John O'Regan (Diamond Rings) tiene la enfermedad de Crohn. Después de que se la diagnosticasen correctamente y estar pochÃsimo en el hospital ahora está bien. Y por ahà anda de gira tan pichi.
In the summer of 2008, O'Regan was just coming off a tour with the D'Urbs, as they're affectionately known. While the tour was a success, something was off with the band's frontman. During some of the dates he was struck by an illness that came to a head during the band's North By Northeast performance. O'Regan began sweating and convulsing, and his bandmates rushed him to Toronto Western Hospital. There he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. He required surgery and spent most of his summer in the hospital with an IV.
Where most people would be discouraged, O'Regan found inspiration. "I had three weeks in the hospital, so I thought let's try and make the best of this," he says. "It was the summer, fortunately. I could go outside dragging this IV pole around Kensington Market with my guitar [laughs]. I was really haggard looking. But by the end people would be coming into my room on their breaks and we'd do these über DIY shows. We'd pour some ginger ale and it was like a party. That would have been the first time I performed [first single] 'All Yr Songs' â in the hospital, with the nursing staff, playing my keyboard and guitar. It's not a very glamorous beginning, but that's how I really started conceptualizing the project.
"It was kind of like I had my own subsidized artist residency," he continues. "I had this bed and a desk, and a guitar here, a crappy keyboard there. We couldn't bring a drum kit into the hospital, so the songs started taking on more of this singer-songwriter lyrical quality than what I had done previously. And that was it. I started writing songs just for me."
