Ewan Currie of The Sheepdogs (INTERVIEW)

Ewan Currie is a very down-to-earth young man. Even though his band made the cover of Rolling Stone as winners of a recent contest, he appears to be unfazed by all of the hullabaloo. He is soft-spoken, witty and devoted to the band he has called home since 2005: The Sheepdogs, a Canadian rock and roll band with deep 70’s southern roots.

Following a rollicking set at the New Orleans Voodoo Fest in late October, Ewan sat down with me behind the Bud Light Stage to talk about his roots in Australia, NOT playing hockey as a kid in Canada, and who influenced him to play music.

Tell me about where you grew up, Ewan.
I grew up in Australia. I was born in Sydney and grew up in Adelaide, Australia, until I was ten and then I moved to Canada. Lived in Vancouver for one year before moving to Saskatoon in 1996 and that’s where I’ve lived since then.

Was it very different?

Yeah, it was totally different. I mean, both are English speaking western world countries but there are a lot of differences. Just think how many differences there are between Canada and the US, or even two regions in the US. So going from Australia to Canada was a bit of a learning curve.

Did you like it?

In Australia? Yeah, absolutely, it was a great place to grow up. I was kind of a sporty kid, liked playing sports, and it’s warm and you can be outside all year round. And I loved playing cricket and baseball and basketball and all that stuff.

When you were in Canada, did you get into playing hockey like everybody else?

You know, I never really did get into hockey much to my chagrin and kind of a national embarrassment (laughs). I never played it and you got to start when you’re really young and I didn’t get to Canada till I was ten. By then I played baseball and I played basketball and later on I just became more into football.

Tell me about meeting Ryan Gullen (Sheepdogs bass player) when you were kids.

We met because we were both in a concert band and what they did was they had different schools but they would get all the different band programs in each of the schools and have all the schools come together one day a week. So we met actually at the high school we ended up going to together. We weren’t friends at all really. In fact, I found Ryan annoying (laughs). But then we ended up going to the same high school and we really didn’t start to become friends till like grade twelve. We just kind of ended up having similar friends by then and eventually he and I kind of bonded. Like I had a CD player one time and I let him borrow it while I was in class – yeah, he gave it back (laughs) – and it had like Stevie Wonder and James Brown and stuff on it and he said, “Oh this is really cool music”. So I think the first thing we really bonded over was like funk music, soul music.

And you played clarinet in the band?

Yeah, we both played clarinet.

Can you still play the clarinet?

I can still play the clarinet (laughs). I can play not bad. I make a bunch of recordings at home and I’ll play clarinet on there.

What was the first band that you heard that totally blew you away?

I think the first band that I truly, truly got blown away with were Chicago. My old man had this tape that a friend had made him from a bunch of Chicago LPs, a bunch of their early stuff, the best of, and I remember just falling deeply for that stuff cause it was just this great sort of fusion of melody and great players and great set of songs and songs that sort of flow into one another; and it was horns as well, cause playing clarinet I liked horns. I loved that it was sort of rock music but had all this kind of soloing and all these different elements to it.

When did you realize you could sing?

I could sing decently, just by myself, and I auditioned to be in a national youth choir in Australia and I got accepted, but I think a month later we left the country, so it didn’t matter. But I don’t know. I remember being nineteen and working at a bar, a club, and this band playing and I remember thinking how bad the singer was in this band and thinking, “Man, I can sing way better than this guy. What am I doing?” So that’s when I kind of decided to get back on it.

Do you remember the first song you wrote?

Not really. Even when I was a kid I would write like stupid little songs and record them on a tape player. I used to make my own show where I would do different things, like I’d do a little comedy or do a little sketch and different little pieces and record it on a tape and stuff like that.

Did you go out and do something in front of the neighborhood kids?

I liked attention. I was one of those kids (laughs). I was in musicals and plays and stuff like that. When I was a kid I wanted to be a stand-up comedian too.

So you can tell a good joke, I bet.

I don’t know about that (laughs)

What did it feel like the first time you got up on the stage and sang?

It felt good. I felt confident in my voice. It feels good to impress people or have people say you sang well up there. I think I’ve always been that type who likes the attention, who wants to get up on stage and wanted to be somebody people looked to for entertainment or whatever.

About how old were you, do you remember?

I was really a young kid. I think when my parents had friends over I was probably doing something to steal the attention.

Tell me about your parents. Ryan said they were composers?

My dad is a classical composer and a pianist as well.

Can you play piano?

I can play a little piano. Nothing even close to what he can do but I’m alright.

What was the first concert you went to?

I went to my dad’s orchestral pieces when I was growing up so I’ve seen symphonies and orchestras and various formations of quartets and stuff. But the first rock show I went to was actually a Canadian band called Our Lady Peace with a bunch of friends when I was in grade eight. I was like twelve years old or something.

What did you think of them?

I remember thinking, cause I was twelve years old and I had sort of a critical view of things, that kind of comes from my dad, just analyzing things, but I remember thinking that the sound wasn’t very good (laughs). And thinking that we were kind of far away and it was sort of like the most money I had ever spent on anything and I remember thinking like wow, what is this? (laughs) So I think that early on it put an appreciation for a real good show.

So that actually helped you in the long run.

It did, absolutely it did. It helped me learn to get the audience their money’s worth.

Who has been your biggest influence as a musician and why them?

It’s really tough to say. I mean, guys like Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder are huge influences cause they’re like composers, great singers, they can play a variety of instruments very well and they had this incredible amount of creativity where they could do all kinds of things. I look to that as the ultimate musical model, cause I’m not just interested in songwriting and just singing. I want to be good at everything, cause I like that aspect. So I look at McCartney and Stevie Wonder as these two amazing sort of multi-instrumentalists who can sing really well and wrote so many great songs.

Who was the first real rock star that you ever met?

Oh boy (laughs). It’s hard to tell who’s a star or not but … I didn’t meet him per se but when Neil Young was playing in Saskatoon, our hometown, he was staying at the hotel that I worked at and I was going to the show that night. Or it was the next night I was going to the show. And he came into the Japanese restaurant that was by the bar I worked at for dinner, and I saw him coming down the way and I looked up and saw him walking towards me. I don’t get starstruck but Neil had me starstruck. He’s a legend but he’s also like famously curmudgeonly so I didn’t want to like hassle him. I saw he was kind of straining to see the hockey score so all of a sudden I was right there with the score and I was right there to tell him. And he was like, “Thank you”. And he walked on in and I consider that to be like a very successful interaction with Neil Young (laughs) considering I didn’t want to interrupt him and be a fanboy  gushing, you know. That was probably the first time I met somebody that I was just like, whoa (laughs)

So what is happening next for The Sheepdogs?

We’re touring till December 20 then a little Christmas break. I’m going to go to San Francisco and hang out and then we’re going to have a New Year’s show up in Canada. After that, the next two months up in Canada we’re devoting to the next album.

How far do you want to take this band?

As far as they’ll let us go. Things are really taking off for us in Canada and the US is a big wide country that we’re still trying to crack. Just as long as we get to keep doing shows and meeting people and then recording the music that we want to make, it’s a pretty nice life.

Watch for more from my interviews with Ewan Currie and Ryan Gullen coming soon.

MY ROOTS will be off next week for the Christmas holiday but will return on January 2 with a great interview with Tyler Connolly, lead singer for Theory Of A Deadman. Happy Holidays Everyone !!!

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