The Grapes of Wrath: Harmony, History, and the Basement That Built a Band

Sunday, September 28 • 7:00 PM
The Historic Market Hall 

Before the stages, the record deals, and the gold-plated radio singles, it was just two brothers and a friend bashing it out on Friday nights in the wood-paneled basement of a Kelowna home, chasing the ghosts of The Beatles and the bite of punk rock. The year was 1977, and if you’d told anyone then that those suburban jam sessions would echo across four decades of Canadian music history, they might’ve laughed. But The Grapes of Wrath weren’t here for easy labels or short stories.

Born of the melodic swirl of the British Invasion and the raw nerve of new wave, they turned basement tapes into EPs, then into classics. With a name stolen from Steinbeck and a sound that leaned into jangly guitars, wistful harmonies, and sharp hooks, The Grapes carved out their own space in the late-‘80s Canadian canon—neither flashy nor forgotten, but fiercely beloved.

Capitol came calling, the songs started spinning—Peace of Mind, All the Things I Wasn’t, You May Be Right—and soon The Grapes were everywhere: gold records, MuchMusic rotation, tours across continents. But success, as always, brought tension, and in ’92 the band walked off stage and into the fog.

Then something beautiful happened. They came back.

First Kevin and Tom, stripped down and acoustic. Then, eventually, the full lineup returned. High Road dropped in 2013, an album born on the same street where it all began. The harmonies still held. The songs still hit.

Now, all these years later, Kevin Kane and Tom Hooper are still chasing that same spark—this time with an unplugged tour that peels back the gloss to reveal the bones: melody, memory, and the sound of three friends who never stopped believing in their songs.

The Grapes of Wrath never really went away. They just kept growing.