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 Dearly Beloved will celebrate their debut CD You Are The Jaguar with a release party at Sam The Record Man tonight. |
Sometimes great bursts of creativity arise from great pain -- and yet the eventual product is far from mournful. That's the case with Dearly Beloved's debut CD, You Are The Jaguar, anyway.
Singer-bassist Rob Higgins, formerly of Change Of Heart and Doctor, was inspired to write perhaps the best songs he's ever done by the illness and death of his father earlier this year, and it proved to be excellent therapy.
"I guess I kinda lost it after being in the hospital every day," Higgins explained over the phone last week. "The Doctor thing had sort of dissolved at the same time that my dad got sick, and I just started writing 'cause I didn't know what else to do. I went to Florida for a couple of weeks by myself and just wrote songs. I think I was lucky to have a place to put that energy, a therapeutic way of dealing with it other than seeing a shrink."
There are some slow songs on You Are The Jaguar, but it mostly rocks with an intensity that's more joyful than woeful.
"I didn't want to make a really mopey, my-dad's-dying record," said Higgins. "For one thing, we were hopeful for a long time that he'd come through. And then I wanted to celebrate his life as much as mourn his death. I wanted to make a record that would make you shake your ass."
Higgins recorded the album with a bunch of musician friends, some of whom -- Sticky Rice singer Niva Chow, former Danko Jones drummer Damon Richardson, now playing guitar, drummer Alex O'Reilly and guitarist John Pogue -- have settled into a semi-permanent Dearly Beloved lineup.
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"I did each batch of songs with a different group of people, which is why there are so many players on the record," said Higgins. "But Niva and Damon and I have a really tight bond, and John and Alex are great bandmates. I think we've become a family, and I'd like to make the next record with them."
You Are The Jaguar is out today, and the band will celebrate at a release party tonight at 7 p.m. at Sam The Record Man on Yonge St., complete with live performance and video shoot. They'll also play the Horseshoe July 28 and then head east on tour.
ESCOVEDO RETURNS: The brilliant Austin country-folk-rock singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo also dealt with the spectre of death on his latest album, but it was potentially his own, from Hepatitis C.
Escovedo recovered to make the John Cale-produced The Boxing Mirror -- his first album in six years -- and plays the El Mocambo tomorrow. Also tomorrow, Howie Beck and Jason Collett play two sets at the Rivoli, and Buffy Sainte-Marie is at Hugh's Room.