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.

The Sadies Work With John Doe

The Sadies are one of Canada's hardest working bands, fine purveyors of punk-inspired 'insurgent country'. Though the Sadies have released many fine records in their own name, Dallas and Travis Good, Mike Belitsky and Sean Dean are also inveterate collaborators, appearing with the likes of Neko Case (notably on her latest, Middle Cyclone), Jim White, Andre Williams, Jon Langford and the Waco Brothers, Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor (together as the Unintended), and more.

Their latest collaboration is with John Doe, formerly of seminal punk band X as well as the Knitters. Rumour has it that the record, entitled Country Club (out today on Yep Roc/Outside Music), was the product of a drunken post-show promise, and the results are awesome. From Yep Roc's website:

Timeless sounds abound on Country Club, driven by Doe's gorgeously rough-hewn vocals, the dueling thousand pound chops of the guitar-wielding Good brothers and The Sadies' world class rhythm section of Mike Belitsky and Sean Dean.

Here, the Countrypolitan sound of late 1960s Nashville is filtered through the telecaster-based tonk of Bakersfield, CA and the results are simply stunning. Classic tunes by Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings stand alongside corkers by Tammy Wynette and Roger Miller, all of them getting unique treatments by Doe and The Sadies. The album also features four originals - three from The Sadies and one courtesy of the timeless pairing of John Doe and Exene Cervenka.

On Country Club, Doe and The Sadies find the perfect blend of the reverent and the experimental, resulting in a slightly psychedelic brew that just might pass for straight if you're not lookin.'

I've often said that punk music is more about attitude and drive than the sound itself, and this is as punk as country gets. Funny that the Sadies are working again with punk-related icons (their work and tour with the Waco Brothers, formed by Mekons founder Jon Langford, is superb). The Sadies channel all that punk energy and ethos into these classic tunes.

But don't just check out the record: the Sadies are one of the best live acts you will ever see (trust me), and the chance to see them live with John Doe is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Here are the dates for John Doe and the Sadies, with plenty of chances to see them in Ontario or Quebec:

04/29/09 Starlight Social Club Waterloo, ON

04/30/09 The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern Toronto, ON

05/01/09 Call The Office London, ON

05/02/09 Il Motore Montreal, QC

05/03/09 babylon Ottawa, ON
05/05/09 T.T. The Bear's Cambridge, MA

05/06/09 City Winery New York City, NY

05/07/09 World Cafe Live Philadelphia, PA

05/08/09 Iota Club and Cafe Arlington, VA

05/09/09 Thunderbird Cafe Pittsburgh, PA

05/10/09 The Rumba Cafe Columbus, OH

05/11/09 The Pike Room at the Crofoot Detroit, MI

05/12/09 Double Door Chicago, IL