Can a Fraser Valley country singer bring the 7pm cheer back?

If you see someone hanging around at 7pm with a cowboy hat and a speaker, it might be Todd Richard. Each night the Harrison Hot Springs country musician has been singing along to his song “Green and Blue” in a different place in the Fraser Valley, with a goal of reigniting the 7pm applause for health-care workers.

FVC: What made you decide to try and restart the 7pm applause?

Todd Richard: “We were just two months into the pandemic, and people started banging of the pots and pans. That's what gave me the inspiration to write the song [“Green and Blue”]. I wanted to put the pots and pans and all that thank you into a song. So with us just just releasing it now, I kind of went like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I haven't heard about anybody doing the acknowledgement.’ I just had another crazy idea and just thought, well I’m going to start going around. Because now we’re over a year into this. When we were just two months in I thought to myself how tough it must be for front-line workers… [Now] they’re literally at their breaking point. They’ve been through just hell and back, basically, and are still in it. So, it just seemed important to me. The emotion of the song is really there in the lyrics, and I wanted to put that out now.”

FVC: You’ve already sung in Chilliwack and Harrison. Where are you hoping to go from here?

TR: “We're going to start moving towards Abbotsford and work our way into Richmond and Surrey and Vancouver, and start now with going to some of the hospitals and care homes… We want to have some of the front-line workers able to be there and hear it. We've had folks that want to find out where we are every day because they want to come and support. But I've been not wanting to do that because... you don't want to have a whole bunch of people come out [because of COVID]. So, we kept it each night just as a surprise.”

FVC: What do you have to say to the people who participated in the applause a year ago?

TR: “My thought is that we were all so appreciative 2 months in, so I would love it if they would take a moment to think about that. Now we’re 14 months into this… we’ve all had a rough go. It’s changed all of our lives. But that person on the front line, I put myself in their shoes, and I think, at 2 months I was scared and thankful for them. And if we were then, we still should be now. Because they are at their breaking point and they need our help and they need our thanks.”

Todd Richard’s song “Green and Blue” will be played each night, except for Canucks game nights, at 7pm on Country 107.1. Richard will be livestreaming his 7pm tribute each night except Sundays on his Facebook page.