Thursday night in London, Ontario. Combating jetlag with another beer and fistfuls of hot, riffy nostalgia, Classic Rock watches from the Music Hall balcony as an even mix of genders and ages act like giddy weekenders. Twentysomethings dance and make out downstairs. An ancient-looking man in denim, plaid and a baseball cap nods along intently. Booze flows. Pretzels, poutine, sodas and cookies are sold at the back.
Everyone is having the best time as Ewan Currie and Ricky Paquette – the tallest and shortest Sheepdogs, respectively – dive into Thin Lizzy-style ‘guitarmonies’ for Find The Truth. Other songs inspire similar scenes, from rootsy fan favourite Nobody to sweetly romantic newbie I Do. Rock’n’roll with a big heart. Tough guys singing sweetly, as one onlooker recently put it.
“You think of the archetypal rock singer,” Currie told us, “like Elvis, or even country guys like Waylon Jennings, where he’s getting tender and nostalgic. There’s some magic to that. Or the best power-pop, like Badfinger or Big Star, laying bare their raw emotional feelings, but shrouding it in these awesome guitar riffs.”
A familiar bass line kicks in, and the air changes. In 2015, Feeling Good was the victory song for the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team. In 2026 it was the Canadian national hockey team’s goal anthem at the Winter Olympics. Cheers swell, bodies shake across the sticky floor, someone throws a bra, which lands at bassist Ryan Gullen’s feet. Name another contemporary band who can be this rooted in the 70s and make it feel like a superpower, rather than a sign of low inspiration.
“Historically, a lot of bands would be popular for, like, five years,” Gullen muses later. “But how do you keep a band after fifteen years of success, still growing, not putting out the ‘greatest hits’ album, still putting out good new music and keeping people engaged?”
Nods to the ‘other’ London are everywhere in this university town. The pub across the street has a Tube-style sign. St Paul’s Cathedral (red-brick, Anglican church of Canada) is a short walk away. Students in laptop-friendly cafes co-exist with slowly shuffling addicts outside.
A few hours pre-gig, we head to Covent Garden Market – a boho haven of casual but serious coffee, baked goods, knick-knacks and vegan grilled cheeses. Post-gym and slightly running on fumes, Gullen, in a Bob Seger top and double denim, with a Magnum P.I. moustache, sits across from me. After our breakfast date and a quick stop at a thrift store, The Sheepdogs bassist and manager will head straight into a radio interview.
“I mean, sometimes I feel like I’m hanging on for dear life,” he says. “But mostly it’s okay. I always tell that to young bands: no one’s gonna care as much about what you’re doing as you are.”
There’s something of that in all of them. Wrangling their own label (Right On Records), partners, children, and the enormous distances that come with being a touring band in this country, The Sheepdogs have a fierce work ethic. It’s what they’ve had to do to build a presence outside their home town in Canada’s Western prairies. Almost two decades in, they’re still grafting, still writing new songs that fans want to hear.
Backstage, there are flight cases full of cowboy boots and fringed jackets. Techs unloading gear. Gullen’s coffee Peli-case (a full espresso setup), monitors and vintage keyboards. Bottles of Cazadores tequila, snacks, waters and beers in the dressing room. Genial guitarist Ricky Paquette whisks up matcha. Offstage, The Sheepdogs’ newest full-time member has the easiness of someone who’s only ever paid his bills with music. On stage he plays and sings with the panache of a frontman and the engagement of a team player.
“I felt a bit alone when it was my solo project,” he tells us. “If you ask anybody who’s known me throughout my teens, my dream was always to have a band – not be a solo guy.”
Raised a French speaker in Quebec, Paquette fell in love with the guitar when he was nine. His dad held three jobs and fixed up motorcycles, listening to classic rock radio as he worked. “That’s where my classic rock background comes from, just hanging with my dad in the garage.”
At 13, Paquette got a record deal and released his blues-driven solo debut, which led to a long stretch of making music, tours with older bandmates and scoring gigs with Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter. Within a few years, he was working with Quebec stars like Angel Forrest and Martin Deshaun, as a guitarist and studio engineer.
“I realised I liked music in general, not just blues, and the label I was with were very…” He thinks about this. “I’m not going to say ‘disappointed’, but they wanted me to just do the blues thing. So we ended up not doing a third album.”
With rockier influences like Aerosmith and the Brothers Osborne shaping his own songs, he hit a crossroads in 2019. Together with his wife – a pilot – he sold his possessions, bought an RV, turned it into a tiny home/studio and moved to Nashville. “I still wonder what it would have been like if the pandemic had not happened,” he says a little wistfully.
Returning to Canada when covid hit, Paquette had his first child, a new solo record and studio gigs keeping him busy. In 2022, as he planned a work move to Austin, Gullen called and invited him for a jam – The Sheepdogs were down a guitarist (Jimmy Bowskill having just left), and needed one sharpish for a long tour.
“It just felt like I’d met some old friends from high school,” Paquette says simply, of the easy chemistry that’s sent them into this next stage. “It either works or it doesn’t, and when you’re on a bus with a bunch of people, you find out quickly.”
Out front in the Music Hall, a gaggle of middle-aged men and women gaze curiously at a large, colourful wheel. Through necessity and demand, VIP packages have become an increasing part of tour life. Not cheered by the prospect of selling an expensive handshake, photo and early gig access, The Sheepdogs developed a unique formula: a relaxed Q&A, plus a gameshow-style ‘spin-the-wheel’ session. Each spin unlocks a “surprise activity”.
“We used to give away a guitar with one,” tour manager Corrie says with a grin, “but at our second show it was landed on twice…”
Today’s VIPs get, among other things, a portrait drawn by Gullen, a dirty joke from pigtailed, gently hippieish tour drummer Trevor Falls, and a dramatic reading from Currie’s multiinstrumentalist little brother Shamus. At one point, Shamus leg-wrestles a guy. It’s all goodnaturedly silly, and capped off with an enchanting acoustic, campfire-style performance.
Serious but quick to smile, Shamus Currie brings heat to the term ‘all rounder’. Trombonist, keyboard player, additional percussionist and guitarist, he’s The Sheepdogs’ not-so-secret spice rack. On 2026’s Keep Out Of The Storm it’s his contributions – the Pink Floyd-esqe The Owl and instrumental jam The Yellow Line – that give the record a little weirdness, a dark side of sorts.
“Ewan and I like super-concise pop songs in the McCartney mould,” he says. “But also a band that we loved growing up was Chicago, who wrote these long, flowing suites of music. So on the new record we have all these nice, tight pop songs that Ewan has been writing, but I think Sheepdogs fans also like the rambling, freewheeling thing with some crazy jams in there.”
On tour he gets lost in fantasy fiction. You can hear it in the proggy storytelling of his solo records, the latest of which is The Seven Seas (“It’s a nautical adventure, kind of inspired by The Odyssey, Moby Dick…”). His home studio in Toronto’s Little Portugal neighbourhood has The Dark Side Of The Moon, Duke Ellington, Chicago III and Hall & Oates posters on the walls.
After high school, between semesters of jazz trombone studies, he played in a funk band and worked as a short-order cook, watching in awe as his big brother’s band played bar gigs and went on shoestring tours – momentum rocketing after the Rolling Stone contest that saw Canada rally around them (and which the band ultimately won, becoming the magazine’s first unsigned cover stars) in 2011. Soon after, at 23, Currie Jr joined The Sheepdogs full time.
“I was young enough that I looked up to him a lot,” he says of Ewan, with whom he also plays in the double-act BROS. “He was a cool older brother for sure.”
On stage there’s a wooden owl perched on his organ, its cuteness offsetting the grit that’s brought them all this far. There’s a similar juxtaposition in their support band; British Columbia’s Surf Hat, in head-to-toe denim, look like ready-made hicks, but they’re closer to Talking Heads, all dreamy, indie, alt.country and psychedelic textures woven into intelligent pop songs.
Post-gig, Ewan pours drinks over chat about Canadian stereotypes and Ricky’s superfan down the front. Recently the frontman became a father. In a couple of days he’ll go home to take the load off his partner. You can see all that – the bliss, exhaustion and anxieties of new parenthood, mirrored in the post-gig buzz.
“We’re seeing young people at these shows, and it makes me so damn happy,” he enthuses. “When I see a young kid growing his hair out and a beard, or young gals wearing their vintage thrift stuff, I just wanna go and buy them a beer.”
HISTORY is a large, gleamingly purpose-built venue east of Toronto’s trendy Leslieville neighbourhood. Two floors, multiple bars and levels of seating areas, plus sharp-dressed security guards.
Leaving bus bunks and lugging in gear, everyone’s knackered but wearing it calmly. Ewan has a busted foot. Ryan was coughing up blood this morning, and now irons out staging kinks with their techs. Band photographer/art director Mat Dunlap does repairs on the VIP wheel. A little later, fragrant paper bags of ‘doubles’ are passed between grateful band and crew members.
“It’s like a spicy, fried dough chickpea sandwich,” Gullen explains. “It’s a West Indian thing.”
It’s also, in turn, a Toronto thing. Besides Trinidadian street food the city is home to Italian, Korean, Ukrainian, Mexican and a host of other microcultures who have put down roots here. There are several Chinatowns. Later on, we’ll refuel with borscht and pierogies at a diner recommended by Gullen, whose Polish ancestors crossed the country in wagons.
That instinct for movement runs deep. When the founding Sheepdogs were growing up in Saskatchewan, young men their age headed west to Alberta for tree-planting and oil work, making heaps of money on 20-hour days. Parts of a remote, cowboy culture that, on the surface at least, feels far removed from the urban backdrop of Toronto.
“I had buddies in Saskatoon that did that,” Ewan reflects, showing pictures of his son Sly (Sylvester, named after Sly Stone) back in his adopted home near the coast in Nova Scotia. “They’d go out, work their asses off, come back flush with cash and blow their pay cheques on, like, drugs and booze and buying a car. And then they go back and do it again, over and over. Alberta is so rich with natural resources. It’s like our Texas. It’s got cowboys and oil.”
Raised in Australia before moving to Canada for high school, The Sheepdogs’ towering frontman and chief songwriter captained the football team but quickly fell harder for music. It’s easy to see both those sides in the gentle but clear authority he carries onstage, and across their records – most of which he’s also produced.
“I like movies and books, but music is the most pure pleasure I think you can get,” he muses in a low, rough-honey purr. “It doesn’t take anything away from you, like drugs or alcohol or whatever. It’s a bit of a miraculous thing.”
Keep Out Of The Storm was recorded in efficient snatches between tours, getting together and playing each song until it felt right, hitting ‘record’ when it did. It’s there in the tight-but-loose warmth of these songs, by turns lovelorn, shitkicking, psychedelic and swampy – think Thin Lizzy, Little Feat, Leon Russell, freewheeling sunshine with McCartney-fresh melodies.
It’s a world away from the academic influence of his father, a composer with whom Ewan didn’t always see eye to eye: “I’d be listening to something like John Lee Hooker, and he’d be like: ‘This is out of tune!’ He wanted things to be exactly right. But rock’n’roll is more like a good party – it’s imperfect, but it feels good.”
All of which gleams out of tonight’s show, alongside a palpable sense of local loyalty. During their opening set, Surf Hat play The Tragically Hip’s Ahead By A Century – a beloved, bittersweet mega-hit in Canada, and nowhere else – frontman Jon declaring “thank god for Canadian rock’n’roll!” to massive cheers.
The night, though, belongs to our headliners. Bangers like How Late, How Long and Take Me For A Ride feel like classics – hard-hitting, joyful, full of charisma and lived experience. Onstage these five millennial rock’n’roll lifers carry themselves like stars. If this was 1973 they’d have flown in on their own jets. The Owl’s Gilmour-esque swoop shifts into a snatch of Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s Almost Cut My Hair. Ewan reports that the Blue Jays won 2-0, to approving roars and raised beers. Feeling Good ups the ante, baseball caps bobbing, a crowdsurfer heading over denim-clad shoulders to the irresistible harmonies of I Don’t Know.
“For all the evolution or subtleties we’re developing, there is a good chunk of my musical being that, at its core…” Ewan muses, “I’m still nineteen years old, the best part of my week is Friday, I’m two-to-three beers in and listening to Funk #49 by The James Gang and nothing has ever sounded so good. A perfect rock’n’ roll moment – that’s what we’re shooting for.”
Soon the Curries will return to Saskatoon to see their parents, separated but still in town. Their mother has dementia and lives in a home. When they were growing up she played The Seekers and The Carpenters. Clean, melodious foundations that her sons and their bandmates would cherish and lovingly roughen up.
The dirty, emphatic punch of Scarborough Street Fight draws the night, and this leg of the tour, to a close. Again there’s that sense of everyone connecting under the glow of this huge, sprawling country, much of it unknown or misunderstood by the rest of the world. Bands from far-flung places, quietly doing brilliant things.
“People aren’t coming to a Sheepdogs show because we’re the hot new thing, because we’re very obviously not,” Ewan says. “They’re coming because they like to see some cool rock music, and that’s so exciting. Yeah, I wish we could play in ’73 when rock was at its heyday. But that’s not gonna happen, so we’ll just keep rocking and finding our people.”
The next day Gullen and his girlfriend watch the Blue Jays claw their way back from seemingly inevitable defeat. Rogers Stadium roars with fans hanging on their heroes’ every move. Gullen points out the spot where Geddy Lee sits (he’s not here today). It’s amazing to imagine Feeling Good booming out in this vast space.
“It’s funny because there’s people who say, ‘I’m going to make music my career’,” he says later. “We were never like that, but as soon as we started doing it we were all like, ‘we love this, we want to do this’.”
If Gullen was rich, he’d hire a mechanic to look after his motorbikes. It’s hard to make time for them. In the past he took advantage of Canada’s considerable open roads. Once after a tour in Madrid, he rode solo through the Pyrenees. “I did all sorts of things, met lots of people, rolled through these small Spanish towns, I slept on a cot behind a bar one night,” he recalls, dreamily.
We’re sitting on a bench facing a swoop of scrubby parkland, the Toronto skyline up ahead, talking over butter tarts (a rich, smoky-sweet national specialty). Gullen’s mum, he says, makes the best ones. His dad died of cancer in 2018 – the week Gullen started managing The Sheepdogs.
“He was very happy [about that]. We had a bit of a contentious relationship at times, but from a place that he saw that I could do more. I was probably maybe a little bit of a… deadbeat son!”
Of all the Sheepdogs, Gullen might have changed the most since his teens. An awkward kid and a “pretty big stoner” who met Ewan playing clarinet in a concert band, he didn’t finish high school. Starting the band sharpened his focus; he completed his classes and went to university.
At 19, needing to pay bills alongside zerobudget tours, he started working with disabled adults. He drove the bus, dealt with aggressive and nonverbal cases and developed programmes. He stopped in 2011 when musical success allowed. “I learned to understand things people might not say, but that maybe they are experiencing. And just the ability to be calm in situations that are, to the majority of people, pretty intense.”
Not long ago he was diagnosed with ADHD, making sense of a lot of things. He takes medication for it and runs early in the mornings, before anyone starts asking him for things. Off tour he gets up at 4.30am.
“I think a lot of people assume I’m doing this because nobody else wanted to manage us,” he says. “I’ve had some contentious conversations with people, saying things like ‘it’s time you let someone real manage your band’. But I enjoy it. I get huge satisfaction making music, and succeeding on the other side of things.”
Even so, it’s not for everyone. In 2023 founding drummer Sam Corbett quit amicably to spend more time with his wife and daughters. Touring made him realise he wanted to stay in Saskatoon. For the others, it was the opposite: a nomadic tick of sorts kicking in, the same one that keeps certain people hooked on this strange life. Napping on flight cases. Beers, laptops, take-away boxes. Disasters, in-jokes, boredom, thrills. Weeks of this. All in service of 90 minutes a night.
The ‘deadbeat’ stoner from a far-off town who became a band manager, label owner and rock star seems to see all this for a second. “There’s a lot of musicians that are always chasing that same high – getting on stage, playing a song, a crowd cheering.”
Maybe you need Canada for a band like The Sheepdogs to start, grow and thrive as they have done. Toughened by distance, elements. Uninhibited by anything so agenda-setting as a scene. Friendly, and a little wild.
Keep Out Of The Storm is out now. The Sheepdogs tour Canada in October and the UK and Europe from Nov 11. For dates and tickets, check the Sheepdogs' website.
