Nichol Robertson's Mimico Moonlighters @ Reposado, Thursday

Sean Dean & Mike Belitsky join Nichol Robertson for a night of Mimico Moonlighters exotica splendour at Reposado from 9 pm on. 

Watch The Sadies live at Massey Hall in 2021

Here's some brilliant footage of Dallas Good and brother Travis tearin' it up in style at Massey Hall on November 30, 2021.Hall 

Watch The Sadies with Dallas Good play Massey Hall in 2021

Remembering singer/songwriter and guitarist Dallas Good on his birthday with a Sadies set at Massey Hall on Nov 30, 2021. 

The Sadies go acoustic @ The Cameron House, Friday & Saturday

Travis Good is a helluva picker so these two intimate Sadies shows at the Cameron should be great... if you can still get a ticket. 

Happy Birthday Kurt Vile!

Celebrating the birthday of singer/songwriter Kurt Vile with a 2022 performance with The Sadies. 

T.O. guitar slinger Nichol Robertson releases Mimico Moonlight LP @ The Cameron, Friday

Nichol Robertson is joined by The Sadies' Mike Belitsky & Sean Dean on "Mimico Moonlight" – check the title tune.  Photo: Laura Proctor

Here's the scoop...

Nichol Robertson is a Canadian roots music guitarist, born and raised in Toronto, Ontario.  Equally at home melting faces with his high octane guitar onslaught as he is gently picking Hawaiian tunes for background ambience at the local bar, Nichol Robertson is a sonic painter with an ear for Bob Ross-esque aural landscapes. From twangy melodies echoing The Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet to B-bender shredding reminiscent of the late Clarence White, his six-string technique is very impressive. 

Robertson's first solo album was the critically acclaimed “Stranger Things” released back in 2011, long before that show. His latest opus “Mimico Moonlight” – recorded with his Honkytonk Boogaloo band cohorts, drummer Mike Belitsky  & bassist Sean Dean of The Sadies – is out Friday (May 17th). While 13 years between releases might seem a bit long, Robertson has spent that time working on countless projects including but not limited to The Layrite Boys, The Hulagoons, Thelonious Hank, Nic & the Narcs, Robertson & Kerr and Snowbird when he isn't accompanying rising country stars or recording viral videos with his family band, The Robinson'sons. 

Get a copy of Nichol Robertson's Mimico Moonlight album on vinyl right here. 

Nichol is launching the vinyl version of his Mimico Moonight album in the back room of The Cameron House on Friday (May 17) at 7:30 pm surrounded by the oil paintings of the multi-talented Sean Dean. Check out a performance of the title track from "Mimico Moonlight" below. 

 

Nichol Robertson's Honkytonk/Boogaloo Boys @ Reposado, Thursday

Guitarist Nichol Robertson will be joined by Sean Dean & Mike Belitsky at 9 pm with Trombone Charlotte sitting in later on.

The Sadies were joined by Gary Louris in Hamilton & Toronto

Gary Louris sang The Sadies' "Tell Her What I Said,"  The Jayhawks' "Tailspin" & The Kinks' "Strangers"at Hamilton's Casbah. 

The Sadies share "Stop and Start" performance clip

Watch The Sadies perform "Stop and Start,"  the lead track from their great new Colder Streams album out now. 

Writes Travis Good...

So as most of you already know Mike had surgery on his wrist last month and so we decided we should get together the day before he had it done to play some songs before the long healing process began. We thought we should document it in some form, even just on a cellphone, but the stars aligned and it quickly snowballed into a mobile recording studio and a small film crew. Some family, friends and neighbours dropped by, we played new songs in the basement and because we're lucky enough to have friends in film we now have a short performance movie coming soon. It's called "Stop And Start" which seems to be a pattern for us lately. Here's the first song, thanks for listening. – Travis Good

Watch Kurt Vile & The Sadies perform "Baby's Arms"

"Baby's Arms" was shot for Kurt Vile's (bottle back) documentary. Watch 'em both below. 

Mattson 2, Boogaloo Boys, Mother Tongues @ Monarch Tavern, Thursday

Don't miss the dynamic guitar-drum duo of Jared and Jonathan Mattson with Toronto's own Boogaloo Boys feat. Sean Dean opening. 

The Sadies opening for Blue Rodeo @ Massey Hall, Thursday

Watch Travis & Dallas Good discuss The Sadies' Northern Passages on BT followed by two songs from the album. 

The Good Family @ Dakota Tavern, Sunday

Bruce, Larry, Margaret, D'Arcy and the kids will be tearing it up at the Dakota Tavern tonight at 7 pm. 

The Good Family Album release party @ The Dakota Tavern Thursday & Friday

Out now, The Good Family Album will do fine until a new Sadies disc appears in September.

Coal Black Hills by The Good Family
  

A new *improved* Andre Williams album

If you recently picked up a copy of Andre Williams' oddly low-key Bloodshot release Hoods & Shades – which he calls "my folk album" – and were wondering what happened to the raunchy rhythm & booze-inspired frolic for which Mr. Rhythm is known and loved, evidently Andre was saving it up for a rematch with the Sadies. 

On May 15, Yep Roc (Outside in Canada) will release the Jon Spencer-produced Night & Day packed tight with the sort of lascivious humpin', bumpin' and thumpin' we've come to expect from Andre Williams. That's right, no Don Was involvement whatsoever. Phew! The label has thoughtfully made Andre's much-anticipated comeback album available for pre-order in various configurations which you can get directly from Yep Roc's site

Here's the press release: 

Canada’s finest live band, The Sadies, have reunited with explicit soul singer/cult legend Andre Williams for Night & Day on Yep Roc records. Night & Day is the result of sessions that began in 2008 at Key Club Studio in Detroit and captures Andre, then 70 years old and still using at the time, at his most raw, honest, and immediate. No filter. 

Andre is aided by a stellar cast of musical friends, dirty bluesers who have earned the trust of the ancient hustler, including Jon Spencer (who directed these sessions) and Matt Verta-Ray of Heavy Trash, Danny Kroha of Detroit’s own gutter-blues superheroes, The Gories, the unsinkable Mekon, Jon Langford, and of course, behind it all, The Sadies’ long-time line-up of Dallas Good on guitars and keys, his brother Travis Good on guitars and fiddle, Mike Belitsky on drums, and the mighty Sean Dean on the bass. The result is a raw, gritty slice of raunch rock that has attitude in spades and the hooks and playing to back it up.

The story starts at Key Club Studio, an old school jungle of analogue gear an hour outside of Detroit. Andre had just been sprung from a few days in the county cooler where he was being held on powder possession until his manager came to bail him out, a charge he would eventually beat, but his most recent stop in stir is reflected in "Your Old Lady," a song about sending a lover back to her man after he gets out of prison.

Throughout these sessions, Andre kept his rum buzz and his harangue on, and even if he showed up missing his bottom row of dentures -- he growls "I like my rum, coz I got no teeth, I let it flow over my gums" -- he was still able to drawl and percolate his continuing narrative of life in songs. In "America" he sings that "Living in America ain't no fun, better have some money or you'll be on the run, and it's a goddamn shame, without cash you're trash... the men are dogs, the women are hogs, but that ain't a bad thing... it's better than living in Africa."

Since these sessions, Andre was able to shake off some of his demons and has been living clean ever since. Says Andre, "I like where I am now. My family admires me now. I kinda wanna keep it like that."

Dallas Good writes in the liner notes for Night and Day that the first session "was good but we were worried for Andre. A couple years later, everything was different. He was sober and sharp. Agile, mobile and hostile. Night and Day. It wouldn't be fair to the new Andre (who I'd never met after working together for like, 12 years) to let the old Andre have this album. So we did more."

The resulting record is a modern classic, with Andre showing remarkable range -from heartbreak and bitterness to ribald humor, swagger, sleaze, fear and retribution, romance gone right and romance gone wrong, and all in the spirit of the sloppy fun that has made him a legend. Andre Williams represents as the first and last of a breed of pimp-rolling R&B wise men, the real deal, an authentic totem of the low-down and disreputable, a man who has played outside the law, and outside the record business, and somehow managed to come out not only alive, but with a fervent cult behind him.

Night and Day

1. I Gotta Get Shortly Out Of Jail

2. America (You Say "A Change Is Gonna Come")

3. The Seventy Year Old

4. Your Old Lady

5. Bored

6. Mississippi & Joliet
7. I Thank God

8. Don't Take It

9. One-Eyed Jack (listen)

10. Hey Baby!

11. I'll Do Most Anything For You

12. That's My Desire

13. Me and My Dog