Dishwalla singer-songwriter JR Richards knows his priorities.
He has yet to play at The Venice West – where he will take the stage on Tuesday, July 18 – but his research is complete.
“I’ve heard it’s pretty cool,” Richards said via Zoom from his home in England. “Two or three people told me they have a fantastic grilled cheese sandwich.”
The Venice West performance is a rare public show for Richards, who will play piano and acoustic guitar. The set list will be eclectic.
“Half the show is songs I wrote when I was in Dishwalla,” he said. “Then I do my solo stuff, and I put out a covers album four years ago. I’ll be playing some of those songs, too.”
He references 2018’s hidden gem, “Under the Cover,” which features reimagined tracks from artists such as Pearl Jam, the Righteous Brothers, Eurythmics, George Michael and CCR. Richards takes on Queen’s challenging single “I Want to Break Free.”
“Covering something he sings is not particularly easy,” Richards said of Freddie Mercury with a smile. “I like to challenge myself, but most of the songs were a challenge to sing.”
“The other challenge was figuring out how to do all these great songs in my own way without them sounding awful. That’s the challenge with covers. You don’t want to sing them like karaoke. I don’t want to try to sound exactly like (the original) version.
“I want to try to make something that has my own signature.”
The creation of “Under the Cover” was exciting for two reasons.
“First of all, it was fun,” he said. “Secondly, there are so many great songs that one of the challenges was choosing and then cutting out the songs I didn’t want to do. I wanted to try a lot of them.”
After recording the songs, Richards faced another hurdle: playing them live.
“This is far from my comfort zone,” he said. “I’m a singer-songwriter. I would spend time alone, writing songs on acoustic guitar or piano and bringing them to a band.
“Then we always did these big, massive, bombastic rock versions of everything. For most of my life I was used to having a drum kit behind me, guitar amps on and being in the middle of all this sound. Now I’m suddenly out there and it’s just me. It’s kind of very scary.”
Verve Pipe lead singer and Richard’s friend Brian Vander Ark helped him ease his fears.
“He’s a great singer, a great songwriter and a great instrumentalist as well,” Richards said. “He’s been playing solo acoustic for quite some time. During COVID, he and I were discussing what we should do now that all the venues were closed, all the recording studios were closed.”
“He said, ‘Well, I’ve been doing these private shows, acoustically in people’s houses,’ which I thought was crazy. But I decided to give it a try, and it was one of the coolest experiences.”
Dishwalla scores
Richards fondly remembers “Counting Blue Cars,” his biggest hit with Dishwalla. His life changed when the Grammy-nominated song – which is about “Tell me everything you think about God, because I’d really like to know her” – played on alternative rock radio.
“The early days of Dishwalla were really cool,” he said. “It was a magical heyday, just because there were no real expectations other than just playing songs together and trying to make them sound as good as possible. It really changes the dynamic dramatically – sometimes not in the best way.”
“That changed our dynamic.” Responsibility and maturity also came with it.
“You’re 20, you have no responsibilities and you’re just making music, and then suddenly the responsibility appears,” he said.
With the responsibility came the stress of music. Richards, now 57, said he had to relearn how to enjoy music.
“There was a period in the early 2000s where I kind of lost the love of it,” he said. “It was like I just kept going, and then Dishwalla broke up. Our last album came out in 2005. Then it’s either get another job or figure out how to enjoy singing again. That’s what I did.”
He believes that his wife, British director and sculptor Min Reid-Richards, and their close relationship helped him fall in love with his art again.
“It helped me get things back in my head,” he said. “I just remembered why I enjoyed it in the first place. It’s not about being famous or hugely successful. It’s about having fun singing songs and writing songs.”
