Horseshoe Hootenanny: John Doe and The Sadies

Concert Review: John Doe and The Sadies
Sonic Boom and The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto
Thursday, April 30, 2009

You know how when you read a really good book, and then see the movie and the movie didn't quite live up to your love of the book? Or when you are at a restaurant and you eat some apple pie, but its not nearly as good as your mom's apple pie? Its not a completely fair comparison - your interpretation of a novel verses a director's film interpretation, or mass produced restaurant pies verses your mom's secret recipe. But you compare them nonetheless. This is sort of how I feel about The Sadies recoded music verses seeing The Sadies live. Yeah, their albums are good, but the records don't come close to the awesomeness that is a Sadies live show. Thus, I was uber excited that I got to see The Sadies with and without John Doe twice on Thursday, April 30, in Toronto.

I darted from work in the pouring rain to get to Sonic Boom for John Doe and The Sadies in-store show that evening, promoting their new album Country Club. Though my leather shoes were soaked through to my socks, it didn't stop my toe tappin' as Doe and the boys happily played through five songs from their new album. Doe was chatty and jovial , and his voice sounded terrific. In fact, in terms of country music, Doe's voice sounds a lot better live than on the record. The Sadies were a tight quartet as usual, with brothers Dallas and Travis Good singing backup in the places where women sang backup on the album (not that the boys sounded girly at all). Dallas rocked his killer electric guitar that has his name splayed over the fretboard, while Travis and Doe played acoustic guitars. The audience was thrilled, and as I looked around I spotted a smiley and drenched Greg Keelor in the corner sporting sunglasses and a yellow rain slicker. The performers mingled after the show, but I had to bolt home to change into dry clothes and forage for food before part two.

Sonic Boom (in-store) Mini Set

1. I Still Miss Someone
2. Husbands and Wives
3. It Just Dawned on Me
4. Stop the World and Let me Off
5. Are the Good Times Really Over for Good

The rained stopped in time for me to head over to the Horseshoe Tavern for the 10:30 start time. Local Toronto roots band The Pining was in the middle of their set when I arrived, and the crowd was so chatty that I could barely hear the all-woman quintet. I hate that! The crowd was an odd mix of people, including many in the over 50 age category who I am assuming were there to see John Doe. I overheard one man behind me say that he took two days off of work to drive to Toronto from Rochester, NY, just to see Doe and The Sadies.

I didn't know how the main act would proceed. The Horseshoe web site listed two sets, and I was hoping one of the sets would be The Sadies doing their original tunes. My hopes came true when the foursome took the stage and blasted into an hour set of 15-18 (I lost count) tracks of kick-ass surf, gospel, alternative, and instrumental rock, leaning heavily on their 2007 release New Seasons. By the end of the first hour I already had my $17.50 ticket price worth of entertainment. And there was more to come!

The Horseshoe Tavern
Set I - The Sadies
(Very rough set list because I don't know the names of all of the songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But its hard to concentrate on the show, drink beer, and keep a detailed set list all at the same time. I clearly need more practice.)

• Lay Down Your Arms - Stories Often Told (2002)
• First Inquisition, Pt. 4 - New Seasons (2007)
• Anna Leigh - New Seasons
• Higher Power - Pure Diamond Gold (1999) (Note: every time I see The Sadies, the audience always breaks out the wacky tobaccy during this song. No wonder Dallas referred to the crowd as "Delightful Crazy Bastards." I love Canadians.)
• What's Left Behind - New Seasons
• The Trial - New Seasons
• The Story's Often Told - Stories Often Told
• The 400 - Tales of the Rat Fink
• Ridge Runner Reel - Tremendous Efforts (2001)
• Tiger Tiger - Stories Often Told

Roughly 15 minutes after the first set, John Doe joined our heroes for a little hootenanny. "Warning, there will be country and western music tonight," he said. "Stage dive at your own risk." Unlike an X show from Doe's past, there was no stage diving here, but a lot of country wallowing and heartache taken mostly from the new Country Club album. Now this is what I hoped Country Club would sound like. High energy, soulful country. The Good brothers continued singing backup, but this time mixed up the instrumentation with Travis switching between fiddle and a couple of electric guitars, and Dallas swapping between two different electrics. I was standing about six people deep from the stage, slightly to the left and closer to Travis. He had some bad-ass guitar solos. There were some guitar geeks in front of me with their mouths hitting the floor. I don't know anything about playing guitar, but Travis did some technique where he makes his electric sound a bit like pedal steel. The geeks in front of me said, "wow, that is really hard to do." Then they shook their heads and gawked in awe some more. And the Good bros got to sing lead on a few tracks that didn't make the Country Club cut. Travis sang the Jimmy Martin bluegrass standard "Free Born Man" while Dallas sang something slightly faster than the speed of sound (see track 11 on the set list). The audience was treated to a few songs from Doe's past, "The New World" from his days with X, and an amazing version of The Knitters "Call of the Wreckin' Ball." These tracks fit in perfectly with the country and/or western theme of the second set. Despite the potential for crying into one's beer due to the heartbreaking lyrics of many of the songs, it turned into a uplifting night of music from a punk legend and a fireball backing band.

Set II - John Doe & The Sadies
(mostly from Country Club except where noted)

1. I Still Miss Someone
2. It Just Dawned on Me
3. Help Me Make it Through the Night
4. Free Born Man - (Jimmy Martin Cover)
5. A Fool Such as I
6. Husbands and Wives
7. The Losing Kind - John Doe, Black Snake Moan Soundtrack (2007)
8. 'Til I Get it Right
9. Stop the World and Let Me Off
10. Take These Chains from My Heart
11. Note: I have no idea happened here. Doe said, "Dallas, can you sing us a pretty one?" Then there was two minutes and thirty seconds of country spaz-rock. At the end Doe said, "That was pretty. Pretty fucking fast!" Holy crap.
12. The Cold Hard Facts of Life
13. Night Life
14. Workin' Man's Blues (Merle Haggard Cover)
15. The New World - X, More Fun From the New World (1983)
16. Are the Good Times Really Over for Good

Encore

1. Sudbury Nickle
2. There Stands the Glass (Webb Pierce Cover)
3. Call of the Wreckin' Ball - The Knitters, Poor Little Critter on the Road (1985)

John Doe and The Sadies @ Call the Office

London becomes a very different city this time of year. The flowers are in full bloom, the sun is shining, and most of the university and college kids have all gone home. The same can be said of Call the Office. Earlier in the week Shout Out Out Out put on a serious dance party that got plenty of young bums shaking. On Friday, Call the Office offered quite the change of pace with a throwback country show from John Doe and the Sadies which brought out the local crowd, with plenty of friendly faces from local indie radio station 94.9 CHRW.

The way the set took shape, it seemed like two shows in one. First the Sadies played rockabilly induced honky tonk. Country hooks gave way to extended guitar jams that were absolutely ferocious. Double guitar riffs were flying at breakneck speed, leaving no doubt that the Sadies sure know how to handle a guitar, let alone Dallas and Travis Good's bang-on lyrics and tone. The first portion of the set had an unmistakable punk flavour, ironic considering ex-punk rock god John Doe hadn't even taken the stage.

John Doe took centre stage looking dapper in a charcoal grey suit and a freshly cut hairdo. His musical contributions matched his throwback demeanor as he belted nostalgic country track after track. The pinnacle of the night's longing for a romantic love long passed was the song, “Husband and Wives” which Jon Doe sung with all the conviction of a longtime country singer who knows a thing or two about love. The older crowd could definitely relate and brought John Doe and the Sadies out for a well-received encore.

John Doe thanked opening band Young Rival (one of my favs) for putting on an excellent opening show as they so often do. They've opened for big names at CTO including the Von Bondies, where they stole the show. From the big name American band If you haven't heard of Hamilton's Young Rival be sure to check out their tunes because Young Rival's sound is as infectious as the swine flu.

See you at the shows,
Adam Szymanski

Album Review: John Doe and The Sadies, Country Club

I can’t remember exactly how I learned to love classic country music. It wasn’t from my central Wisconsin upbringing. My parent’s record collection consisted of Barbara Streisand and Johnny Mathis and that’s it. Seriously. And I cannot for the life of me remember if there was a country music radio station on air in the late 70s/early 80s in Oshkosh. If there was one, I sure wasn’t listening to it. I was in the college class of 1995, and in the early 90s on campus in the Chicago area it was grunge, Pavement, and the dregs of hair metal.

I must have picked it up sometime while living in St. Louis in the late 90s, possibly during my Bob Dylan/Neil Young bender of 1999, a particularly miserable year for me. I do know that the first country CD I bought was Johnny Cash 16 Biggest Hits, followed quickly by Patsy Cline 12 Greatest Hits. And nothing says depression and despair on the 26-year-old psyche like a “Sunday Morning Coming Down” or “Walkin’ After Midnight.”

A decade later I am still collecting classic country music, still learning about its roots, and still blubbering into my beer when a deadly lyric knocks me on my ass. When I found out early this year that my favorite Canadian band, The Sadies, was teaming up with John Doe, founder and bassist for the seminar punk band X, I damn near put away the whiskey and cheered up! 2009 is turning into the year of the country covers, with Phosphorescent releasing the Willie Nelson tribute To Willie earlier this year, and Steve Earle set to release his much anticipated Townes Van Zandt tribute album on May 12.

An album of classic country from The Sadies is not entirely unexpected as they have been doing Sadies-fied versions of country tunes during their live shows for many years. Indeed covers of Roger Miller and Bob Wills tracks made their 2004 live album, In Concert Vol.1 Likewise, John Doe has been playing with the country/folk/rockabilly band The Knitters for the last 25+ years.

The resulting album, Country Club, features Doe singing with the Sadies as the backing band, with the exception of a two Sadies-penned instruments. The album launches into “Stop the World and Let Me Off,” made famous by Waylon Jennings, then covers songs from Roger Miller, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and several other greats of country music. Doe and fellow Knitters and X band member Exene Cervenka also contribute an original “It Just Dawned On Me,” which fits in very well with the other classic country themes on this record which include heartache, divorce, loneliness, adultery, and homicide. Man, isn’t country music wonderful?

Reviews of Country Club from critics much better known than I have been all over the place. Allmusic calls it a “casual, no-frills masterpiece,” and the Boston Herald rates it an “A,” while Toronto’s Now magazine calls it “average” and says, “Doe …has a voice you could charitably call serviceable,” and The Onion AV Club gives it a “C+.”

So, here’s the real deal from a non-professional critic. I’m somewhere between the Boston Herald and the AV Club. The album is good, but it is not great. To me these ridiculously talented musicians played it quite safe with their song selection and interpretation. It actually hurts me to say that I am underwhelmed by something that my favorite Canadian band is involved with, but it’s the truth. Doe’s voice, while solid, doesn’t do a lot for me when singing country. He doesn’t quite get me to sob into my Seagram's the way Hank Snow does. And would it hurt to let The Sadies’ Good brothers sing lead on a track or two?

I do love the instrumentals, which are classic Sadies pieces. Kathleen Edwards sings backup on what I think are the two best tracks, the aforementioned “It Just Dawned on Me,” and the Merle Haggard classic “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?” It is overall a very enjoyable record, but I really wanted it to knock me into next week. Instead, it made me long for the originals.

I’m hoping that most of the people who hear this album will be hearing some, if not all, of these songs for the first time, which will hopefully cause them to look into the original artists. I really want more people my age (mid-30s) and younger to discover a love for classic country. I could use a few drinking buddies.