NXNE 2006: Dearly Beloved

Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Official Website: www.dearlybeloved.ca
Rock 'n' roll man about town Rob Higgins has a new band, Dearly Beloved.

Here's a little bit about them:

ChartAttack: Playing NXNE is cool and all, but if you could travel back in time, which festival do you wish you could have played at... Altamont, Woodstock or the first Lollapalooza? Why?
I think our band would have just a really good time at Altamont. We're a bit debaucherous and have a tendency to have too much fun. But I'll go with the first Lollapalooza though, that's the only one that feels like a real answer.

Music festivals are notorious for being populated by weird industry weasel-type people. What are three tips to deal with the shameless upward graspers of the music industry?
Can I sum it up in three words? Accept, tolerate, with compassion. I suppose that's four words. I went for a massage to get destressed and it was this Buddhist woman who was giving me the massage and during the whole thing she basically just gave me this awesome one-on-one free-flowing exchange about Buddhism. And she said that the essence of that whole mentality is to handle every situation, even if someone's being abusing you, with acceptance and to tolerate it with compassion. So maybe I'll just apply that to how to deal with the weasels.

What's the best way to score free stuff at music festivals?
You just need to show up really. If you just go out, you'll get free stuff. Don't sit at home and say, "Oh, I'm tired, fuck this." Get the hell out of your house and participate. It's like those Participaction commercials in school when you were young. If you're a good human and you get off your ass and go out to see bands, you'll get free stuff.

What do you do when a band you're put on a bill with suck?
Can I just say "See answer #2?"

How important is it for you to "circulate and flirt" with the audience before or after the show?
I'm not very good at it after the show, 'cause after the show, I'm just no good at it. And before the show I'm probably not that good either. So, what was the question again? I guess it's really not that important to me because usually I just like hanging out with my friends and I hang out with my friends all the time.

When you're meeting so many people and shaking so many hands on the road, do you ever get concerned about catching something?
Well, we have a sponsorship with Purell. We have a big Purell bus. No, that's not true, but that would be awesome, eh? Just have that be our whole story where I'm so freaked out about shaking people's hands that we hooked up a Purell sponsorship. Yeah, we try to minimize physical contact when we're playing out-of-town. I love humans, love meeting them, but we're all pretty selective about who we touch on the skin. But did you know in the '20s, when the influenza hit Canada, it became illegal to shake people's hands? Maybe we should just revert back to those days and make it illegal to shake hands with people.

What are the best and worst things about your music?
Probably the same thing for the two is that it's just honest music. We don't use auto-tune or digital effects to enhance anything. We just record into microphones and commit it to something and that's it. I think that's probably the best thing about our music and to some people it would be the worst. We don't fix a lot of imperfections.

Last question: Have you done anything new or interesting this week?
I've strangely had the best and worst week of my life. I had my dad's funeral on Thursday — so the last seven days have been really hard. But at the same time my uncle let me go up to his cottage and let me golf at a course near his cottage. So it was actually the best five days I've had in a really long time. This week I've buried my father, had a massage from a Buddhist woman and golfing at my uncle's cottage. I'm happy to be alive.

Dearly Beloved will play The Drake Hotel at 11 p.m. June 8 for Chart's NXNE 2006 showcase.