“We were expecting maybe some sort of street party, with a smaller stage.…but it was a big deal with so many people coming out… we were just blown out of the water,” said lead singer Tony Dekker.

Throughout the concert, the band (composed of Dekker, Erik Arnesen on banjo and guitar, back-up singer Miranda Mulholland, Bret Higgins on upright bass and drummer Greg Millson) played several songs from their brand-new album New Wild Everywhere. Mulholland captured the audience’s attention with her passionate and spirited playing in “Easy Come Easy Go” and “Great Exhale.”  The concert was a testament to Dekker’s belief that the band had matured; it was certainly clear that the band had coalesced and developed a holistic and full sound.

New Wild Everywhere is the first studio-produced album for the GLS. Another big difference was the addition of Mulholland on back-up vocals and violin. Dekker described the natural inclination to bring Miranda on board following her successful run with them during the Lost Channels tour. Her fiery presence was a constant source of energy throughout the concert

“She adds a lot of flavour and has a lot of experience under her belt. She has a great sense of style and playing, having played [violin] for years now,” Dekker said.

As a long-time fan of the GLS, I have found that there is no other band that has so poetically and beautifully woven ecological metaphors to describe our daily social relations. “ Your Rocky Spine” and “Changing Colours” are two examples that take the physical natural landscape and transpose it to apply to the concrete parts of human behavior and appearance. I asked Dekker about how ecology shapes his daily life and what environmental issues he believed were paramount.

He said, “I’m currently part of a campaign for preserving the Great Bear Rainforest, near the Haida Gwaii region in BC. They are talking of putting extensive pipelines under the area… I agree with the [idea of] possessing the environment to appreciate it and I don’t want to get overtly preaching in our music…but there could be huge damage done to an area which deserves to be protected.”

What struck me was how important the environment is to both the GLS and Dekker himself, yet he made it clear that it should not overtake the importance of the band’s sound. We discussed the continued success of the GLS and folk music in general, which Dekker described as, “[something] that will always be deeply seeded in our culture in Canada.”

While their concert on Sept. 19 wowed long-time fans like myself who felt that seeing them live truly captured the depth of the GLS, they certainly impressed the people standing around me who had no prior knowledge of them. Dekker noted that as the band continues to refine their sound, it has been amazing to find an ever-expanding audience, reaching more people even within Canada.

Aissa Boodhoo-Leegsma, Senior News Editor

The sun was setting, the rain held off (mostly) and cotton candy and red bull were plentiful at the second Welcome Week concert on Saturday Sept. 8. The Sheepdogs, who had come all the way from Saskatoon, were headlining.

Their music exploded with such good vibes that there was even the hint of a crowd surf. It took two attempts and only lasted about half a second, but it was there.

Near the end of the set, the singer thanked everyone for coming out. Despite the fact that there was no drinking allowed at the event, the guitar player ran to his red plastic beer cup and handed it to someone in the crowd, to which the singer responded, “Well, that’s going to be taken away immediately.” And even if it was, at least the person got a good story out of it.

The Dirty Nil, from nearby Dundas, were the first of two openers. They were reckless, loud and catchy. The Toronto-based Great Bloomers were next up. Their folk-indie pop was pleasant.

Before the show, I got to ask the Sheepdogs about their story.

The band has been around for eight years, releasing three albums before their infamous Rolling Stone cover. Their latest album, the first on a major label, is self-titled and came out on Sept. 4.

Before all the magazine covers and major labels, the Sheepdogs were high school band geeks. “Ryan and I first met because we were in schools bands, like concert band,” said singer Ewan Currie. “We both played clarinet,” laughed Ryan Gullen, the bass player. “The macho-ist of the woodwinds,” replied Currie. “Well, after flute and piccolo. We never had a punk phase or anything like that.”

Going from a playing clarinet to the Sheepdogs took a bit of time, and the members were about 20 when it all started. From there, the Sheepdogs did what all young bands do: they toured as much as they could and prayed that they’d be able to afford gas.

“We had doubts. How can you not?” said Currie. “I think it’s natural to have doubts in everyday life, no matter what you’re doing. Certainly there are times where you’re like, ‘Why the fuck am I out here doing this right now?’”

Hearing that Currie doubted himself was understandable, but I wondered how he knew that his doubts didn’t mean that he should give it up. “It’s like an intangible thing, you just have to know,” he said. “It’s just a gut thing. You’ll find out, man.”

Despite the doubts, the Sheepdogs made it to the point where Patrick Carney from the Black Keys produced their most recent album. “He has one of those megaphone things, a cone, like an old-time director, and he sits in a director’s chair, and he goes ‘Cut, cut, cut! All wrong!’” said Currie.

“He wore a beret. He treated it like he was Robert Altman on the set of McCabe and Miller.”

“That was the strangest reference,” added Gullen.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is an old western that, like much of the music that has influenced the Sheepdogs, is from the 1970s.

“It’s not like I wish I was in Woodstock and I wish I was in 1971,” said Currie. “I just like the stuff they were doing. The music more closely resembled roots music, like old country and blues and folk. It had chord progressions and melodies and harmonies, and bands were generally more adept at playing in a range of styles. It seems like a lot of bands now start by playing their original material instead of learning a bunch of other stuff. And as such, I think their sound gets really limited.”

I expected the Sheepdogs to be gruff and intimidating – maybe that’s because of their huge beards and shoulder-length hair. But they were friendly, down-to-earth and funny. Like their concert, it was a nice surprise.

Josh Parsons

Music Editor

In the world of punk rock, few have stuck to their guns like Mike Watt has. He was a member of legendary econo-punkers Minutemen, currently plays bass for Iggy & the Stooges and has continually been active as a solo artist for the past three decades.

This week, ANDY had the chance to chat with Watt, as he sat in his sunny living room in San Pedro, California. It was humbling to hear him so eager to speak openly in a slow paced Virginia-via-California drawl about the relevance of punk today and his newest material.

“Punk wasn’t a style of music, it was an attitude. We tried to do stuff that wasn’t on the beaten path,” Watt asserted. “Don’t get all cock-sure of yourself, just have a little nerve to try stuff that might not fit in.”

Watt has renown in independent music circles for his strict adherence to a low-cost, econo approach to music. “If you feel like you don’t fit in you have to do it yourself, you have to keep that autonomy. In not being a style, but a set of ethics, you don’t have to worry about stylized things or being out of date.”

Watt’s latest project, Spielgusher, is a far-out collaboration with a Japanese drum/guitar duo, playing to poems written by renowned rock lyricist, Richard Meltzer.

“Meltzer gave me 48 spoken word poems and we made about 63 pieces of music to go behind it – kind of Minutemen style,” Watt laughed. “I got together with these guys in Tokyo for three days and just wailed out all these jams to go behind it.”

Since the end of Minutemen, following the tragic death of front man D. Boon, Watt has stayed away from the fragmented writing style they became known for. “I gotta tell you, I didn’t listen to a lot of Minutemen after [Boon] got killed. It was bummer.”

But in 2005, two filmmakers approached Watt with the idea of shooting a Minutemen documentary, forcing him to dig up a painful past. “These guys, Keith and Tim, they were too young to actually see us. So they wanted me to do the spiel. I had to listen to the Minutemen for this thing and I kind of got into it again. I wanted to write like that.” The result was the award winning, We Jam Econo.

What followed was Watt’s first effort since 2004, Hyphenated-Man, inspired equally by the Minutemen and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, who“made one thing out of a lot of little things, little creatures, you know?

“I didn’t want to make just some nostalgia trip. I wanted to make it about where I am now, a middle-aged punk rocker. I wrote ‘em all on D. Boon’s guitar, so I’m not ripping off the Minutemen. I usually write my stuff on bass. It gives the other players a lot of room. I thought, ‘maybe if I use his guitar I’ll have the courage.’”

After three decades, it’s incredibly inspiring to see Watt still venturing forth into untouched territory, embodying in his art everything that he believes