Daddy Rabbit, Eugene-based ’50s and ’60s rock band, celebrates seventh album 

Daddy Rabbit, a Eugene-based band playing 1950s and ’60s rock ’n’ roll, has been performing and recording for about 13 years.

The band has held all of its album-release parties at the same location — Mac’s Nightclub and Restaurant — and saw no need to change that for the Friday, Nov. 6, release of its seventh album.

For Robert Jacobs, the band’s guitarist and vocalist, the payoff is playing original songs for a crowd that loves the music.

“It’s a slight out-of-body experience, actually,” Jacobs said. “All of a sudden … the whole room is moving. We’re playing. I’m singing … the lyrics are just coming out of my mouth.”

He described it as a feedback loop. When the crowd is dancing, the band plays better, which gets more people dancing. “They dance more, and then we play better,” Jacobs said.

Friday’s release party for the band’s seventh album, “Double Feature,” was no exception.

Sitting down and cracking open a bottle of Henry Weinhard’s root beer, I started to realize that despite being the youngest person in the venue by about 30 years, I was one of the only ones not dancing.

At the start of the release party Friday, about 20 people were already on the dance floor, doing the mashed potato and the sprinkler as Daddy Rabbit played originals from the new album, including “Stone Cold Fox” and “Boogeyman,” along with covers like “Tainted Love” and “Love Shack.”

It took a lot of restraint to not put my pen down and join the fun.

Between songs, the band, dressed in black tie, traded quick jokes with the crowd in the dimly lit nightclub.

“Buy our newest album on CD for $10,” Jacobs said. “Or get two for $20.” The crowd laughed.

Bassist and vocalist Josh Swearengin said that reaction is what keeps him playing.

“It just kind of brings me a lot of joy to see how much joy it brings the people that we play for,” he said. “It’s timeless music. It’s fun, and it’s danceable.”

A double feature in 19 tracks

The new album, “Double Feature,” is built like a night at the movies. The 19 songs are split into two “films,” and Jacobs said the whole record is meant to have a “cinematic feel.”

The first half, “The Summer of Lost Love,” follows a romance from love gained to love mistaken to love lost. The second half is a horror feature called “The Monster With Three Heads.”

The record also introduces new sounds for a band known for ’50s and ’60s rock. 

Songs like “Party Time” and “Funky Halloween” pull in hip-hop and Motown influences, and Jacobs said he’s a little nervous about how longtime fans will react.

“There’s a lot of times where one part of the lyric is one guy, and the next sentence is another guy … and we all come in together. So we’re utilizing Run-DMC vocalizations, because those guys trade stuff back and forth every other word,” Jacobs said.

Drummer and vocalist Kasey Rajkovic said the shift comes from how Jacobs writes.

“Rob writes music like I’ve never seen,” Rajkovic said. “He’ll come to rehearsal every week with two new songs.” The band then reworks them together. Rajkovic called the process “haphazard, but intentional.”

“I’m really proud of this album,” Rajkovic said. “Every song has a different hook. It takes you to a different place.”

Swearengin said the band’s range has grown since he joined. “We kind of branched out a lot on this one, and I feel like we covered a lot of ground.”

Recording together

The band recorded all of the instruments in a single day, a method Jacobs said he prefers because it captures “an immediacy” that segmental recording loses. He pointed to classic Blue Note jazz and early Chess Records sessions, where musicians played together in the room.

It’s also cheaper, he said.

To keep microphones from picking up each other, Rajkovic and Swearengin played in a living room while Jacobs played from a bedroom. Without eye contact, Rajkovic said, one song’s repetitive beat became a problem late in the day when the band members were tired. 

“It was just the hardest time to synchronize that without eye contact,” Rajkovic said.

Vocals came later. After Jacobs recorded his, Rajkovic and Swearengin added backing vocals together on one microphone a couple of weeks after that. Rajkovic said the project took about six months from start to finish.

Why Mac’s?

For the band, Mac’s intimate feel and enthusiastic regulars is what keeps the band coming back for those CD release parties.

“When we play outside at Mac’s, [younger people will] be coming by and just checking it out,” Swearengin said.

Those younger listeners are what Rajkovic enjoys most.

“I just really like watching people watch what’s going on,” he said. At all-ages shows, he said, kids as young as 5 or 6 will mimic the guitar parts and tap their feet. “They tear it apart. They analyze it.”