Squamish Valley Music Festival Band of the Day: Dear Rouge

by Amanda Siebert on August 6th, 2015 at 10:53 AM

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It's almost here. And, no, we're not talking about tonight's Republican debate.

No, we’re referring to the Squamish Valley Music Festival, taking place August 6 to 9 at the Logger Sports Grounds and Hendrickson Fields. In anticipation of the big day, we’re rounding up local artists who’ll be playing this year’s event, and getting them to answer some important questions.

Like what they’ll be making sure to pack to make it through their set, the all-time dream festival lineup, and who they plan to stalk backstage. And that’s just the start of our probing. Read on, but not before you pick up your Squamish Valley Music Festival ticket. The last thing you want to miss is today’s featured local artist....

Dear Rouge is led by husband-and-wife duo Drew and Danielle McTaggart. Since coming out on top at the Peak Performance Project in 2012, the synth-rock outfit released its first full length album, Black to Gold, earlier this year, cracking the Canadian Top 20 with "I Heard I Had", "Best Look Lately", and "Black to Gold". This isn't the band's first time at Squamish, and the McTaggarts are looking forward to playing the festival once again.

Outdoor essentials

Bring a small puppy, and a flask of whiskey to sneak into the festival. That’s pretty much all anyone ever needs. Actually, maybe throw some glitter in there as well.

I'd love to hang with

Mariachi El Bronx, obviously. They created there own genre of mariachi punk, and because of that we would love to chat with them. We would ask them how they like their outfits, can they do the splits, and if they have every played a set at a Mexican restaurant.

As stellar as this year’s Squamish bill is, what’s your Fantasy Fest line-up?

This is tricky but I’m pretty sure this would be the dream festival. We would put two stages together. One stage would be summer 2015 and then the other stage would be summer 1969. When you walk between stages you pass through a sweet time warp where you meet Bif from Back to the Future.

The 2015 stage would have the headliners—Washed Out, Tame Impala, TV on the Radio, Florence & the Machine, St Vincent, and Drake. The 1969 stage would have the Beatles last show ever, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, et cetera.

The festival would be a ‘pay what you want’.

What’s your official rider request?

Our dream rider would be a random one. We would have a sheet with thousands of items we like, i.e. food, alcohol, products both cheap and expensive.

Then each show we play they have to pick 10 things from our list to get us. This way every rider would be unpredictable, which would make it the best rider ever!

Trivia time: What's Squamish's official slogan?

Ummmm… the valley of ultimate squashy music mania. Pretty confident that is it.

The Squamish Valley Music Festival takes place at Hendrickson Fields & Logger Sports Ground. Quick—what’s your favourite logger sport?

We are huge fans of all logging sports. But our favourite one is the two-man shimmy up the post one. It’s so cool to watch two 200 lbs+ burly men shimmy up a post with a helmet on. Name one person who wouldn’t want to watch that.