There’s a tendency among insufferable music snobs, myself often included, to roundly dismiss the yearly slew of summer hits as a monotonous wall of mindless party bangers. The often are, and why not? The sun is out, it’s hot, and no one really cares what they’re listening to. Rarely, though, do they leave much in terms of lasting impressions once the temperature starts to fall.
That was the place I was in when I first heard The Sheepdogs were confirmed to be headlining this years Nickel Days festivities. Their 2015 single “Downtown” had topped out at number six on the Canadian rock charts after it was released at the beginning of July, a modest accomplishment compared to their three number one hit singles, three gold-certified tracks, and an album that had gone platinum just two years prior. But nonetheless, it was enough to earn heavy radio play across the country, and become one of the regularly circulated tracks that would drive me insane over my first summer working from behind a desk. Sorry guys;cCan you blame me? Any artist will start to sound awful when it’s packed in the summer’s cookie-cutter styrofoam dance numbers and force-fed through the office stereo. Guilty by affiliation.
Like most touring artists that have crossed my desk, I wasn’t familiar with The Sheepdogs beyond the odd song. So I did some digging. The first thing I come across is their big break, being the first unsigned act to win Rolling Stone magazine’s “Pick the Cover” contest in 2011: readers voted for their favourite act to be featured on the magazine’s cover, and to be offered a record deal with the prestigious Atlantic Records.
But I wasn’t convinced. Rolling Stone? What is this, 1978? Three CASBY Awards in 2011? Never heard of ’em. Three Juno Awards? Awards are for shmucks, anyway. I mean, come on. Justin Bieber has won a Juno. What do they know?
But digging deeper, I noticed that they weren’t present to accept their Junos, touring as they were with none other than John Fogerty in Australia. Wait, John Fogerty? Creedence Clearwater revival’s John Fogerty? Yessir. The Sheepdogs have often been compared to southern rock and ’70s psychedelia: Rolling Stone’s Austin Scaggs described them as “immediately gratifying, recalling the Doors, Neil Young, the Beatles, Allen Toussaint and CCR.” Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill said, “They have a timeless sound, and you can hear their influences from song to song. I can’t wait to hear those harmonies live.” Their newest album, Future Nostalgia, has been hailed by CBC Music as a return to that classic sound.
Prejudices thoroughly torn to shreds, it was time to take another listen. The claims ring true: alongside legends like The Doors, there’s definitely an uncanny resemblance in flavour. No doubt, their modern production and polish has helped them establish their popular appeal, or maybe we just live in a time when rock fans no longer have to hide their record collection from mom and dad. But none of that is a bad thing, and The Sheepdogs have, at least for now, found a place on my phone’s library.
I caught up with the group’s bassist and vocalist, Ryan Gullen, and asked him a bit about the struggles of getting noticed, camping in the north, and small-town gigs in the face of national success (interview edited for length and clarity):
K: Are small town tours still a big part of your circuit?
R: We really just want to play anywhere and everywhere; we don’t necessarily just tour big cities. This is the tail end of our Canadian tour: we had 35 dates across Canada, and a lot of that was trying to play in small towns in between the big cities. There’s a lot of bands that can’t do that, but we’ve been afforded the opportunity. We grew up in Saskatoon, which is a booming metropolis by any means, but growing up we would get passed over by concerts a lot. We couldn’t understand it, because people in Saskatoon love music. Now that we’re doing this, we recognize that there’s a lot of these places that miss a lot of shows, so we try to play in as many places as we can.
K: One of your guitarists for awhile, Rusty Matyas, was from Winnipeg. How did you guys link up?
R: He was an old friend. We had a couple of changes in the band, and when we needed someone to lend a helping hand, Rusty would come in. The big thing with Winnipeg is, though it’s not the closest city to Saskatoon, it has a really big and supportive music community, and there were years that we would play in Winnipeg more than we would play our hometown, or anywhere else. There was one time we played something like 12 times in one year in Winnipeg. So, we have a lot of really good musician friends there.
K: The festival that you’re playing at, Nickel Days, I guess it would kind of be the equivalent of the Ex in Saskatoon. Were you a big fan of the Ex growing up?
R: (Laughs) I used to always go, but, I really don’t like rides. But I was at that age when you’re a kid, and you just go and do what your friends do, and all of my friends would go to the Ex. When I got to that age where I was like, “You know what? I don’t have to go to the Ex to hang out with my friends! I’m going to go do something else!” it was a great moment for me. But I was all about eating all of that deep-fried terrible-for-you food. But, I felt like it was a really Canadian thing, the summer, the Ex, they have something in every city. It’s kind of like a rite of passage that every kid goes through.
K: Your frontman, Ewan Currie, is quoted talking a lot about feeling isolated in Saskatoon. It struck me as odd; I mean, we feel isolated. I’m not sure if you share his feelings, but now that you guys have spread out a bit and can look at things from the top down, do you feel like your perspective has changed at all?
R: Well, when you’re spending time in Saskatoon, you’re not really aware of the isolation, but it’s more when you leave, and see what else is out there. I mean, Saskatoon isn’t as isolated as Thompson, but like I said before, when we were younger, and wanted to go see a concert, it wouldn’t come to Saskatoon. We’d have to go to Winnipeg, or Calgary, or Edmonton. But I think there’s a lot of positive things that come out of that isolation too. You can kind of create your own identity; you’re not as influenced by other things, you’re not trying to be something else. So there’s two sides. But you do often attribute negative things when you’re young, and you want to go do things, go places.
K: Have you guys spent any time in Northern Manitoba, or northern Canada?
R: Not really. I mean, we’ve played in the Yukon, and I’ve travelled up to northern Saskatchewan. But, most of the places we tour are kind of in the lower half of Canada.”
K: Northern Saskatchewan is a lot like Northern Manitoba, though. When people think Saskatchewan, they always think flat prairies, but the north is just gorgeous.
R: Oh yeah, people have no idea. Just because you drove on the No. 1 highway between Winnipeg and Calgary, doesn’t mean you’ve been to Saskatchewan. It has thousands of freshwater lakes and untapped wilderness. I enjoy being in the wilderness. When you’re Canadian, it’s accessible, and it’s one of those things you have to take advantage of. I brought a friend over from England, and being from a place where people pretty much live on top of each other, it blew his mind, being in this wide-open space. He couldn’t even fathom swimming in this freshwater lake. It kind of made me take a step back, going back to that theme of isolation. It’s one of those things you take for granted: To go into the wilderness, and literally hear nothing.
