C. Kane and Tom, who had been playing a few acoustic shows together, presented the idea to Chris and Jones; Jones was unable to participate, but Chris was immediately on board.

“It was a one-off with the hopes that it would amount to more,” says Kane of that show. “I don’t know if (the Hoopers) ever admitted those hopes, but I sure hoped it would amount to more, and it did.”

The show was a success, and a kismet meeting shortly after in Toronto between Kane and a music industry pal from Vancouver resulted in record label Aporia offering the Grapes of Wrath the chance to record another album together.

“The floated the idea to us and we did it,” says Kane. “The first thing we did was we lined up a rehearsal and a photo shoot… so the first thing we did, the three of us hadn’t really seen each other in the same place in 20 years, and there we were doing a photo shoot. So that was kind of weird, but it was a lot of fun.

“After that, we went to the rehearsal space and played together for the first time in 18 years and it was like second song in, we were just grinning at each other like, ‘OK, this is fun,’” he continues. “And we remembered how to do the songs… the lyrics and solos and some of the drum fills we had to go back and learn, but as far as the bones, it was all there.”

A marathon two-week record session resulted in High Road, the trio’s first collection of new songs together since 1991. Despite the break, Kane says the process went pretty much as it always had, with him and Tom writing songs separately and then submitting them to the group for approval and collaboration.

While there aren’t any formal plans to start recording again in the near future, Kane says the group is in talks to get back into the studio, though he doesn’t know “what shape or form it’s going to take.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @NireRabel