Fellow musicians are remembering Dallas Good as somebody who fostered group throughout the Canadian music scene, supported new artists and gave them an opportunity to showcase their expertise.
Good, the singer and guitarist of rock/different nation band the Sadies, died Thursday of pure causes at age 48.
The Sadies posted the information on their social media accounts Friday afternoon, saying in a Fb put up that Good had been beneath physician’s look after a coronary sickness found earlier this week.
The band, made up of Good, his singer/guitarist brother Travis Good, bassist Sean Dean and drummer Mike Belitsky, fashioned in Toronto in 1994 and launched their first album Treasured Moments in 1998.
They usually had served as inspiration for different Canadian acts since.
“We sort of grew up idolizing and watching (them),” Ryan Gullen, bassist for the Sheepdogs mentioned in a cellphone interview. “Their albums are wonderful and their dwell exhibits had been one thing you could possibly solely aspire to.”
Gullen mentioned the Sadies had been the primary band to “take an opportunity” on the Sheepdogs in 2011, inviting the then little-known rock group from Saskatoon to tour with them by means of Western Canada.
Gullen mentioned the gig was “large affirmation” for the Sheepdogs, including that Good and the Sadies rapidly put their star-struck nerves relaxed by welcoming them “with open arms” and taking them for drinks after the primary present.
The Sheepdogs’ time with Good was lower quick when he broke his leg earlier than the tour’s second present. Nonetheless, Gullen mentioned, it was the beginning of a bond that grew stronger through the years.
“We grew to become a part of their group, and I believe that’s the largest piece of what you may say about Dallas and the Sadies,” he mentioned. “They actually bred group. They welcomed individuals in and so they supported individuals.
“It wasn’t about getting larger for them. It was about surrounding your self with good individuals and constructing them up, which is type of misplaced in a number of methods with a number of musicians.”
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Eamon McGrath, a musician and author from Edmonton, remembers when Good broke his leg on tour. He additionally recollects Good’s triumphant return to the stage months later in Saskatoon, carrying a solid beneath his go well with that prolonged previous the highest of his knee.
McGrath opened for the Sadies at that present — certainly one of his many instances taking part in with the band.
“I don’t even perceive how he received a go well with on over that solid and performed your complete present,” McGrath mentioned. “A ripping, loud, energetic, Sadies present, dripping in sweat… That in all probability would have been unspeakably uncomfortable.”
McGrath mentioned he all the time felt “like a giddy schoolgirl” when he may play alongside the Sadies.
“They had been, in a number of methods, just like the final holdout of true hard-working, road-hardened troubadours,” he mentioned.
The Sadies had been nonetheless performing weeks earlier than Good’s loss of life, and had launched a brand new single, “Message to Belial,” in January.
They had been among the many acts at a digital version of Guelph, Ont.’s Hillside Inside pageant earlier this month and had been listed on the invoice for Winterruption, a music pageant in Edmonton that runs March 31 to April 3.
They had been set to play Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern this April, a make-up date for exhibits that had been postponed in December.
“We now have no phrases for the shock we’re all feeling,” the band’s Fb put up learn Friday. “The stage is darkish at this time with the all too quickly passing of certainly one of music’s brightest lights.”
Gullen described Good’s voice as having an “unimaginable low, virtually haunting” high quality.
Not the usually loud, boisterous frontman, Good was a “stoic, calculated performer,” Gullen mentioned, displaying the world “you don’t should be Mick Jagger to steer a band.”
McGrath mentioned Good transcended a number of music genres, noting he additionally performed with Moncton, N.B.-based psychedelic band Elevator to Hell, instrumental Toronto rock group Shadowy Males on a Shadowy Planet, and Toronto indie rockers the Unintended.
“(The Sadies) had been as a lot a punk band as they had been a rustic band,” McGrath mentioned. “Their musical means when it comes to guitar taking part in, I imply, they take advantage of technical loss of life metallic bands seem like incapable college students.”
Dallas and Travis Good got here from a robust lineage of musicality. Their father Bruce performed within the Juno-winning bluegrass outfit the Good Brothers alongside his siblings whereas mom Margaret has appeared on recordings with each her husband and her sons.
The Sadies’ 2017 album Northern Passages was recorded within the Good mum or dad’s basement in Newmarket, Ont.
The band collaborated with many different homegrown acts, together with Buffy Sainte-Marie, Blue Rodeo, Neil Younger and the Tragically Hip, with whom they toured extensively.
The band teamed up with Hip frontman Gord Downie for his or her 2014 album And the Conquering Solar — an intensive venture that took seven years to finish.
Good additionally labored as a producer, serving to Canadian sister trio The Garrys with an album they launched this fall.
Julie Maier, one of many band members, referred to as Good a “wish-list producer” and mentioned the band was thrilled when he agreed to work with them. His down-to-earth nature — Good solely requested for Purple Rose tea when the Garrys provided to supply meals and drinks in studio — struck her and her sisters.
“He was simply such an unpretentious particular person,” Maier mentioned. “He was simply the farthest factor from a diva.”
His contributions to Canada’s music scene are unparalleled, McGrath mentioned, noting how the Sadies toured the nation “relentlessly.”
“They by no means discriminated in opposition to their viewers, by no means appeared down on any city as small or as large because it was,” he mentioned.
“They laid the groundwork for being Canadian artists.”
© 2022 The Canadian Press
