Winning a competition isn’t always the best way to achieve musical success. Just ask any of the ultimately anonymous winners of American Idol or The Voice. But for The Sheepdogs, a contest win jumpstarted the Canadian band’s flagging fortunes and vaulted them into a position that had eluded them.
The band started with childhood friends Ewan Currie and Ryan Gullen, who formed The Breaks with new pal Sam Corbett at the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. After the trio released an EP, the band connected with guitarist Leot Hanson at a party, joining his impromptu Kings of Leon cover performance.
With Hanson’s arrival, they changed their name to The Sheepdogs, inspired by an incident from Currie’s childhood when his panicked mother found her wandering son in a park playing with a sheepdog. The newly minted Sheepdogs, inspired by the big riff Rock of Led Zeppelin and the harmony-rich Folk of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, independently released its first two albums, 2007’s Trying to Grow and 2008’s Big Stand, and toured endlessly. The band’s third album, 2010’s Learn & Burn, might well have been its last; touring across Canada’s vast expanse had exacted an emotional and economic toll, and the quartet exhausted its savings on a 2011 Los Angeles trip for a brass-ring shot that turned out to be a bad bar gig. But the year was about to take an amazing turn.
A Toronto agent they’d met sent their demo to Rolling Stone’s “Choose the Cover” competition, which earned them an invitation to Bonnaroo and an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The Sheepdogs won the reader-voted contest, becoming the first unsigned band on the magazine’s cover. The group also scored an Atlantic Records contract in the process. Learn & Burn was reissued, hit the Canadian Top 20, notched platinum sales and earned The Sheepdogs multiple Canadian music awards.
The band’s 2012 eponymous fourth album was produced by Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney (ironically, The Breaks had performed Black Keys covers at early gigs). Hanson left the Sheepdogs two years ago and was replaced by longtime utility member Rusty Matyas, who featured highly on 2015’s Future Nostalgia. The Sheepdogs became a sextet in 2015 with the addition of renowned Blues guitarist Jimmy Bowskill; Currie’s trombonist brother Shamus had played on their early albums and officially joined with the 2012 tour.
For The Sheepdogs, opportunity knocked just as the party was winding down… and now the party is in its 10th year.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 7, 2016.
