{"id":11283,"date":"2015-11-04T06:23:55","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T14:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11283"},"modified":"2015-11-02T12:26:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T20:26:06","slug":"jesse-roper-drops-new-album-for-charity-gets-lost-in-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/11\/04\/jesse-roper-drops-new-album-for-charity-gets-lost-in-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Roper drops new album for charity, gets lost in woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

When singer\/songwriter Jesse Roper calls me to start our interview to chat about his new benefit album and tour, something seems off right away: he\u2019s completely out of breath.<\/p>\n

\u201cHi, it\u2019s Jesse Roper here, and I\u2019m on a little hike,\u201d he says, panting, making it difficult to make out his words.<\/p>\n

Roper, who is from Metchosin, is squeezing in phone interviews between shows on an acoustic tour. He\u2019s also squeezing in hikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m just in Alberta right now,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m actually, um, hiking up a… What am I hiking up? The Citadel? It\u2019s just on the edge of Nordegg and I\u2019ve never been to Nordegg before, so I\u2019m enjoying this a lot. I\u2019m trying to get up to the top before the sun goes down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jesse<\/a>
Jesse Roper\u2019s new album, <em>Food for a Day Acoustic Sessions<\/em>, is a benefit release for Victoria\u2019s Our Place shelter (photo by Al Smith).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Roper\u2019s current tour is giving all proceeds from his new album, Food for a Day Acoustic Sessions<\/i>, to support Our Place, a homeless shelter in Victoria (proceeds from the sale of the album go to Our Place as well).<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you walk around downtown Victoria and [homelessness] is obviously a problem,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd you can\u2019t ignore it because it\u2019s everywhere. I thought with the album it would be a nice way to give back to the community a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roper grew up fortunate enough: he played hockey, went to school, and never missed a meal. But realization struck when he moved out on his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never really thought about where that was coming from until I left home,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m definitely not rich now, that\u2019s for sure. It was just the first thing that came to my mind when this whole idea of putting a charity [album] together started. So I think now that I\u2019ve got that going, I\u2019d like to head more in that direction, but do it more towards the education side of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roper\u2019s current tour, which finds him playing a lot of house shows, is a shift from his normal festival schedule, but he\u2019s enjoying every minute of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never done a house concert tour before, and I didn\u2019t know exactly what that entailed,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I\u2019ve been showing up at people\u2019s houses and they\u2019ll have a big steak dinner made and everybody\u2019s interested in what you\u2019re doing, and everybody\u2019s talking. It\u2019s such a treat. I play at lots of big festivals, and that\u2019s very exciting, but this is such a refreshing tour, because I\u2019m just by myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing inspiration for music from daily life, Roper stays on top of current events and sings about the things that matter to him the most.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be all kinds of things,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, heartbreak is always a good one; love is also on the other side of the coin, too. In the news, you see all these stories of Syria and things like that. I also read a lot of novels about wartimes; that grabs my attention. I find myself writing about that a little bit, and the shootings down in the states.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roper, still breathing hard at this point in the interview, shifts subjects when he realizes a more immediate concern in his life<\/p>\n

\u201cUm, I think I\u2019ve taken the wrong trail down this mountain path,\u201d he says. \u201cAw, shit… I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m going the right way or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope he made it out of there before the sun went down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When singer\/songwriter Jesse Roper calls me to start our interview to chat about his new benefit album and tour, something seems off right away: he\u2019s completely out of breath. \u201cHi, it\u2019s Jesse Roper here, and I\u2019m on a little hike,\u201d he says, panting, making it difficult to make out his words. Roper, who is from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-november-4-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11285,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions\/11285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}