Duguay not in decline

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This article was published 10/05/2023 (853 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Veteran musician Richard Duguay doesn’t spend much time strolling down memory lane.

His critically acclaimed new album Beautiful Decline (Cursed Blessings Records) coincides perfectly with the 40th anniversary of Creatures for Awhile, the lone full-length effort by Personality Crisis. When this is mentioned to the member of the seminal Winnipeg punk-rock band of the early 1980s, Duguay pauses to take a long draw on his cigarette.

“You know, I really try to live in the present. Forty is a crazy number. While I do acknowledge that stage of my life, to me, everything is its own thing,” says Duguay, 61, who lived in Winnipeg until he was 28 “more or less,” then moved to Vancouver before calling Los Angeles home for the last 17 years.

“We did the (Personality Crisis) reunion six years ago (at the Pyramid). Was it fun? Sure. Was I glad it happened? Definitely,” he continues when reached poolside in the back yard of the North Hollywood abode he shares with his wife, Paula Tiberius, and their 14-year-old daughter Violet.

“What can be frustrating, though, is when people continue to go, ‘Oh, it’s not like Personality Crisis,’ when they’re discussing what I’ve been up to lately. ‘That’s because it’s something else, entirely,’ I wanna tell them.

“(Personality Crisis) is a shadow that’s always there, and always will be there, but in my case, it’s not exactly top-of-mind.”

Duguay is a Nelson McIntyre Collegiate alumnus who first picked up a guitar around age 17. Post-Personality Crisis, he performed and recorded with the likes of Guns N’ Roses. In late 2019, Duguay began working on Beautiful Decline, shortly after the release of Bad Juju, his third solo album.

Despite having a home-recording space, Into the Black Studio, steps away from his bedroom, he still found it difficult getting much accomplished in the early days of COVID-19.

“It took a while for the reality and severity of the pandemic-plague thing to settle in,” he says.

“I had a couple of songs started, but what with the world seemingly shutting down, I didn’t feel overly inspired (to record), and ended up painting the house, building a pergola… just trying to feel useful by being outside and getting (stuff) done.”

Things began to take a more positive turn in the fall of 2020, following a text conversation he had with Rod Bruno, a musician friend in British Columbia. The two were discussing a mutual pal of theirs who had just died at age 55, when Duguay typed out, “It’s going to be a never-ending parade from here on out, till one day it’ll be one of us.”

Seconds later, he stared down at his phone and thought, “Hmm, ‘never-ending parade’ would be a great name for a song.” He shared the sentiment with Marc Floyd, one of his primary writing partners, who agreed. A few weeks later the pair — who co-wrote seven of the new record’s 11 tracks, including Never Ending Parade — were off to the races.

One of Beautiful Decline’s standout tracks is Kid Stardust. The tune isn’t inspired by 1970s glam-rock, as its Bowie-esque title seems to suggest, but rather, by mid-’60s Motown acts such as the Four Tops and Jr. Walker and the All Stars.

“I love all that stuff, and felt the need to write a song with that sort of groove to it,” says Duguay, who admits to initially “borrowing” the bassline from the Temptations’ smash hit My Girl.

“Things began to come together, at which point I started f—ing around with a descending chord pattern I had, till things reached a point where the song reminded me more of Alice Cooper, which was funny, considering how it came about in the first place.”

In his four-star review of the album, Free Press writer John Kendle referred to Beautiful Decline as “grand and epic stuff.” That’s definitely the case with two sweeping numbers, Prepare the Dogs for War and Double Up the Ante, each of which clock in at close to six minutes.

Juxtapose that pair with country-tinged Widows Walk, which Duguay co-wrote with his wife, that barely reaches the 90-second mark.

“The reason why (Widows Walk) is shorter in nature is that back in 2017, I got tired of writing in standard, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge arrangements,” Duguay explains.

Because he doesn’t anticipate that his records will ever receive “any airplay anyways,” he made up his mind to follow whatever path a riff, lyric or melody took him on, whether said path took 60 seconds to traverse, or 10 minutes.

As for the straight-ahead rocker Get in Line, which touches on the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 (“Storm the capitol in a blitzkrieg rage”), Duguay allows that’s probably as political as he’s ever going to get with his lyrics.

And if you’re wondering about the title track and are concerned that its author feels he’s reached the twilight of his musical journey, there’s no need to worry, he says.

“It’s such a different world today from the one our parents lived in, when they were in their early 60s,” says Duguay, who has a brother in Vancouver and a sister in Winnipeg, but whose parents are both deceased. “By definition, decline has negative connotations, whereas to me, it’s the opposite. I have a studio in my house where I can write and record till I’m 100. I’m 14 years sober and have a daughter who’s turning 15. Life is good.”

Although Duguay, who last played Winnipeg in July 2022 at Pembina Highway’s the Orbit Room, mentioned off the top he isn’t one for living in the past, he does admit to being pleased that Beautiful Decline is the first of his four solo albums to be made available on high-grade vinyl.

He has fond memories of hopping on a transit bus headed downtown when he was the same age his daughter is now to comb through the bins at Portage Avenue record stores such as Mother’s and Kelly’s.

“When I understood for sure that Cursed Blessings was going to issue the record on vinyl, it got me thinking how maybe, in some f—-ed-up way that could never happen again, my daughter would get the same experience I had, when I used to ride the bus to spend three hours flipping through a billion albums, figuring out what to spend my five bucks on,” Duguay says.

“I’m not saying she’s going to get on a bus to go buy her dad’s record. Nor will she go through the same ritual I used to, where I’d remove the shrinkwrap on the ride home to study the liner notes and lyrics, to the point that I was totally invested in a record, before ever putting it on the turntable.

“But I do, I like the thought that if she wanted to do that, she absolutely could.”

david.sanderson@winnipegfreepress.com