If you’re a drummer, unless your name is Peart or Bruford or Mullen, you probably don’t do a heap of press interviews. Everybody wants to talk to the frontman (or woman), which in the case of Toronto’s The Sadies would be guitarists/vocalists Dallas and Travis Good. Bassist Sean Dean wasn’t able to join us yesterday so I had a nice tête-à-tête with Sadies drummer Mike Belitsky, left, a man whose been watching the Toronto music scene evolve since he first landed in town in the late 1980s, a runaway from Halifax determined to make it as a rock ‘n’ roller.
“I remember going to the Cameron House,” says Belitsky, “and seeing Glenn Milchem (Blue Rodeo) drum for the Garbagemen and thinking, ‘Oh man, I gotta go back to the drawing board.’ I wasn’t going to be some punk in a band just because I had a leather jacket; that’s when I knew I’d actually have to learn how to play my instrument.”
Belitsky has learned plenty about drumming in the dozen years since joining The Sadies. Over the course of seven studio albums, one live set and numerous collaborations with artists like Jon Langford, Andre Williams, Neko Case and Jon Spencer, The Sadies have gained a reputation as musician’s musicians, a rep that’s flattering and yes, a little daunting, admits Belitsky.
“Sometimes, if I’m on stage and I know there are really good players in the audience it can throw me a bit if I let it. I have to force myself to stop thinking about it. That’s why I play, to just lose myself in the music.”
Belitsky and company will be getting lost on Toronto Island Saturday opening for Montreal’s Arcade Fire, presently the No. 1 rock act in the world: “We were flattered when they asked us,” says Belitsky.
The Sadies, above, have been working hard since May when their latest album, Darker Circles was released to unanimous acclaim. The album has since been shortlisted for the Polaris Prize recognizing the best album in Canada this year (winner of the $20,000 cash prize will be announced September 20). What’s more, The Sadies have been in the studio working on a new album with Tragically Hip frontman, Gord Downie.
It’s a rich creative life, bought and paid for with more than a decade’s worth of hard slogging. “We’ve done it the old-fashioned way,” states Belitsky. “We didn’t have a big press push, we just put out records quietly and toured very intensely in markets in the States and here at home. Now, we’re starting to see the fruits of that labour and there’s something really satisfying about that. We’re making a living. It’s a dream come true and we appreciate it so much.”
Saturday’s Olympic Island bill couldn’t be more disparate. The Sadies will open the show with their own garage-style country and western, followed by soul-singing newcomer Janelle Monae and then Arcade Fire’s cutting-edge, indie rock. Of the three acts on the bill only Monae is signed to a major record label; the Canadian bands have made it under their own steam.
“I remember when the dream was to get signed by a label and if that didn’t happen then you weren’t a success,” recalls Belitsky. “It’s so different today. There’s so much more control in the hands of the artists now. I don’t know how our lives would be different if downloading music for free and YouTube hadn’t come along. But with each new release we sell more copies than the record before it. Maybe, if we were at this point in 1993 when everyone was getting huge record deals, maybe we would have gotten a big deal and signed a big publishing contract and maybe it would have broken the band up. Who knows what would have happened?”
“At this point,” says Mike, “we’re as close as family. We’ve learned how to respect each other’s space even though we live a lot of the time in really close quarters. We travel and play together and at the end of our work day we don’t go home to our families, we go to the same hotel and wake up in the morning and have coffee together and do it all over again. There’s not a lot of separation. So within that type of environment we’ve learned how to give each other the maximum amount of space.”
If you’re lucky enough to have tickets to Saturday’s show, you’ll hear and see first hand what that space has wrought. The competition may be stiff but The Sadies get my vote for the Polaris!
Sadies photo by Rick White, Mike Belitsky photos by Christopher Jones
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