Honeydogs perform in MPR studios
The band the Honeydogs has been a staple on the local music scene dating back to the 1990s, but they haven't had a new album in a few years.
Last weekend at First Avenue, they released their tenth album, "What Comes After."
But no one who's in the audience had any preconceived notion that this was just your standard, usual album release party.
The new album comes two months after the death of 21-year-old Daniel Levy, the son of the band's frontman, Adam Levy. Daniel Levy took his own life on Jan. 15 after years of living through depression and bipolar disorder. During his son's eulogy, Adam Levy called his death "the end of a terminal illness."
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"I've undergone probably one of the single most epic events of my life; it is transformative on so many levels," he said. "It's a daily struggle in terms of processing the actual loss. There are no words that can describe the loss of a child. And yet, there's a sort of positive transformation that can happen under these circumstances."
Adam Levy said there has been an outpouring of people who reached out to him with similar stories.
"Some of these people have had great difficulty processing these events in their lives because of issues around suicide and mental illness that they are frequently dealt with in society with a great deal of shame," he said.
With the new album, his son's death is part of the narrative and Adam Levy said that's OK.
"Yeah, this is a status in my life," he said. "We go through lives and choose who we are -- we become parents, we develop careers. But in a lot of ways, this status was foisted upon me; an unchosen weight to bear for the rest of my life. For me to say it's not a part of who I am seems really false. I think you have to embrace the reality. Daniel made choices that have impacted many people's lives. I'm certainly not going to stop playing music, and his death along with the release of this record was ill-timed. It could have happened at any other time, but I have to keep doing what I do because I have to find peace with this."
Video: The Honeydogs perform "What Comes After" at MPR studios
Video: Honeydogs frontman Adam Levy on his son's suicide