Meet Hope Boy Deluxe | Artist, songwriter, musician

We had the good fortune of connecting with Hope Boy Deluxe and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Hope, why did you pursue a creative career?
Ultimately I started to pursue music because there was no avoiding it. I’ve always been on the creative side, always loved music. But when I started writing my own songs, it became pretty obvious to me what I wanted to do with my life.

Have you ever felt like the universe is literally yelling at you to do something? Well that was how it felt for me when I started playing music. My life was filled with a comedic amount of synchronicity. The more I kept going, the more insane things got. People I hadn’t seen in years would come to my mind for a couple seconds and then for whatever reason I’d see them that day. I didn’t completely understand it, but everything felt so familiar. I was totally obsessed with music seeing where it went.

Music has been an incredible medicine in my life. Helped me transmute ugly feelings into something better. Helped my mental health. Healed my relationships with the people I love. I often refer to my twenties as rage therapy on stage. I don’t know where I would of been if I hadn’t of gone the route I did.

Everything I do in my life is catered towards art. I think expression and authenticity are some of the most important things in life. We’re only here for a little while and to reflect our true selfs back to the world is an amazingly powerful experience.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
We are Boy Deluxe! Your favorite band you probably haven’t heard of yet.

I think what sets us apart is that we don’t exactly sound like anything else. A blessing and curse, I guess you could say. It’s heavy, dark, moody, pretty sexy. You can dance to it. You can rage to it. Hopefully fuck to it. Hip Hop beats with hyper pop vocals on one song and the next is dark electronic. You’ll see that it takes us a couple songs figuring out one sound and then we move on to the next. I love that about us. Constantly evolving our sound.

I’m always the most excited about the next song. Like, Hope’s Up is great, but just wait until ya’ll hear our next single. And then the one after that is going to be insane. And live? Get outta here. These songs are going to hit so hard you’ll lose teeth.

TBH, I’m proud of everything we’ve done. All the trash songs we’ve written to get to the gems. The empty clubs we’ve played so we could know how to kill the full room. Our relentlessness. Resilience. Our delusions. That we left a community of people and artists we love to further ourselves and our art.

The thing is, nothing that’s worth it is easy. I keep going because I belong here. This is what I’m supposed to do and who I am. I’m so lucky to have someone like True next to me. Because when I can’t listen to myself I can listen to him. And when he can’t listen to the noise in his head I keep him right.

One of the best lessons I’ve learned is from a PR guy we worked with forever ago. He told us once that inaction is your worst enemy. It doesn’t matter which choice you make, just that you make one and keep moving forward. He was totally right. Music is very much a trust the process kind of thing. You might not know where it’s going to land, but it’s worked every time before so just keep going.

I just want people to know this is a genuine experience for us. This is how we dress. This is the music we want to hear. We don’t change for whats trending. We just want to be 100% in everything we do and Boy Deluxe is 100% us.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’d like to start this off by saying the both of us are introverts. Being stuck anywhere surrounded by people and unable to escape sounds like my personal hell.

So, there will be chilling. A lot of it. We’d go get coffee at La Colombe in Frogtown and hide in the corner. Hopefully it’s raining so nobody is there. Then go home and take a nap. Then Tacozone would magically be in front of my apartment we we could walk outside and instantly have the best food and wouldn’t have to wait long because lines don’t exist in my world. Then they would leave and I wouldn’t see them for a week and I’d be really excited to see them again. Maybe we’d hike up the Griffith observatory around 1 (because it’s after second coffee) and by some divine intervention we’d have the whole park to ourselves because there was a Taylor Swift concert. And then we’d roll down all the way like how you do when you’re a kid on a grassy hill and laugh and barf and then they’d fly home.

The end.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
First I’d like to recognize that I am half of Boy Deluxe. I am the singer, but I am not the entire band. True Murra is the counter part to this project and without him there is nothing. Our journey together has been absolutely incredible and I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else. The literal light in my darkness.

There have been more people than I can count who have helped us along the way, but here are a few… The White Rabbit, The Crocodile, Ever So Android, Rob & Lynn Turner, Bill Rieflin, Logan Rohrkemper, Death by Stars, Wes Speight, Starhead Boy, ETG Coffee, Kimi Recor, Stories Books and Cafe, Gabe Pressman, Jerrod Bettis, and an honorable mention to everyone that’s ever played drums with us.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boydeluxe_/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boydeluxemusic/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5SYFuEHNOCFEX0801UN93Q

Image Credits
V Robitaille & True Murra