A conversation with Dallas Good of The Sadies from 2006
On the occasion of his band's all-star 10th anniversary concerts, the Toronto twang-rock titan recounted his history with all the famous friends invited to the party
The Sadies. illustration: Jeremy Bruneel
Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars (and the occasional classic-rock icon). This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).
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THE OPENERS
This week at Pitchfork, I wrote about the excellent new album from Colombian producer Ela Minus, DÍA, a fusion of arty electro and huge dance-pop hooks best described as Fever Ray of Light.
Notes on this week’s new arrivals to the stübermania 2025 playlist:
Sparks, “Do Things My Own Way”: Happy new Sparks single to those who celebrate! This punky lo-tech teaser from the Maels’ upcoming MAD! imagines how their late-’70s phase might’ve turned out had they hooked up with Suicide instead of Giorgio Moroder.
Gus Baldwin & The Sketch, “(She’s Gone) Arigato”: Speaking of Sparks—this giddy garage rave-up sounds like a Kimono My House-era outtake as covered by Ty Segall, i.e., totally my shit.
Customer Service, “and it feels”: On the other hand, emo has never been my shit, but this spirited Halifax group knows how to soften a cynical Gen X-er’s hardened heart: make a video that lovingly rips off Sloan’s Smeared-era visuals.
Snapped Ankles, “Raoul”: This filthy electro banger from the costumed East London crew just might convince you that what the world really needs right now is an A.R.E. Weapons revival.
FKA Twigs (feat. North West), “Childlike Things”: After spending some time in Eusexua’s deviant discotheque this past week, I think I’m still more partial to the art-pop audacity of Magdalene, but this mid-album highlight is a delightfully delirious mash-up of ‘80s block-party rap and ‘90s ballroom house, topped with a sassy Japanese verse from Kimye’s kid.
Population II, “Le thé est prêt”: This Quebecois crew usually favours free-form psychedelic splatter, but this single from Maintenant Jamais (out March 28) suggests early-‘70s Lennon locking into a prog-funk groove.
Saya Gray, “LIE DOWN..”: The former Daniel Caesar bassist’s early EPs overflowed with manic, spliced ‘n’ diced future-pop freakery, but the closing track from her upcoming full-length debut, SAYA (out Feb. 21), sees her settling into a chill West Coast vibe, coming off like Haim pinching some of Mac DeMarco’s weed.
Gnod & White Hills, “Nothing Neu! Under the Sky”: Two underground psych-rock institutions, one magnificent motorik blowout.
THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Dallas Good
The date: January 20, 2006
Location: Mitzi’s Sister in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood
Publication: Eye Weekly
Shows being promoted: The Sadies’ all-star 10th anniversary concerts at Lee’s Palace on February 3 and 4, 2006.
The context: This is always a sad time of year for Sadies fans, as we approach the third anniversary of Dallas Good’s untimely passing at the age of 48. Not only was Dallas an electrifying guitar player with nudie-suit style for miles, he was also a consummate gentleman and generous soul who was always willing to lend a helping hand to lesser-known artists, whether he was producing records for Hamilton punks TV Freaks or playing with Toronto hardcore crew Career Suicide. And while few have looked cooler rocking out onstage with sunglasses and a dangling cigarette, the things I really miss about him are his smile and laugh—dude was funny as fuck.
But I’m resurfacing this old Eye Weekly interview from 2006 to mark a much happier occasion—the 10th-anniversary Sadies concerts that happened 19 years ago this week at Lee’s Palace, where the Toronto twang-rock titans corralled an all-star cast of special guests to stage what was effectively the cowpunk Last Waltz, albeit without the breaking-up part. (Technically, the band had been around for 12 years at that point, but 2006 marked the 10th-anniversary of the classic Dallas Good/Travis Good/Sean Dean/Mike Belitsky locking into place.) The shows were recorded by their friend Steve Albini and released a few months later as In Concert: Volume 1, which, for my money, is right up there with the greatest live albums in rock history.
Though we met in a bar, Dallas laid off his customary glass of bourbon and ordered a ginger ale—he was nursing an ulcer at the time. I wanted to talk about how The Sadies became the rare band that could bridge the mainstream roots-rock/folk-festival world inhabited by Blue Rodeo and the garage-punk underground that spawned Jon Spencer. So, in lieu of the standard Q+A, I asked Dallas to tell me the origin stories of how The Sadies became friends with each of their Lee’s Palace guests. We started with the ones he had known the longest:
Margaret and Bruce Good (a.k.a. Dallas’ mom and dad)
My father’s biggest-selling record of all time was his double-live record from 1980. They always made it crystal clear that there’s no money in the music business, and that it’s a fluke that I’ve existed this long. So I had a realistic perspective, but I also had amps in the basement and I was allowed to start rehearsing with my hardcore bands when I was 13. Santa Claus brought me punk-rock records. So they’ve been great all along. But I never really drew much from what I learned from them until way later. My brother started playing with them when he was 17-18, playing full time in The Good Brothers, and I only did that way later when it was trips to Europe or Caribbean cruises. We brought them to the UK with us, and so they were playing with us for the whole set, and ever since then, there’s been a lot more realism in their attitude toward The Sadies. They’ve seen us now in packed out clubs, empty rooms, whatever. They’ve just been a really integral part of the band. It was a bit of a shock to me that we would draw on their old material. When we first started playing, Travis and I had this arsenal of country-and-western bluegrass standards that really formed the backbone of what The Sadies became in terms of drawing from that well, and that was entirely their influence, of course. But I didn’t know I could sing those songs until I was twentysomething. It wasn’t until Sean got an upright bass that I started listening to my parents. We sing out-of-tune perfectly together!
Steve Albini
He had worked with Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet; I had been in a band with two of them called Phono-Comb. Steve recorded our debut record in Toronto, and that’s where I got to know Steve, and I really, really like him and his work ethic a lot. We hired him to make the first three Sadies records. The second record, though, half of it was recorded by Don Pyle. So for this live record, we’re bringing in Steve because I feel like he knows how to capture us as a live band, but at the time we worked with him, we probably should’ve been more of a studio band. So we know what we’re getting from Steve, which is 110 percent efficiency and everything else. Don Pyle is also going to be involved in the recording. I just needed the best possible people in our corner, because I don’t want to think about it.
Andre Williams
We’ve gone through every contact we know for Andre, and we’ve gotten a million phone numbers—if anyone can find him, get him here! The closest we got was, “oh shit, Andre doesn’t live here—click!” We’ve also invited the Hawk [Ronnie Hawkins]; he just may or may not show up. Same with Robyn Hitchcock—I felt like having him might’ve felt too forced, because we’ve only collaborated on one song and just played a bunch of covers live. So to fly him up without any rehearsal time… I’d rather just make a record with him, and the next time we make a live record, we’ll have him.
Neko Case
I was her guitarist on her first record tour and wasn’t that comfortable with a bunch of pick-up guys, so the Sadies toured with her immediately following that. It was a long, hard tour, but we covered a lot of ground. She called me up cold, I had never met her before—it was on the recommendation of [Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet’s] Brian Connelly and [publicist] Yvette Ray. I talked to Neko, she was great, I got her record and thought it was really good. I also thought it would be very easy and I had a lot of time on my hands, assuming it was going to be a one-off thing. We spent so much time together back then, it taught me so much about the music business and what we can and can’t do as a band. A testament to us thinking alike is the fact that we can go six years without working together and then make two records and then go back to the way we were—she’s got a new band now. It’s amazing that she’s willing to do this. Everybody doing this is doing it for the love of the game. Everybody we called said, “Yes.” It wasn’t like, “how much? Let me talk to my band…”
Jon Langford
If you had asked me 10 years ago that I would one day work with Langford, I would laugh in your face and say, “no way.” I didn’t get the Waco Brothers when we first signed to Bloodshot and they were so popular. And then I met him and, of course, I’ve always held The Mekons in really high esteem. Even though I didn’t listen to them much growing up, I always appreciated them. We are the Canadian Mekons, quite literally. We’re on the Punk Rock record, we did that tour as the Mekons. We got along great with Jon, and I knew he made so many side-project records that I just told him, one day, if you send us some lyrics, we’ll give you a record, and he did just that. He’s been really great for the band; he brought us to England the first time on the Waco Brothers’ dime.
Kelly Hogan
Kelly was on our second record and all of our Neko’s records. She was somebody we had almost overlooked, but then we saw her in Chicago and couldn’t believe we had forgotten to invite her, and she was willing to drive. So she’s in, and we’re really excited to have her.
Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo and Rick White of Eric’s Trip/Elevator (who were also members of Sadies’ spin-off band The Unintended)
I can say that our link to both Greg and Rick is what they do as individuals and what The Sadies do as a group is basically different takes on the same genre—like three different people’s description of the same photo. We’ve come together in a million different ways: Blue Rodeo had taken us under their wing for a long time, and that’s lent itself to Travis guesting on their records and all of us sitting in with them. Their fans were unbelievably great to us. We sold a lot of records because of them—we definitely have entered the consciousness of the average Blue Rodeo fan. It’s just a circle of friends that has stuck together. I love being able to be affiliated with musicians of that caliber. We just have different takes on the same ideal. And with Rick, when he first moved to Toronto, we lived together. Elevator’s Darkness>Light record was ultimately supposed to be the first Unintended record. Elevator is Rick White’s band 100 per cent, so my involvement on Darkness>Light was really unexpected, but it definitely let us know where our strengths lay together, and we wrote that first Unintended record together on paper first, and we made that record really quickly. It doesn’t feel like The Sadies plus those guys when we play together. Because it’s hard for The Sadies to do longer, slower songs in our set—we’re a short attention-span type of band. We try to provide atmosphere in a nightclub where the booze is cheap.
Gary Louris of The Jayhawks
Gary brought The Sadies on tour with The Jayhawks before they disbanded, and we were really good friends. He’s going to co-produce our next studio record, but that keeps getting pushed back. I wanted to get him up here because I want to act now and get it going. Also, whenever we played The Jayhawks, Travis and I would sit in on a few songs, so we had an idea of what we were going to do. And he’s the perfect example of someone with whom I was like, “Well, we’re doing this live record,” and he’s like, “When is it happening? Can I come? Is there floor space for me?”
Andre Ethier and Max McCabe of The Deadly Snakes
I’m pretty sure they were at our first show at the Cameron House, and they were not old enough to get in; I had to say they were cousins of mine. When they told me their band was called The Deadly Snakes, before I had ever heard them, I vowed they would be my favourite band, and they didn’t let me down! They asked me to play on their second record, which was a total treat for me. And Mike sings on their most recent record.
Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray of Heavy Trash
The first big Sadies show was opening for the Blues Explosion at the Opera House in ’95. It was a big deal to us because we had done maybe four or five shows locally, so for [promoter] Elliot [Lefko] to have given us that was just huge. I loved the Blues Explosion, and Pussy Galore to this day are one of my favourite bands. But we’d never crossed paths. Heavy Trash signed to Yep Roc and they needed a band; they had already heard a bit about us and the Neko live record. They came to see us at the Bowery one night and that sealed the deal as far as they were concerned. We were asked before we had even heard the project and Sean and I said, “Yes, absolutely.” And then we heard it and were like, “whew!” [laughs] Those guys have been so great to work with. It felt like we had known each other for a long time, because we have a similar sense of humour. In the wake of a van-breaking-down tragedy, everyone knew what to do: There were no weak links, no crying on the side of the road. It was raining, we had this broken-down van, and everyone’s looking ridiculous! Pomade doesn’t withstand storms too well. I was intimidated before meeting Jon, for sure. But ultimately, I have to think about why I was into the Blues Explosion—he perseveres and he succeeds. The only difference between his career and my career is the stuff we do has never caught on! Their schedule was insane 10 years ago, they were on top of the world. They were touring three months at a time. Being asked to work with them as hired guns has been the most flattering of all, in terms of session jobs. Because, I gotta say, it was cold—we didn’t know Jon when we first got the cold call. Whether it would work or not was a total roll of the dice. Jon slept at my apartment in the middle of the heatwave on a shitty futon—he’s certainly not spoiled.
ENCORES
The Sadies’ 10th-anniversary concerts featured an unannounced keyboard cameo from Garth Hudson, who, sadly, recently joined Dallas (and fellow guests Andre Williams and Steve Albini) on the other side.
In terms of sound, style, and stage presence, Dallas Good was an irreplaceable member of The Sadies, so the band’s response to his loss was to not replace him. Since Dallas’ passing, Travis Good, Sean Dean, and Mike Belitsky have soldiered on as a trio, with a painted mural of their fallen comrade looking down upon them onstage. Here they are on Q with Tom Power talking about their decision to keep on keepin’ on:
But if there’s anyone who can claim the title of honorary fourth Sadie, it’s their old friend Rick White, who they backed on the stellar 2024 psych-country set, Rick White and The Sadies.
This is a free newsletter, but if you really like what you see, please consider a donation via paid subscription, or visit my PWYC tip jar!