Rich Aucoin wants to give you his phone number

Photo by Adrian Southin, taken at Hubbards Beach, Nova Scotia, 2019.

The crowd mobs to the front of the dance floor as Rich Aucoin takes to the stage, birthday cake in hand. He calls three of us forward, and leads the audience through “Happy Birthday” to those turning a year older on the day of the show. It has become a standard opening at the award-winning indie rocker’s shows. When we lean forward and blow out the candles, the projected screen behind him begins flashing between clips from Wet Hot American Summer and names of various audience members. His back-up band and Aucoin’s own gesturing whips the crowd into a rolling wave of hopping bodies. And he’s not even begun the first song.

Aucoin offers more than a one-way stream from performer to viewer; the audience members are active participants. The self-styled “motivational crowd karaoke” performer spends only a portion of his set on the stage itself, instead weaving through the dance floor with a mic in one hand and a battery-powered light bulb in the other, leading the crowd in the tailor-made call-and-responses of his songs. 

For an hour and a half, Aucoin binds his audience together. We’re dancing, we’re singing, we’re sweating, no one is still. Whether it’s passing out the well-travelled rainbow parachute or encouraging the audience to link arms for the ever energetic “It”, Aucoin breaks down the barriers between strangers. This feeling is verbalized when Aucoin leads us through another call-and-answer: “This heart/Is all that keeps us up/This heart/Is beating.” This connectivity is maintained through the intermission, and into the night as we join the group karaoke to perfect sing-alongs like “Shout” and “Under Pressure.”

As a sampled quote from the opening track on his newest album Release (2019) from neuroscientist Dan Harris states, “what we truly have is this moment, and this.” For a brief moment, we are one, we are together.I meet with Aucoin on Hubbards Beach just hours before his show at the Shore Club. We’re sitting in warm sand, watching the receding tide of the Atlantic roll against the shoreline. I’m a little awed that Aucoin is taking to the time to speak with me between picking up musicians for his backing band. I have recently arrived in Nova Scotia from Vancouver, a city east coast friends have often described as cold and unwelcoming (I prefer to say that we’re coolly polite and that everyone’s just on their own mission), and I’m still adjusting to the hospitality of the community-minded Martimes.

“I’ve always liked coming down, playing, being at this beach,” Aucoin tells me. “More and more in the past couple years they’ve been booking bands to come down and play, so it seemed like a good place for a summer show.”

It’s an off the path venue to host his annual summer party—the Shore Club is more known for its lobster suppers than exuberant rock shows, and the four hundred or so population town of Hubbards is fifty kilometres out of Halifax, Aucoin’s hometown. The theme for this year’s show is summer camp, fitting to the Shore Club’s nautical fishing shack décor. Wooden seagulls and recovered buoys hang from the ceiling behind a hemp fishing net, and red lobsters seem to be painted on every surface. Clips from the cult classic comedy Wet Hot American Summer will be projected onto a screen behind the band and synced to his set. Accompanying visuals like this are a staple at Aucoin’s shows, and he edits together a new sequence for each tour.

“The idea is that every time you see me it won’t be the same show.”

It’s this attention to detail that keeps his fans coming back to see him again and again. Lighting, handpicking his backing band, and even the practicalities of the venue itself are all considerations when it comes to designing a show that will connect to his audience. He’s not just planning something to be watched. He’s crafting a party for everyone in the building.

“If my only barrier between me and my audience is a two-foot drop in the stage, I can very easily be immersed and a part of everything going on.”

 This emphasis on immersion and establishing connections came as a direct response to his first EP, Personal Publication. That album was a solitary affair. When it came to creating a follow up, Aucoin wanted to work with as many musicians as he could. 

“I always pick something to do opposite of the previous album, so I thought the fun thing to do would be to do it with a bunch of people,” Aucoin says. “As the number got bigger, I thought ‘there’s no way I can fit this all on an EP.’ So it became a record. With so many people, it made me learn so much on one record, and it felt like I’d made five.”

The result was We’re All Dying to Live, which expanded upon his aptly-titled sophomore  EP Public Publication. Featuring five hundred collaborators, Aucoin built a continent-wide network of musicians, and believes those relationships allowed the project to grow beyond him.

“It features a lot of people in a way that I’m [able to] make a record that’s not my voice the whole time. It’s other voices and it’s other sensibilities. I did have some definite things where I thought ‘this needs to be this way,’ but then there was also leaving some wiggle room to let some happy accidents happen, and some new directions. The spirit of that record is that togetherness.”

That seeking of togetherness came after Aucoin finished college and found himself in that all too familiar “what am I going to do with my life” moment. He realized that everyone else around him was in the same situation, and sought to create something about the community of that age and experience.

Aucoin’s next two offerings, Ephemeral and this year’s Release, have continued to explore conceptual themes. While the former looked at the passage of time, the latter moved into more existential territory.

“There’s continuity from the last one and that awareness of ‘the moment is all we have’ mentality,” he says. “But then the record goes into a list of bunch of existential concerns, why we have them, and how those different concerns affect the way we view the world and how we approach our own mortality.”

The album picks apart our fears of failing to live up to our dreams, our regrets of the past, and resistance to change. As Aucoin moves through these threats and others, the album arrives at the final track, “Release.” The title song combines elements from each preceding track, taking all of our anxieties and, well, releasing them. It’s musical catharsis.

Like his previous records, Release was composed to sync as an alternate soundtrack to an older film, in this case the equally existential 1952 Disney adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Ephemeral was synchronized with the 1979 stop motion version of The Little Prince, Personal Publication to How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and We’re All Dying to Live to over forty different films from the public domain.

Aucoin is presently on the road for his “Death” tour, and is soon to be arriving on the west coast. In these tours Aucoin will be pulling on some of the connections he’s established throughout his career, such as during the recording of We’re All Dying to Live, to make up his back-up band. 

“The band will be different sizes at different shows. There’s different people that know the set all across Canada,” explains the multi-instrumentalist, who brings in local contacts to join him on stage. “I like the idea of a band that’s never locked into just the same members and keeping it fluid.”

“And, ideally, I don’t have to be flying people all over the world,” he jokes.

Although Aucoin plays “a little bit of a bunch of instruments,” including trumpet, piano, bass, drums and guitar, by freeing up the wide number of roles his songs call for, he is able to focus his attention squarely on his audience.

Aucoin admits that he also enjoys taking a step back from centre stage and joining in as a backing member with other musicians. He appreciates the chance to engage with the music of others, such as friend Taylor Knox, or when was touring with his brother, Paul.

“He took me on my first tour and I played in his band,” Aucoin says. “That was super fun, getting to play his music and not have to be responsible for the shows and stuff. Tonight I have to oversee a lot more stuff, whereas playing someone else’s thing you can just show up and play and then you’re done.”

These collaborative relationships speak to Aucoin’s same approach with his audience. As he makes his way through the dance floor, it often feels like Aucoin is working to have a personal moment with everyone in the crowd. He hands his mic off, makes eye contact, and gives dedicated shout outs to audience members. Speaking from my own experience, it’s certainly one thing to go see your favourite artist, but it becomes a whole new level to have them see you back. And rather than slipping away to a green room after sets, the exhausted and sweaty Aucoin remains out on the floor to sign merch or just have a chat. Even as a line forms behind you, there’s no sense of rush when speaking with him.

And these connections are contagious. You’ve sung, linked arms, and partied under a parachute together. Between sets you feel like you’ve gotten to know everyone around you a little bit and rather than retreating to separate corners, there’s a sense of openness and freedom to keep chatting. Maybe it comes a little more naturally to Maritimers, but it’s something I’ve noticed in his west coast shows as well. Couldn’t solipsistic Vancouver use a little more of that togetherness? According to a study by the Vancouver Foundation, around half of Vancouverites find it difficult to make friends here, and over a quarter feel more alone than they would like to be. 

Aucoin takes that personal touch beyond his shows, however. At the end of his set, he will famously display his cell phone number and social media handle (@richaucoin) through the projector, encouraging the audience to text him for a link to the visual synchronization to his latest album. The last few years have seen a shift in how fans contact him, but he embraces how the changing modes of communication enable new connections.

“I always picked my phone number because I like that personal connection,” Aucoin says. “Every business in the world is asking you for your email. It’s more of a personal thing: ‘okay, if you want, I’ll send you this.’ It’s such a different world than when I started it, and more people like DMing on Instagram. I get more messages through my social media platforms than I do my phone number.”

As for privacy, Aucoin isn’t concerned.

“Everyone’s been really cool. I’ve texted thousands of people, and there’s only been a couple prank phone calls. Even when people have, it’s one time, just being like ‘Oh my god, this is still your number, and we thought this would be funny cause we’re all drinking right now.’ But I have my phone on silent, so it doesn’t ever really bother me. If I see a missed call from an unknown number I usually text back ‘who’s this?’” he laughs.

“Because it’s more intimate, I think I’ve been lucky enough to receive a lot of text messages from people being very open and honest about their experience during the show.” Aucoin explains. “Sometimes they’re going through much heavier shit than just coming out to see a music show. They talk about the show in terms of contrast to the stuff that’s going on in their life, and why the idea of going to a show and feeling that sort of connectivity and positivity is beneficial to them at that moment.

“That turns into the fuel of me wanting to keep doing it and keep making those experiences for people.”

Rich Aucoin’s fourth album Release came out earlier this year in May, with Haven Sounds. He will be performing at the Biltmore Cabaret October 31st.