"I already knew and liked a lot of the music from that era, like Richie Valens and Buddy Holly, and through the Beatles, because they did a lot of those songs early on," says Hope. "But I guess I started to get more into it because the psychobilly [the post-punk, horror movie-themed style established by the Cramps] shows were always really cool, with bands like the Dead Luck Devilles and [Goldpaugh's group] the Arkhams. At one of the shows I met this guitar player from Saugerties named Jeff Kadic, who had started a rockabilly band called the Champtones. He started making me mix CDs of all this cool stuff I'd never heard before and asked me if I'd be into singing for the band, and it just felt perfectly natural. So rockabilly went from being this thing I had only listened to being what I actually did, which was totally awesome."
Thanks in large part to Hope's go-getting, the Champtones swiftly became the Kingston area's first-call rockabilly unit and made an EP, 2010's Heartbeat, before differences over touring ambitions and the loss of members got the better of them. Around the same time that the Champtones were unraveling, so were their friends the Arkhams.
"Lara and I had already started hanging out by then, and she had a bunch of Champtones shows she'd booked and still wanted to do," says Goldpaugh, who grew up in Kingston, studied art at SUNY Purchase, and for several years lived in New York, where he worked in forensic autopsy photography. "So she said, 'Hey, can you guys just back me up for these shows?' Our drummer had been playing in both bands, so it was pretty easy to do. We didn't wanna call it the Champtones, though, because Jeff wasn't involved [Champtone is also the name of Kadic's custom-built guitar line]. And with Lara singing it wasn't really the Arkhams, either. So we came up with 'the Ark-Tones' as a placeholder, figuring we'd come up with another name later. But everybody just got used to it and it stuck."
The new configuration began its ongoing and relentless gigging regimen, debuting on CD with 2014's Luck Maker. And, true to that title, one can say that Hope and the Ark-Tones have, indeed, been making their own luck ever since. The band can be found rocking on the road around the US several months a year at clubs and roots music festivals and performing somewhere in the Northeast almost every weekend (the night before this interview, the couple had returned from a six-hour round trip to play a show in Vermont). Among others, the Ark-Tones have appeared with the likes of R&B legend Gary US Bonds and honky-tonk hero Wayne Hancock, opening for the latter on WAMC's "Live at the Linda." Along the way they've earned the enthusiasm of some other music veterans as well. One of them is Tony Garnier, Bob Dylan's longest-running sideman and also the bassist of choice for Tom Waits, Paul Simon, David Johansen, and Robert Gordon.
"Lara Hope and the Ark-Tones' records and live performances capture, and release, the spirit of the original rockabilly and country bands that I have listened to and enjoyed for most of my life," says Garnier by e-mail. "And my two boys, who are 10 and 13 and are [otherwise] glued to Top 40 radio, are also huge fans."
But, as amazing as such accolades are, for Hope the biggest honor came earlier this year, when, after a nail-biting online campaign, she was given the 2017 Ameripolitan Music Award for Best Female Rockabilly Artist. "That was definitely the coolest night of my life," says Hope, who attended the February awards ceremony in Austin, Texas, which saw Jerry Lee Lewis, Junior Brown, Hank Williams III, Pokey LaFarge, and others line up to collect honors as well. "It was really, really amazing. When we were there, we met people from all over the world—Italy, Spain, Australia, all over—who've become friends and stayed in touch with us."
Many of those contacts will no doubt be helpful when the band tours Europe for the first time this spring, after a lengthy Southern tour this winter; a three-week US tour opening for the Reverend Horton Heat is set for June. Through constant hard work and hustle that includes the Ark-Tones, their acoustic offshoot the Gold-Hope Duo, and their seasonal stint as entertainers at Rocking Horse Ranch in Highland, Hope and Goldpaugh have somehow managed the impossible: making a living—albeit a modest one—from their music. When asked about it, Hope brings up a joke about rockabilly being the retirement plan for punk rockers, a trope that's more of a commentary on many punk musicians wanting to turn the volume down as they get older, rather than an assurance of their being able to trade low-paying loudness for roots rock riches.