The Sheepdogs have had an interesting and remarkable career. After forming in 2006, the band slogged it out on the road, playing wherever and whenever they could to hone their musical chops, songwriting and to build an audience. After a couple of self-produced indie releases in 2007 and 2008, the band’s third album, Learn & Burn broke the band wide open on not just a national but an international scale as they won Rolling Stone magazine’s Choose the Cover competition in 2011.
Put out initially in 2010, Learn & Burn was re-released to great fanfare the following year, winning the 2012 Juno for Rock Album of the Year, while the lead-off single I Don’t Know took the Juno that same year for Single of the Year. They also took home the Juno for Best New Group.
Later that year, the band wrote, recorded and released their second major label album, a self-titled project that was produced by Patrick Carney, drummer for The Black Keys. It went to number one on Canadian album charts eventually being certified Gold, while Learn & Burn has earned platinum status.
After relentless touring, the band’s third album Future Nostalgia was unveiled to great critical and popular acclaim in the fall of 2015. Now, two years later, The Sheepdogs are putting the finishing touches on an as-yet untitled new studio album, in the midst of a busy summer touring schedule which brings them to Belleville, Ontario on Saturday, July 22, on a double bill with The Glorious Sons to cap off the 2017 edition of the Empire Rockfest concert series.
The Sheepdogs vocalist and primary songwriter Ewan Currie said the album is being recorded and mixed in Toronto with him working alongside Tom D’Arcy (best known for his work with July Talk) on the production chores. The band also features Currie’s brother Shamus, co-founder Ryan Gullen, Sam Corbett, and relative newcomer, Jimmy Bowskill.
“We’re wrapping up this new record so there’s a fair bit of last-minute changes and getting things ready for when we put it out in the fall. So while we’re travelling all over Canada to do shows, during the in between dates we’re popping into the studio and looking over the mix and making sure it’s sounding like it’s supposed to sound,” he said.
“I think it’s the same stuff that we’ve always done. It’s rock and roll, and we’ve got a big medley at the end of it. We’re trying to make that a hallmark of our studio albums. There’s some different instrumentation this time, although there’s also tons of guitars, guitars playing harmony and vocal harmonies in there. But we also slapped on a bunch of pedal steel and fiddle and mandolin because Jimmy plays all that kind of stuff, and then there’s also my brother’s trombone and lots of keyboards. It’s still very much rock and roll, it just has much more diverse orchestration I guess.”
Currie said regardless of the state of album sales, be they physical or download, and the prevalence of streaming services, he still believes in the concept of a collection of songs, and that the more old-school vibe of The Sheepdogs is best suited to the album format.
“It sure isn’t what it used to be. It’s the same for rock and roll itself. In some ways the fate of rock and the album have kind of been linked. But the way people listen to music predominantly is on their phone or using some sort of streaming service or a download program. So there is a lot of shuffling and mixed playlists that may feature just one of your songs,” he said.
“So I have to acknowledge that the album has kind of gone away, but there are still people who will listen to an entire album. And you can point to the resurgence, over the past decade of record sales that indicate that people are still doing the long listen and are interested in a band putting out a complete work. And that’s kind of where we’re hoping people are still invested.
“You can listen to individual songs if you like, but we hope you will check out the whole album because we’re kind of rock nerds; we grew up passing albums around going, ‘hey man, check out this record. If you like Led Zeppelin, listen to this Humble Pie LP.’ It’s such an ADD generation now with people looking at phones and YouTube videos and everything, but then people are still going to the movies and movies are getting longer than they’ve ever been. The average movie used to be like an hour and 30 or an hour and 40 minutes, but now every Transformers of comic book hero movie is nearly two and a half hours. So, based on that, I do think there is still a place for albums. And for our band, we have a lot to say; we could try to just get your attention with one song, but that’s not really what we’re interested in.”
Because of diminishing revenues that come in to a band because of album sales, and the nature of charts being somewhat suspect because online sales and streams are like apples and oranges compared to the old-fashioned physical sales of years past, how does Currie evaluate whether a new album is a ‘success’ or not?
“I think first and foremost is it something we are proud of? That’s the first benchmark but the after that it gets tricky. You can look at album sales and all that kind of stuff but the numbers keep going down, because people don’t buy, with streams and things like that. So there’s new ways of looking at it; you look at how much a song gets played on one of those services like Spotify, although that doesn’t really translate into money for us,” he said.
“So I guess it’s sort of about how we feel about the record, and hopefully we hit the road and lots of people are buying tickets and you meet people at the shows and they give you their feedback. And I guess the live response to the new songs is important too. We did a Canada Day gig in Newfoundland and we were playing one of the new songs that no one has ever heard before and by the second chorus people were singing along, so I guess you know you’re doing something right when that happens.”
The Sheepdogs have done an excellent job of melding the old with the new, and are not particularly concerned about being dedicated followers of the current musical fashions, although while infusing their music with a definitive 1970s rock vibe, there is also a very modern sensibility to the songs.
“I write what I write because I want to make the kind of music I like, first and foremost. And if it doesn’t sell and people don’t want to see us play live, I’m going to be out of a job pretty quick. I do think there is some truth to the fact that we really don’t follow the trends. Not following a trend is a good long-term plan, especially since we don’t get a lot of the hot press and attention that we once did. We don’t have that buzz about us like when we first broke out with the Rolling Stone Cover [in 2011] in people’s consciousness,” Currie said.
“I think we’re now becoming more known as this solid rock and roll band that puts on a hell of a show and puts out these cool albums and I think that’s the kind of recipe we need for longevity and so we’re focusing, as we get older, on maintaining a career and keep drawing tickets every time we go out. I look to bands that are 10 or 15 years older than us as sort of a model and how they are able to create and maintain a reputation. You look at the Tragically Hip and they are the epitome of that in Canada.”
As Currie said earlier in the interview, there is going to be more diverse instrumentation on the new album, much of that thanks to the 2015 addition of blues/bluegrass phenomena Jimmy Bowskill into the band. As a teenager earlier in the 2000s, Bowskill had carved out a career as a young guitar and multi-instrumental whiz, with some observers likening his style to that of Colin James or Jeff Healey. Currie said in more recent years, Bowskill had begun to explore his passion for roots music, and honed his skills on a number of stringed instruments.
“We just basically found ourselves short of a guitar player on the road. I was talking to our guitar tech and was asking him if he knew anybody who might want to come in and save our butts on short notice. And he said, ‘I’ve got your guy.’ And he was so confident and we ended up flying in Jimmy. I had known a little about him but not the full deal. I think he had been getting away from playing the guitar for a couple of years. He was working on a lot of bluegrass stuff,” he said.
“But he knows rock and roll and he knows how to play guitar – he’s a hell of a performer. It was such a good fit and we are so fortunate to have him. Honestly, I think he got a bit burnt out on playing loud rock and roll and blues, and he decided to explore his very diverse interests. He is very much into bluegrass and all kinds of instruments: he plays pedal steel, mandolin and fiddle, but he still has a huge love of classic rock, and we also have a lot of common interests in music.
“I think he was looking to maybe not be the front man for a change. I think he wanted to step in and be just one of the players. So it’s worked out, and it’s so rare because when you grow up in a situation where you’re ‘the man’, you’re not always so modest and so aware of your desire to just step back and be the guitar player. But he’s a special cat in so many ways.”
Currie said he and his bandmates are excited for the chance to share the stage with The Glorious Sons in Belleville this weekend.
“Actually, I just saw them personally for the first time at a festival in Owen Sound. They had the crowd fired up and singing along, I was very impressed. They look like they’re having fun; they were partying it up and rocking hard, it’s good to see,” he said.
For more information on the Empire Rockfest series, visit http://theempiretheatre.com/live-events/empire-rockfest-2017.
For more information on The Sheepdogs, including updates on the new album and other tour dates, visit http://www.thesheepdogs.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
