Death of Sadies singer Dallas Good spurs tributes from other musicians

Fellow musicians are remembering Dallas Good as somebody who fostered neighborhood throughout the Canadian music scene, supported new artists and gave them an opportunity to showcase their abilities.

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 submit 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 type of grew up idolizing and watching (them),” Ryan Gullen, bassist for the Sheepdogs stated in a cellphone interview. “Their albums are wonderful and their stay reveals had been one thing you may solely aspire to.”

Gullen stated 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 stated the gig was “large affirmation” for the Sheepdogs, including that Good and the Sadies shortly put their star-struck nerves comfortable 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 stated, it was the beginning of a bond that grew stronger through the years.

“We turned a part of their neighborhood, and I believe that’s the largest piece of what you’ll be able to say about Dallas and the Sadies,” he stated. “They actually bred neighborhood. They welcomed folks in and so they supported folks.

“It wasn’t about getting larger for them. It was about surrounding your self with good folks and constructing them up, which is kind of misplaced in plenty of methods with plenty of musicians.”

READ MORE: Sadies singer practically hit by falling mild cowl throughout Nova Scotia efficiency

Eamon McGrath, a musician and author from Edmonton, remembers when Good broke his leg on tour. He additionally remembers Good’s triumphant return to the stage months later in Saskatoon, sporting a forged beneath his go well with that prolonged previous the highest of his knee.

McGrath opened for the Sadies at that present — one in every of his many instances enjoying with the band.

“I don’t even perceive how he obtained a go well with on over that forged and performed your complete present,” McGrath stated. “A ripping, loud, energetic, Sadies present, dripping in sweat… That in all probability would have been unspeakably uncomfortable.”

McGrath stated he all the time felt “like a giddy schoolgirl” when he may play alongside the Sadies.

“They had been, in plenty of methods, just like the final holdout of true hard-working, road-hardened troubadours,” he stated.

The Sadies had been nonetheless performing weeks earlier than Good’s dying, 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 reveals that had been postponed in December.

“Now we have no phrases for the shock we’re all feeling,” the band’s Fb submit learn Friday. “The stage is darkish as we speak with the all too quickly passing of one in every of music’s brightest lights.”

Gullen described Good’s voice as having an “unbelievable low, virtually haunting” high quality.

Not the usually loud, boisterous frontman, Good was a “stoic, calculated performer,” Gullen stated, exhibiting the world “you don’t must be Mick Jagger to guide a band.”

McGrath stated 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 stated. “Their musical skill when it comes to guitar enjoying, I imply, they take advantage of technical dying steel bands appear to be 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 father or mother’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 in depth undertaking 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 stated 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 supplied to supply meals and drinks in studio — struck her and her sisters.

“He was simply such an unpretentious particular person,” Maier stated. “He was simply the farthest factor from a diva.”

His contributions to Canada’s music scene are unparalleled, McGrath stated, noting how the Sadies toured the nation “relentlessly.”

“They by no means discriminated towards their viewers, by no means regarded down on any city as small or as large because it was,” he stated.

“They laid the groundwork for being Canadian artists.”