BEIJING, March 4, 2011 (City Weekend) — “I don’t usually do lounges,” Bertie Higgins tells City Weekend. “After you get a hit record, a new world opens up for you.”
In America, that hit was “Key Largo.” The song, featured on his 1982 album Just Another Day in Paradise, reached #8 on the Billboard Top 100. In Asia, his hit came with “Casablanca,” a heady romantic ballad from the same album. Thirty years after topping the charts and watching “Casablanca” enter every KTV catalogue in China, Higgins is cranking out films instead of records.
Despite an aversion to lounge lizardry, he’s currently rocking out five nights a week in the Renaissance Hotel’s R Lounge to prepare for his role as—surprise—an American lounge singer who comes to Beijing to perform in a hotel lounge.
Though it’s the longest stretch he’s spent out of the States, he says it’s “good homework” for his role in his forthcoming film The Marco Polo Bridge, which chronicles a washed-up American crooner who comes to 1937 Beijing to sing in a lounge and falls for a young Chinese seductress.
Higgins’ long-time composer-keyboardist, Mark Halisky, has already banged out the instrumentals for the film’s theme, and Higgins now spends his free afternoons searching for the perfect lyrics. They’re both penciling in time to explore Beijing, where Higgins plans to shoot 95 percent of the film.
Higgins’ band at R Lounge is, oddly enough, not composed of lounge lizards, either. It includes punk rockers from Beijing’s Brain Failure (Xu Lin on drums and Dee Dee on guitar), Argentine bassist Neil Jofre and Cuban conga drummer Jorge David Juarez.
“It took a few days of rehearsals and meetings of the minds, but they’re doing a great unit,” Higgins says. “We’re lucky music is a universal language.”
The band’s show hosts Higgins’ classics like “Key Largo,” “Casablanca” and a duet he did with Roy Orbison called “Leah.” Lovers of covers shouldn’t fret, however—there’s plenty of Bob Marley, Van Morrison, Bob Seger and Creedence Clearwater in the set.
Higgins says he’s willing to take on any project, film or music, as long as the writing is up to snuff. He’s fond of reminding everyone that, “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.”
It's Mikala! 