Along the way there were run-ins with Nick Cave, Ministry’s Alain Jourgensen, Kill Rock Stars’ Slim Moon, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, and Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. Published in April 2020, shortly after lockdown, I was riveted reading about Lanegan’s path from redneck delinquent in an eastern Washington hick town to international rock star with heroin shivers. 8 I wouldn’t call Mishka a close buddy but I’d certainly call him a friend and fellow traveler. Then, early on in the pandemic, I was drawn into his world from a fresh angle, his memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, the autobiography he wrote with the encouragement of Anthony Bourdain 6 and a further push and editorial assist from Mishka Shubaly, 7 a denizen of the same early 00s NYC music scene I came out of. I made the mistake of typecasting Lanegan as one of those Grunge Guys, a genre whose charms I’ve always been immune to. To this day I have endless respect for Roger’s taste and the foresight of his signings. Prior to the pandemic I simply thought of Mark Lanegan as the former lead singer of the Screaming Trees- as Pitchfork put it a “workmanlike rock band blessed with a distinct vocalist…a character actor specializing in a certain kind of brooding, wizened masculinity.” When The National signed to the Beggars Banquet label in the mid-00s, Lanegan was already on the roster and they shared an A&R person named Roger Trust. I post this playlist with big feels to those in my circle who loved him and with the hope it’ll introduce you to the music Dallas so obviously made with love. Don’t take it as a sign of disrespect when I say they are meat and potatoes American music-like The Band before them, a Canadian export doing our music better than anyone in the land where it supposedly came from. The Sadies are an amalgam of garage rock, early R&B, country sounds, surf music riffs, and punk rock energy, all performed with virtuosity and commitment. However, the root pleasure of it is utilitarian: impulse, motion, celebration, love for the history of 20th century North American popular song. Like anything great, The Sadies’ music can reward close contemplation. The adjacency of this music to beer and barbecue was no accident. I’m still tickled it was, by any reasonable estimation, his first live show.) (Don’t worry: the gig was open air and we kitted him out with noise cancelling headphones. The gigs I remember most distinctly were at the downtown Brooklyn location of a Texas BBQ restaurant, shortly before the birth of my son and then, about a year later, at a beer festival held in an industrial hanger in the same borough’s Sunset Park neighborhood. I learned of Dallas’ death not from a Tweet but a text message that’d just pinged my spouse’s phone.Īt Mike’s invitation, I was lucky enough to see The Sadies a handful of times in recent years. My spouse and I are friends with The Sadies’ drummer Mike Belitsky, his partner Damian Rogers, 4 and their young son. What made it more so are intimate family ties. The details of Dallas’s death last week at the age of 48 -while under a doctor’s observation no less-are shocking for anyone pushing 50 like myself. 3 In each instance the expectation wasn’t that they’d just open up for these legends but play alongside them. 1 But my personal discovery and first proper listen only happened after I married in to a Canadian family and began spending time in Toronto, where I quickly realized The Sadies were a beloved regional standard, akin to hockey 2 and bagged milk.Ī live band first and foremost, they are best known as serial collaborators who toured with Neko Case, Kurt Vile, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Neil Young, and Gord Downie. The importance of Dallas Good and his band The Sadies first took root in my brain when the Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, an acquaintance from indie rock doings, told me they were his favorite band.
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