The Sheepdogs with Beat Cops

Some listeners may argue that the sounds soaring from their speakers while listening to the Saskatoon band are familiar relics of decades past, and they’d be right; however, it’s the manner in which The Sheepdogs borrow bits from classic, psychedelic, and boogie rock iconoclasts like Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Allman Brothers, and The Grateful Dead and mix them with modern rock sensibilities that really sets them apart.
Over the years, The Sheepdogs have trekked across Canada in their beaten-down van playing as many new cities as possible. They released their first independent album Trying To Grow in 2007. In 2012, they won three Juno Awards: Rock Album of the Year, Best New Group and Single of the Year (I Don’t Know). Their highly successful follow-up, 2012’s The Sheepdogs, featuring the instantly-recognizable, Gold-certified singles “Feeling Good” and “The Way It Is.”
In 2015 The Sheepdogs released Future Nostalgia which builds upon The Sheepdogs’ foundation of feel-good vocal harmonizing and nasty guitar jamming. “Our musical journey has been about trying to find how we sound our best,” states Currie, and the album represents the pinnacle of their progress thus far. That’s made immediately clear from the opening riff of “Downtown,” an undeniable straight-up rocker that sparkles with the warmth of summer. Down at the other end of the street is “Bad Lieutenant,” which walks a dark and sexy strut courtesy of bassist Ryan Gullen and drummer Sam Corbett, who also tear up the furious “I Really Wanna Be Your Man.”
‘Mikey Heppner and Tim Fletcher began playing music together in Montreal punk rock band, ‘The Dropouts’, when they met in 2001. ‘Priestess’ and ‘The Stills’ (Heppner and Fletcher’s respective side-projects, go ahead and google them) both ended up taking up a lot of time for them, so their collaboration had been quite minimal until July 2014 when the two began taking themselves seriously once again. Enlisting the young and able Max Hébert (Les Breastfeeders, High Dials, etc etc.) on drums, and the even younger but no less sensational Pat Bennett (from the legendary ‘Trigger Effect’) on guitar and keys, …Beat Cops… was formed. Their music has been compared to other music, and their live concerts have been described as ‘loud’, and ‘fun’. For years now, Heppner has been hearing things in his head and it has been quite frightening to him, but the way Beat Cops have managed to translate this into actual music songs is quite acceptable! When listening, you might, for example, get the feeling that ‘huge guitars’ were employed to achieve the sounds you’re hearing, when by all means, they were actually quite normal-sized guitars. Their debut album, “MEAN STREETS”, is out now on Indica Records.
The Sheepdogs