Dear Rouge

History

Drew and Danielle McTaggart were both touring musicians under separate projects. They met while in their early touring days, and began dating, before getting married and starting Dear Rouge. The name of the duo is derived from the name of Danielle's home town, Red Deer, Alberta. She had previously been in a duo called Gaetz Ave, named after a street in Red Deer. Gaetz Ave won a GMA Canada Covenant Award in 2005 as New Artist Of The Year. In April 2012, Dear Rouge independently released their debut EP Heads Up! Watch Out!, a four-song EP on their Bandcamp page, and followed up six months later with their second EP Kids Wanna Know.

In November 2012, Dear Rouge won $102,700 as the grand prize winners of the Peak Performance Project put on by the Music BC Industry Organization and CKPK-FM radio station in Vancouver.

In June 2013, Exposure Contest and Dear Rouge partnered up to present a video editing contest in support of their single, "Thinking About You", from their Kids Wanna Know EP The contest drew a wide social media spread, accumulating hundreds of entrants from around the world.

In March 2014, the band's second single "I Heard I Had" charted at #3 in Alternative Rock (Mediabase), #3 in Modern Rock (Mediabase), and at #13 in Canadian Rock (BDS radio). The song also won the 2015 SOCAN Songwriting Prize, an annual competition that honours the best song written and released by 'emerging' songwriters over the past year, as voted by the public. The band released their third single "Best Look Lately" on April 22, 2014. As of September 2014, it has also cracked the Top 20 of the Canadian Alternative Rock and Modern Rock charts.

The band signed to the Canadian branch of Universal Music Group in October 2014, and announced that their debut album Black To Gold will be released through them in early 2015. The band's fourth single, title track "Black To Gold", was sent to radio on January 13, 2015. Black To Gold (Single) was made available digitally on February 10 along with a pre-order for the album. On February 2 the band announced March 30th as the release date for the album and a tour with Arkells. As of May 2015, "Black To Gold" had hit #2 on the Canadian Alt-Rock charts.

On April 2nd, 2016, Dear Rouge won Breakthrough Group of the Year at the 2016 Juno Awards, and also performed "I Heard I Had" on the live broadcast on April 3rd, 2016.

Touring

The band toured across Canada in the spring of 2013, and again in the Winter of 2013, also covering Western Canada with a number of shows supporting Lights. In March 2014 the band announced another cross Canada tour supporting Fast Romantics. Throughout the summer of 2014, Dear Rouge played a number of festivals across Canada including Edgefest in Toronto, Otalith in Ucluelet, Shorefest in Vancouver, X-Fest in Calgary, Sonic Boom in Edmonton, and Rifflandia in Victoria.

The band toured Canada supporting Phantogram and Mounties throughout December 2014. The band supported Arkells on their Winter Canadian tour dates throughout Canada over February and March 2015. Summer 2015 saw them play festivals across Canada again, including the inaugural Wayhome Festival. Throughout the fall and winter of 2015, Dear Rouge headlined venues across Canada with Rah Rah and sold out many notable venues including Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver and Mod Club in Toronto. They then toured Europe in December 2015. They spent 2016 mostly writing and recording, but appeared at summer festivals like Field Trip in Toronto, and Osheaga Festival in Montreal.

Studio releases

Singles