by Konstantin Chilikin
— Columnist —
First, I want to apologize to Lori Barber (née Hoppenheit), ex-bass player of a Canadian hard rock band Stiletto, that it took THAT long to post this interview. It was done in the very beginning of 2018; right after Stiletto had released a CD called Don’t Call Me Sweetie via FNA Records.
Then the site I was writing for was called it a day and I went to do other things. A while ago I found the interview so here we are, talking with Lori about her short but eventful journey with Stiletto.
Hardrock Haven: Lori, could you tell me how FNA Records found you?
Lori Barber: Well, the band split up in 1991 or 1992 but the girls and I stayed in touch. We all moved back to our hometowns — I am in Winnipeg and other girls are in Quebec and Toronto. Years later I received a message through Facebook from a guy named Jordan Stone. He asked me if I am that Lori from Stiletto and if I still have any demo tapes available. He had seen us playing while we were touring in the States back in the late 80s or early 90s. It had been so long since anybody talked to me about Stiletto and I was very happy and sent him a cassette tape. A few years after that he contacted me again and said, he had begun working as an A&R with FNA Records and he wanted to see if we had enough material on the demo tapes to release an album. So we began working and searching through the old boxes to find our demo tapes. It was interesting having the contract signed by all of the girls because we all live in different parts of the country. It took us a while to find everything and get it released.
Hardrock Haven: Who came up with the title “Don’t Call Me Sweetie”?
Lori Barber: When the band broke up we still had some original songs which had not yet been recorded and one of the songs was called “Don’t Call Me Sweetie” and we would often open our set with this song. It was slow, grungy, and really powerful song. It was about our experience showing up to the club where we would play, loaded our gears ourselves, set up the stage, and a couple of men who worked sound for us or helped to set up the stage, they would often call us sweetie. We were like, “Sweetie?” Is that how you would call a guy who comes to set up a stage? That’s how the song “Don’t Call Me Sweetie” happened and although the song wasn’t recorded when the album came out we just thought it would be an obvious choice for the title. It represented who we were.
Hardrock Haven: As far as I understand, you used to play in The Gasworks Station in Toronto. Did you share the stage with some celebrities there?
Lori Barber: We met lots of them during our tours from the east coast to the west coast of Canada and through the States. One of the most notable famous people we ran into was Metallica. They played at a big arena that night in the city we were also playing and after their show, Lars Ulrich and a couple of people from their crew came to the club where we were playing and watched our show. He graciously stayed behind and talked to us after the show and we all ended up going to his hotel room talking about the music business and sharing stories. It was pretty surreal! We were like, “We spent the evening with Lars Ulrich! What is that?”
Hardrock Haven: Yeah, sounds fantastic! And who turned you on to rock music and made you pick up the bass?
Lori Barber: My music career began at the age of eight when one of the music teachers at my school put a ukulele in my hand and I couldn’t put it down. Ukulele transferred into guitar and bass guitar. At school, I played with a jazz band, I went to clubs, and when a band would show up in our town and stay for a week, I would get to know people. And through the connection that I made with musicians, I got to know Carole [Couture-Oliveri, Stiletto’s singer] who tried to put Stiletto together. She heard about a bass played in Winnipeg and that I was apparently pretty good. (Laughs) So when Carole started to put together Stiletto she tracked me down, and back in those days it was a heck of a lot harder than it is now, so it was a challenge for them to find me, but they did. So within a couple of months after I graduated from high school I left home and moved to Toronto to join the group of girls I had never met before and we were gonna trying to make some music. We stayed together a few years before Carole left.
Hardrock Haven: I guess that was such a shock for your family! I wouldn’t let my children move to another city to join a rock band right after school!
Lori Barber: (Laughs) Yeah, but that was my plan! All my friends planned university and I wasn’t ready for that yet. My plan was to play in a local band in Winnipeg for a year and then I would go to university. But I didn’t find a local band here in Winnipeg so when this opportunity came up in Toronto I thought it was perfect like it just meant to be. When I initially went down it was supposed to be for a short period of time. Stiletto had recorded a demo tape prior to my affiliation, and they had a different drummer and no bass player. So they recorded a demo tape and had received an offer from a Canadian record label to do a showcase. The whole idea of me going down there was I was just going there for just two months, learn some songs, do the showcase and if we got signed to the label I would go home. So we played the showcase and we didn’t get signed. The label decided that we weren’t ready…
Hardrock Haven: They were crazy!
Lori Barber: (Laughs) Yeah, I think so, too! So we stayed together and became sisters. And yeah, for sure it was scary for my parents, but all through my childhood my parents were always willing to let me risk and if I fell on my face they would pick me up, brush me up, and say, “OK, so what’s next?” So in a way, my parents had been training me for this kind of experience all my life. And you know, as a mom of three kids now I hope I’m doing the same thing for them.
Hardrock Haven: Could you clarify the situation with the band’s name? I heard it was called after your last name — Hoppenheit — for a while.
Lori Barber: No, the band was never called after my last name. But there was a band called Hassenpfeffer. When Stiletto broke up in 1991 or 1992 Carole, the singer, moved to Los Angeles, she wanted to pursue opportunities there on her own. The rest of us didn’t see each other for a year. And there was another female singer in the Toronto area who had a bit of success, her name was Maria Del Mar, she was the singer of the band National Velvet. Maria had heard about this girl band who didn’t have a singer and she wanted to get together with us and see if we could make a go with her. So me, Caroline Soucy, Tracy Hilderley and Maria Del Mar became Hassenpfeffer. We mostly played around the Toronto area and managed to record a CD “Songs of Convenience” with an independent label called MaGaDa International. With this band our style was like a multiple personalities — we had many styles and that’s what I really enjoyed about Hassenpfeffer. Whatever music came out of us we laid it down and turned to something we loved. It would have been interesting to see where we might have gone if Carole had stayed with us. I think our songwriting got so solid and we learned how to work with each other. A few years ago it was 25 years since Stiletto first got together and our singer Carole was celebrating a milestone birthday, so we all made it back to Toronto and it was no time has passed. When the five of us got together, we felt like we were still the same. We know that the bond that we created is for a lifetime.
Hardrock Haven: Did you consider a chance to play a few shows to celebrate the anniversary?
Lori Barber: We were talking about maybe doing a show in Toronto. The problem is in that Caroline lives downtown in Toronto, Ann [Greenwood, guitarist] lives outside Ottawa, that’s about four hours away from Toronto, Carole lives in Burlington, which is about an hour from Toronto, Tracy is now in Sault Ste Marie, which is about 15-hour drive from Toronto, and I am in Winnipeg which is 30-hour drive! So it would be a challenge to practice before the show.
Hardrock Haven: Could you tell me about songwriting, rehearsing, and the daily routine with Stiletto back in the day?
Lori Barber: When the band first got together, it was Carole who did most of the writing with her partner at the time Howie Turner and we were like hired musicians, but as the band progressed we started to write more together. We had a practice schedule whether we were at home or whether we were on tour. When we were at home, we used to practice 3 times a week. When we were on tour we rehearsed in the same clubs where we stayed for a week, we would use the daytime to practice on stage and do songwriting there. At different times we were roommates with each other so we would do songwriting acoustically.
Hardrock Haven: When I listen to the CD Don’t Call Me Sweetie, I have an impression that the songs were recorded at least in three different sessions: “Best Of Me” or “One Night” sound a bit in the vein of Lita Ford, while “How Could You” and “I Can Do” are more funky…
Lori Barber: You are right. The album is a collection of demo tapes we made to send to different labels asking, “Sign us!” “One Night” and “Bring Back The Fire” were done before Tracy and I joined the band in September 1989. “Best Of Me”, “Runnin’ Away From Love” were done very early as well. My personal favorites on the CD are “Fallin”, “How Could You” and “I Can Do”. I think they were the last recordings we did together. To me, they are the beginning of that taste of where we were heading. At that point, we were fully writing as a group and every band member had an input in those songs. One person would bring an idea and we would build it together as we practiced.
Hardrock Haven: You mentioned touring the States and playing at places like “Whiskey a Go-Go” or “Roxy Theatre”. Any memories about those venues?
Lori Barber: Being an up-and-coming and not really established band we were subjected to pay-to-play system, so to play at any of those places you would have to go and buy a bunch of tickets from the venue. And in order to make money from playing, you were supposed to go and find some people and sell the tickets to them. And of course, no one sold the tickets. We would buy tickets and walk around the Sunset Strip a couple of nights before the show and hand the tickets to people, give them away for free, just to get people to the show. And also that wasn’t like our usual type of show when we played with our own drums and own amps and everything. You basically walk with your guitars and your drumsticks and you play on whatever equipment is there and you have a shorter set there. I mean, it was quite a bit different but it still was a great experience. One of the most memorable times that we had played in the States was in the club “Sindbad” close to Buffalo, New York. We showed up to the club and we were like, “Where is this place? It’s in the middle of nowhere! Who’s gonna show up to see us here?” But when the night of the show came the club was just packed! And it turned out to be one of our favorite places to play after that. And the stories like that are all over the place.
Hardrock Haven: Was there a difference when you played in the States compared to Canada?
Lori Barber: I think the audiences in the States were a little bit more appreciative. I don’t want to put Canada down, we had really great fans here, but the Canadian audiences were a little bit more reserved, a little bit less crazy sometimes. We felt that the audiences in the States had more energy and were so enthusiastic!
Hardrock Haven: Did you think of relocating to the United States?
Lori Barber: We thought about that and I think that’s why Carole ended up in California, she thought that the American market would be a better place, so we talked about relocating to America. But even if Canada and the US are very close in some ways, they are very different countries. Had the opportunity come up and someone made it very easy for us to relocate probably we would have done it in a heartbeat, but it never materialized.
Hardrock Haven: Didn’t you have a proper manager at the time?
Lori Barber: We have Dan Dube who was our manager from start to finish and he was able to make a lot of connections for us and did a lot of bookings but it was a very different time back then. It was a lot harder to get yourself into places, it was about making phone calls and knocking on doors, but Dan was awesome, we all loved him.
Hardrock Haven: So when Carole went to Los Angeles, that was it, I guess?
Lori Barber: Yes, the rest of us kinda went our separate ways before we came back together and formed Hassenpfeffer a year later.
Hardrock Haven: And what happened to you after that?
Lori Barber: I became a teacher and I teach everything in grade A: math, social studies, language, etc. I really love working with kids and I work in a place with creative teachers who have passion and that’s very encouraging. I told you about how my musical career began with a ukulele, I teach my students a ukulele, and we learn Green Day, Nirvana, so I teach them cool songs on a ukulele. I have one student who I see as a younger version of myself, I can see the passion that he has. My students know that I used to be a rock musician and they can laugh when I tell them what I did. You know, I like working with kids, I like the relationship with them. Of course, I have to teach them stuff too, but the part that keeps me going is when you see their passion. And you know, teaching in a lot of ways is like performance, it’s putting on a show.
Hardrock Haven: How do you see your music career these days? Are you still proud of it?
Lori Barber: Absolutely! I have no regrets about my choice at 18 years old to leave home, move to Toronto, and be a rock star. A lot of things in my life had been delayed because of that and a lot of people have longer careers than I have. Other people of my age are starting to have grandchildren and I have 8 and 3 years old children, so I am an old mama, but I have no regrets about any of that. And I do share the stories about my music career with my students. And one of the reasons I do this is that I still believe that things like going to university and becoming a teacher can always be an option, you always can do it, but an experience comes to you when you are young and you need to take that experience and make the most of it. I did that. If I had said no to that opportunity nothing else like this would ever come to me in my life and my life would be different right now. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
