Rich Hope

“Shake This Joint Around” is the most direct introduction to an album to come since ZZ Top tore through “Thunderbird” on Fandango. The comparison is a fair one, too. Toss in a bit of Johnny Winter, Humble Pie and Mick, Keef and the lot and you’ve got this no-frills trio’s touchstones. But there’s so much more. A searing guitarist with a ragged snarl, Hope can croon high-lonesome, too (“Love or Death”, “Boxcar”). Wherever his beautifully crafted tales take him, the band beats with a pulse as steady as a piledriver, rolling forward like a lone freight across an endless prairie.
Rating A - Vancouver Province

“I’ve always been told that some things are worth the wait. Ladies and gentlemen, this is one of those things. Hell, I’m gonna buy me a whole case full of the fuckers and dole them out as Christmas presents this year. It’s that good”
- Nerve Magazine

The sophomore effort from Vancouver’s Rich Hope and His Evil Doers is a stunning batch of roots and blues influenced pop songs.

The album mixes bluesy stompers, the smoldering ‘Swamp Thing’, catchy roots rock, ‘Sweet Vanilla’, and country laments, ‘My Love is a Bullet’, with Hope’s whiskey and sex-soaked lyrics and his kick ass guitar playing – the solo on the disc’s lead off track ‘Shake This Joint Around’ will leave you breathless.

However, it’s the quiet moments that stand out. The beautiful ‘Pain and Strength’ is the record’s strongest track. It’s a gentle acoustic number about trying to find hope in a seemingly hopeless world. Girl Nobody’s Marta Jacuibek guests on the tender ‘Trailer Girl’.

Hope has been receiving a fair amount of praise for his incendiary live show. If the music found on this excellent album is any indication we can only hope that he will come to our fair city sooner rather that later.
- SOCAN Magazine: Scene And Heard

Vancouver's Rich Hope and his Evil Doers fuse R.L. Burnside with Hank Williams to create a satisfying album of ass-kickin' blues rock that rips with Jaggeresque swagger and southern twang.
- Winnipeg Free Press

The North Shore News & Vancouver's Georgia Straight choose Rich Hope and His Evil Doers as one of the best releases for 2005! - Various

The bullet rides like a freight train straight to your heart. Rich Hope excels at what he is doing and the crowd is eating out of his hands.
- The Student, Bath, UK

“Some things are worth the wait. The resulting album is not necessarily the one that Hope had set out to make. Having cranked it to 11 for four years of full-throttle rock ’n’ roll, the singer initially found himself in introspective mode. “I had originally had thoughts of making a Nebraska-esque record—very stark, very acoustic, nothing else,” Hope reveals between bites of biscotti. That accounts for numbers such as the campfire weeper “Love or Death” and the mandolin-accompanied soul searcher “Pain and Strength”, but Hope’s restless nature won out. “I like to shake it up,” he states. “I certainly can’t go on tour with just a guitar and be sad. I’d go crazy.” So the tunesmith dusted off his Telecaster and called on the new disc’s eponymous Evil Doers—Mack and bassist Ryan Froggatt—to bash out, he says, “five songs in five hours”. The results are as stripped-down and immediate as that time line suggests. “My Love Is a Bullet” and “Sally, Your Parents Ain’t Home” are distorted blasts of gut-bucket blues as raw as anything in the Fat Possum catalogue. “Swamp Thing” is cut from the same cloth, but it takes a slow, hypnotic approach to a tale of murder and repentance. Obviously, Hope has spent some time getting in touch with his crossroads side.”
- The Georgia Straight

“This new CD features 10 tracks of blistering swamp blues and acoustic gems. Like a modern day Juke Boy Bonner all Hope needs is a guitar to get his message across but the addition of a rhythm section kicks his tunes into overdrive. On the definitive opening track Shake This Joint Around the trio comes in running and never lets up establishing a vibe that is carried through the entire record.“
- The North Shore News

“Locals in the know have been waiting a long time for Vancouver-based country-blues rocker Rich Hope to follow up his 1999 debut. After a stint with John Ford, Hope returns with a record that alternates between the raucous and the heartbreaking. Hope demonstrates his abilities in both areas, lamenting acoustically in "Pain And Strength" and "Trailer Girl," but mostly the album just cooks like nobody's business. Hope pays homage to traditional forms with the driving "Sally Your Parents Ain't Home" and the Mississippi-hill-country blues influence of the grinding "Swamp Thing." With his raw, throaty vocal style and killer backing band, you'll want to head to the nearest roadhouse to booze and brawl.”
- Chart Magazine

“I’m fighting this disease and it’s with me everyday. But it ain’t f—ing killed me yet, so I know I’m gaining strength” These are compelling lyrics on a curiously awesome album from Rich Hope! - The Edmonton Sun