On July 16 Canadian duo BROS released their sophomore album, Vol. 2 on Dine Alone Records. The duo consists of brothers Ewan and Shamus Currie, best known as part of the guitar-driven blues-rock band The Sheepdogs.
Ewan, The Sheepdogs‘ primary songwriter and vocalist, co-founded The Sheepdogs in 2004 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They gained international attention when they became the first indie band to grace the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine in August 2011. Over the years, The Sheepdogs had multi-platinum album sales and won four Juno Awards.
After being a four-piece for many years, The Sheepdogs decided to expand and added new members. One of those members was Ewan’s brother Shamus who joined The Sheepdogs in 2012 as a keyboardist and trombone player.
While fulfilling his duties as a Sheepdog, Shamus was doing some writing of his own on the side. Although they both write songs, the Currie brothers did not write together while growing up. In fact, they didn’t begin writing music until they were in their 20’s.
“Our age gap is four years and that’s big enough that it’s just a little bit far apart but we definitely would hang together and play video games and watch movies and stuff like that, but we didn’t make music until we were in our 20s,” said Ewan. “I think Shamus had started showing me some songs that he was writing. This is back in 2014 and they were really good songs. They didn’t really fit with what we do in The Sheepdogs. He showed me this song called Brazil, which was on the first BROS record, and you could just hear that it had a ton of potential but it was that kind of thing that wouldn’t make sense in a guitar live band. So I was like, ‘Well, why don’t we just start working on these songs?’ And it wasn’t like this grand scheme of we’ll create this BROS band. We got some studio time (and) we started working on these songs.”
When the Currie brothers started BROS Vol. 1 they had just finished making The Sheepdogs album Future Nostalgia. They had some time off before the album was released so they worked on the debut BROS record which came out in 2016.
It wasn’t long after the release of Vol. 1 when Ewan and Shamus began working on Vol. 2 in 2017.
“It’s like a passion project and I think it’s reflected in the music,” said Shamus. “We would work on a song and then take a month off and be in a totally different headspace doing different things and then come back to it and take her away. That’s why the songs became so whimsical and wide-ranging in their influences and subject matter.”
Shamus describes BROS‘ sound as “Latin soul, pop elements of world music, elements of old-time, swing, and Jazz.
“It’s really kind of a kitchen sink. It’s like Ewan said, The Sheepdogs is rock, BROS is everything else.”
Added Ewan, “It’s funny, when we get labeled, BROS gets labeled as rock music or (people) say if you like The Sheepdogs you’re going to love BROS. It’s not necessarily. They are sort of different worlds, I think.”
Three tracks and videos from Vol. 2 leading up to the album’s release came out beginning in May. Theme From BROS came out on May 13, Never Gonna Stop came out on June 4 and Garbanzo Man came out on June 25.
Theme From BROS is a fun, animated video. Ewan and Shamus had some ideas to do an animation and pitched their ideas to friend Rob Fidel – an artist and filmmaker based out of LA.
“We essentially just wrote a bunch of action movie tropes and silly ideas that we thought would be fun,” explained Shamus. “We wanted to punch out Hitler and wanted to go to the moon and stuff like that.
“But the song itself was inspired by an Afro-Cuban beat, like a rollicking horn-driven beat. We really like the film scores of Lalo Schifrin, who did the Dirty Harry movies, Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, and lots of 70s action stuff. Just lots of Latin percussion and horns. So we thought we’d like to capture a bit of that element and create our own imaginary cop show theme song.”
When asked if film scores are in their future, Ewan responded, “It’s a dream of ours to do something like that. I love, even now, when I watch movies I love when there’s a good score. It makes all the difference. That’s right at the top of our wish list.”
Shamus added, “I often think about a visual component when I’m writing music. You think about music as being moods or soundtracks to things, what kind of visual components could accompany it. I think it’s very cool. Something I love to do.”
Never Gonna Stop showcases BROS at their hook-laden best, with an entire palette of 70’s inspired sounds coming together to create a tasty retro jam: clavinet, horns, electric piano, and lots of percussions.
The video, shot around Toronto and Scarborough, was directed by Justin Broadbent and Josh Raskin from Don’t Die (Shad, Dragonette, Metric, Corey Hart).
“They’re great,” said Ewan. “They’re Toronto-based filmmakers and they just had a really simple concept that was totally their idea and they just executed it really well. It was just like an old-school camcorder and then it’s just basically we walked around town and they told us to do stuff and it just has this low-key funny vibe to it and weird magic stuff happens and it was one of the more fun videos that we got to do.”
Garbanzo Man is a song inspired by the tasteful Latin grooves of masters like Sergio Mendes and Cal Tjader. The name ‘Garbanzo Man’ is a reference to the Latin jazz standard ‘Cuchy Frito Man’.
The video is self-produced and directed by BROS and Amanda Burt, with video editing by Mat Dunlap. It captures the nostalgia of old home movies and evokes memories of the best summer hangs.
When asked if more videos are in the works, Ewan said they have a couple of ideas.
“It’s been tricky because it’s like everything’s dictated by the rules of COVID and everything. But of course, that seems to be loosening. So yes, we might try and do a couple more things depending on what’s happening.”
At the time of this interview (July 15) it looks as though things will be picking up again for The Sheepdogs, whose plans back in March 2020 got put on hold due to the pandemic.
“It was a strange one. We were getting ready to do a lot of touring with The Sheepdogs and recording with The Sheepdogs as well and then hopefully putting out our BROS record but obviously, we got stuck at home,” explained Ewan. “So, like everybody else, we didn’t really know what was going to happen because everything was changing all the time and then eventually once we kind of got a handle on things we finished up the last couple little things on this BROS record so that we could put it out.”
On May 28, The Sheepdogs released an EP, No Simple Thing, featuring the new single Keep On Loving You which is doing really well on Canadian radio. On July 11 they played their “first real, actual, proper show” at the Calgary Stampede.
The band is getting ready to finally go back on the road with some scheduled dates in Western Canada next month. Early next year in February and March The Sheepdogs are heading to Europe and the UK for some shows. Ontario is noticeably absent on the band’s tour page.
Ewan said they are waiting to see what happens in Ontario with the re-opening of the province.
“Ontario’s been the slowest to open up their restrictions. So it’s been a wait-and-see approach. It’s kind of a weird summer. Usually, your summer’s booked up long before the summer is upon you and this year still kind of comes at last minute so that could change any day here.”
As for shows or tours with BROS Shamus said, “It’s tricky with BROS because it started as a studio project. So it’s lots of overdubs, we’re playing most of the instruments ourselves, pretty much all of them doing lots of vocal overdubs and the result is that the songs are very hard to replicate live without a huge band.
“I’m playing horns and making big bands out of just me. We did some shows in 2017 after Vol. 1 came out and we had a nine-piece band and it was this big cumbersome touring unit. I mean, it was a lot of fun, and we’re definitely not against playing live. It’s just logistically very difficult, especially with the pandemic going on. It doesn’t make things any easier to get a bunch of guys together and rehearse, a big outfit like that, but we’re not ruling anything out, it would be a lot of fun. These songs are a lot of fun. I think people would react well to seeing them live. We’ll see what the future holds.”
To stay up-to-date with BROS and to check out Vol. 2 visit them on their socials: Facebook YouTube
To stay up to date with The Sheepdogs and to check out their new EP No Simple Thing visit them on their socials: Website Facebook YouTube
And don’t forget to check out Dine Alone Records: Website Facebook
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