BC Music Scene – Dear Rouge

Drew and Danielle McTaggart met while touring in their early days, before dating then getting married and starting their own band, Dear Rouge. Dear Rouge is from Vancouver, B.C. and began in 2012. The name is based off of Danielle’s home town, Red Deer. “Dear” being a homophone of deer and “rouge” being French for red.

Dear Rouge is also a “Peak Performance Project” winner from 2012. They’re also quite the decorated group when it comes to awards. Winning the SOCAN Songwriting Prize in 2015. Nominated and won several awards in 2017 and 2018 in the Western Canadian Music Awards. And have even scored a Juno Award for Breakthrough Group of the Year in 2016.

The group has four studio albums, with their latest being released in March of 2018 “PHASES”. The album had three singles which got pretty high up on the Canadian Alternative and Canadian Rock charts. “Boys and Blondes” and “Modern Shakedown” got as high as 6th. While “Live Through the Night” (arguably their biggest song) got all the way up to number 1.

Dear Rouge has toured the country on several occasions. In 2013 they did a cross Canada tour in spring and again in winter, with their western shows supporting Canadian artist Lights. In 2015 the band was able to tour in support of another Canadian group “The Arkells” on their winter tour dates from February to March. They toured in support of the Arkells again in 2019 on their “Rally Cry Tour” Through the west coast U.S. stops.

The band hasn’t mentioned anything new in the works in regards to an album or a tour. The pandemic is keeping everyone a little bit more hush-hush. Although Dear Rouge is still scheduled to play at the Pigeon Lake Music Festival in Alberta in 2021. We’ll see if that still happens.

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