Toronto – Oh Canada how I love thee. I also love free concerts and world cuisine. The Harbourfront Centre combined music, food, tall ships and Canada day into one fun-filled day. What more could one ask for? Well, fireworks for one, but I digress.
The Sadies are a mainstay on the Toronto music scene, they have been around for over 10 years now and have collaborated with fellow Canucks such as Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, Neko Case and the list goes on.
First let me get something off my chest. When I hear people say I like all kinds of music except country and classical, as a response to “what kind of tunes are you into?” it upsets me. I say, HORSE FEATHERS! You cannot exclude entire musical genres when the very music you “love” has been influenced by so many genres that you are basically saying, “I’m a sufficiently large ignoramus”. Generally, these are also the people who only listen to radio top 40, for shame.
Anywho, I digress again! This band, made up of the Good brothers (on guitars and vocals), an upright bass player and a drummer crosses many genres of music to arrive at a very original sound. If I were going to venture an educated yet subjective (slightly inaccurate) guess at what these genres are, I would say country, surfer rock, blues and folk. Dallas Good’s voice sounds like Johnny Cash at some points and Travis Good equally shreds a blues guitar as he does the violin. The drummer is also excellent and a lot of the percussion in their songs has a very Beach Boys, surfer rock vibe, interesting when combined with that country twang. And of course an upright bass is always a nice addition as the immense size of the thing always makes me feel sorry for the kid who signed up for this instrument and then had to lug it to and from band practice.
While Dallas Good has an amazing voice and is a master on guitar, I doubt this dude would exhibit excitement if he won the lottery, woke up with Megan Fox in his bed and found Eric Clapton’s guitar on his doorstep all in the same day. He is the definition of cool. Where he lacks in enthusiasm he makes up for in overwhelming family musical talent, he brought his Mom up on stage to do backup vocals for one of his songs (who by the way is pretty foxy for a Mom). He then brought his Dad (who is part of the country group The Good Brothers) and cousin (a violinist) on stage to help out with a few songs. Having the Good family up on stage was an excellent addition and made for a very nice Canada day fam-jam.
Overall The Sadies are a very talented band and are really able to bend all of those country music stereotypes by incorporating other “cooler” sounds into their songs. Well done Good family, well done.