Finding a new Doctor
Rob Higgins launches Dearly Beloved after the demise of his previous outfit
John Kendle

When last heard from, Toronto-based songwriter Rob Higgins was partnered with singer Danny Greaves in a promising musical project called Doctor.

The former Change of Heart bassist thought he had a good thing going with The Watchmen frontman in 2004, until Greaves realized his family commitments meant he couldn’t tour as much as Higgins wanted.

Doctor disintegrated amicably, but Higgins, at a temporary loss professionally, was then unexpectedly faced with a personal struggle — his father’s 18-month fight with terminal abdominal cancer.

“He battled cancer three times in his life… and this time it just spread too quickly,” Higgins says. “I can’t even begin to tell you how heartbreaking it was, but I made a decision to be there with him almost every day. I tried not to get fucked up over it and just tried to be his friend through all of it, but it was pretty hard at the end of the day.

“Life gets reduced to its fundamentals pretty quickly, and there I was in my 30s dealing with my own mortality and my father’s mortality and at the same time trying to keep focused and producing work.”

At one point in his father’s battle, Higgins found himself suffering from anxiety and panic attacks. He decamped to Florida to regroup and soon found himself writing songs.
v “I needed a way to deal with it. It was like, ‘I need to talk to somebody about this but first I need to write it down.’”
v The end result of those rather trying circumstances is You Are the Jaguar, a spiky, vital indie rock record by Higgins’ newest band, Dearly Beloved.

Featuring former Danko Jones drummer (and fellow Change of Heart alumnus) Damon Richardson on guitars along with John Pogue, the group also includes vocalist Niva Chow and Doctor’s drummer, Alex O’Reilly.

“They all worked on these songs knowing that I was making a record, but when it came out I thought I was going to have to cast a whole new group of people — but these people were there, which was great.”

Because of his father’s struggle, Higgins, 35, says he feels like he’s grown up a bit in the past couple of years. He’s also rediscovered the redemptive power of music.

“When we started, everyone knew how tough things were for me on a daily basis but, relatively speaking, they could always have been worse,” he says.

Only one song, The Butler Routine, with its refrain of “If you can get by, I can get by,” is directly about Higgins’ father’s experience.

“Ultimately I guess the whole (album) is framed by that experience,” he says. “It was like being stuck in the bottom of an emotional well, then climbing out of it and seeing the sunshine.”

On the album, Higgins’ journey is expressed through a live-in-the-moment feel that makes for an immediate listening experience. Now that the band is in the midst of a 40-date Canadian tour, he says shows have taken on a similar vibe.

“We just get up and shake our asses for 40 minutes. It’s the best, most cathartic thing I can think of.”

When their Trans-Canada sojourn is done, the members of Dearly Beloved aren’t going to take a break, either. Higgins is eager to release the new record in Europe, and he’s excited about the possibility of showcasing for Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore at the Pop Montreal festival in October.

“I want to be on the road,” Higgins says. “We need to follow our guts and instinct.”