What a trip: The Higgs to play in Tahoe for first time

The Higgs
Concertgoers are welcome to tape The Higgs on Saturday in the Red Room.

A rock band that likes to stretch out its songs will extend into Lake Tahoe for the first time on Saturday.

“We definitely have our own sound, but as far as the makeup of the shows — we play two sets, extend our songs, let tapers record and pass them around for free — we fit in with that jam band world,” said guitarist-singer John Lovero.

“We like to take it out there and make it a little bit different every night. We play different songs and we always try to make the jams in our songs a little bit different each night.”

Lovero is the founding member of the 6-year-old band, which last summer grew from a trio to a quartet. Drummer Garret Morris has been with The Higgs four years, bassist David Barsky two years and keyboardist Jesse August Jennings joined last year.

This month, The Higgs will release an EP, “Change,” which references the band but, Lovero said, not the topic of a song on the record with the same title.

“We like to leave the songs up for interpretation,” he said.

The band is based in Long Beach. It frequently plays at The Cliff in Laguna Beach, Hangar 24 in Redlands, and in Costa Mesa at The Harp Inn and The Wayfarer, where it recently shared a bill with Hunter and The Dirty Jacks.

Jon Siembieda, a guitarist with Hunter and the Dirty Jacks, encouraged The Higgs to arrange a show at the Crystal Bay Casino. His band recently had a successful debut there last month.

“He encouraged us to get out of our comfort zone,” said Lovero, who fondly recalls his one trip to the lake.

“I personally have just driven through Tahoe, coming from Nevada where it was just all desert,” he said. “I came up over the hill where I saw all the beautiful trees and thought, ‘What a wonderful place to be.’ ”

“Freddy,” a standout track on the new record, also alludes to a trip. The tune stretches more than 10 minutes and includes in-studio improvisation.

The chorus goes, “But the trip wasn’t really the important part, it’s what I got out of it: If you get a tab of Freddy’s shit, only eat half of it.”

The Higgs are a talented band with a sense of humor and should do well with Tahoe’s like-minded music lovers.

The Red Room has presented a wide variety of bands in the last couple of weeks. Hunter and the Dirty Jacks play blues, Sierra Hull is bluegrass, All Them Witches are hard rock and this Friday Reno country band Jake Houston and the Royal Flush will debut. Also, it was just announced that Afrobeat rockers Elektric Voodoo will play on June 2.

  • The Higgs
    When: 10 p.m. Saturday, May 13
    Where: Crystal Bay Casino Red Room
    Cover: free

ABOUT Tim Parsons

Tim Parsons
Tim Parsons is the editor of Tahoe Onstage who first moved to Lake Tahoe in 1992. Before starting Tahoe Onstage in 2013, he worked for 29 years at newspapers, including the Tahoe Daily Tribune, Eureka Times-Standard and Contra Costa Times. He was the recipient of the 2011 Keeping the Blues Alive award for Journalism.

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