Who is Dear One? Dear One is an Americana Folk-Pop five-piece band based out of British Columbia but more specifically in the beautiful Frasier valley! Dear One initially started out as a duo but later transitioned into a band. The duo included husband and wife, Josh & Cally Peterson. Together they performed soulful melodies that soothe the heart alongside lively tunes in which stirs up a nice country vibe. Their passion is to bring a warm, quality feel to the Canadian music scene that will essentially help people feel welcomed, inspired, and entertained!
Dear One gives us warmth and texture with their newest single titled “Take Me Back” and we loved the cultivating energy and how this was able to captivate us into an aesthetic of images! As songwriters, it’s important to create the story for the listener to musically follow. For Dear One, this seemed to be an easy task for them! “Take Me Back” took his listener on an unforgettable journey of soft acoustics and a home-like aura radiating around the song. “California, Is Where I Belong”, was the highlighting lyric of the hook for me. As a personal Californian, I just instantly began creating the vivid paintings of the ocean, palm trees, and warm weather. Complementing the imagery in the lyrics, the imagination Dear One gives the listener is something truly special and unforgetting! “Take Me Back” was nicely done and well executed from the infectious band Dear One.
Listen to "Take Me Back" here and get to know more about Dear One below!
Thank you for sharing your music with us Dear One! As a band, how do you manage to blend together the multiple different personalities to help enhance the band’s brand and sound?
We glad you’re enjoying our music! It’s been both a fun and challenging experience joining together as a five piece band. Our process for new songs is actually pretty fun because the songs often start out differently than the end result. Typically, Josh & Cally start off the process by writing lyrics and a melody with the basic chord structure, then they bring it to the rest of the crew, and together they help shape the final masterpiece. Of course, not everybody has the same ideas, so it’s a lot of give and take. We’re lucky to have Cally head up the branding portion of the band with her photography and design background. We each have our visions for what we want things to look like and as long as we bounce things back and forth, we’re all usually on the same page with that part of things. Sometimes it’s challenging to find the most efficient ways to communicate with each other, as we are all pretty busy people, so that’s been interesting to navigate. Thank goodness for technology!
Who are some of your musical inspirations?
As we all come from different musical backgrounds, our musical inspirations differ. As a band we all have a shared love for Allen Stone— pretty much anything with a good groove and soulful lyrics. We are currently curating personalized playlists on our Dear One Spotify, so you can get a feel of each of our personalities! Some have said Dear One sounds similar to groups like Mumford & Sons, Gospel Whiskey Runners, etc… our genre ‘Americana Folk-Pop Band’ seems to work well for us as we are quite the mix of folk, blues, with a hint of roots/country.
“Take Me Back” is a highly descriptive song that depicts the image of California. Was this inspired by a personal travel/experience?
Take Me Back was written while Josh & Cally were vacationing in California last summer, just an hour south of where our bass player Ryan grew up (near San Diego). We messaged back and forth with Ryan and being a native Californian he actually helped write the lyrics for verse 2 which was helpful! We had been in the midst of a crazy busy year and it felt good to get away for a few days—we didn’t want to leave! This song broke a bit of a writers block for us, and when we introduced it to the band it had a refreshing quality for each of us so we decided to add it into the album.
What was the most challenging aspect in the creation portion of “Take Me Back?
Before our trip to California, we actually bought a mini travel guitar—awkward to play, but it sounded pretty decent for what it was! So, as this was the only instrument we had with us when we were writing it, we had to revamp it quite a bit when we got back home to add in the rest of the parts.
What’s next for you Dear One!?
Over the next few months we are playing at a few local festivals and fun summer gigs to promote our album. It’s special to be able to have our music available to share with the world, and we’ve been getting a lot of great feedback! Even though we are all pretty busy we will continue to play music together, and we are always working on new songs. We have a couple new tunes we’d like to release as singles in the new year. We’ll continue to keep our website and social media platforms updated, so we’re glad you’re following along!
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