The Sheepdogs are a Juno Award-winning Canadian rock band known for their 1970s-inspired southern rock and blues rock style, dual-guitar wizardry, and strong vocal harmonies. They rose to prominence in 2011 as the first unsigned band to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
Formed in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 2004, the band initially went by the name “The Breaks”. They built their sound around classic rock influences like the Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Their hit singles “I Don’t Know” and “Feeling Good,” as well as the albums Learn & Burn and The Sheepdogs, have achieved platinum status in Canada.
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Mark Erelli
Mark Erelli
is an American singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and touring folk musician from Reading, Massachusetts who earned a master’s degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst before pursuing a career in music. Wikipedia
Latest recording — Blindsided
“(Blindsided) soars on the wings of jangly guitars, heartfelt vocals and soulful harmony lines…Yep, that’s the sweet spot right there. And there’s enough of it to make this album matter.”
–The Associated Press“Erelli is a throwback of sorts, a foursquare acoustic songwriter in an age of digital audio workstations. For ‘Blindsided’ he has amped up with a superb band…a rock ‘n’ soul set of songs with friction” –Boston Globe
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Site Visitor User Guide
Roaming the Arts: Visitor User Guide
Welcome to Roaming the Arts, an arts discovery site built for readers, listeners, collectors, browsers, and fans who enjoy finding writers, musicians, bands, and visual artists worth exploring. The site is designed as an arts browser: a place to roam through books, music, art, videos, artist websites, author pages, and creative recommendations at your own pace.
1. Start on the Homepage
The homepage is the best place to begin if you want to see what is new, featured, or recently updated. Scroll through current posts, browse featured artists and authors, and use the visible category buttons or top menu options to move into the areas that interest you most.
2. Choose a Category
Roaming the Arts is organized around creative discovery. Visitors can explore music, books, authors, book club ideas, books by location, word-and-film connections, visual artists, recent reads, all-time favorites, and other arts-focused features. If you arrive with a specific interest, use the category menu. If you arrive open to discovery, simply browse and follow what catches your attention.
3. Use Artist, Author, and Music Posts as Gateways
Most posts are designed to help you go deeper. A music post may include an embedded video, background on the artist, and a path to hear more. A book or author post may point you toward a new series, a recent release, or a writer you may not have discovered yet. A visual art post may help you visit an artist’s online presence and see more of the work directly.
4. Follow Links and Explore Beyond the Site
Roaming the Arts is meant to send visitors outward as well as inward. When you find someone interesting, visit their website, look for tour dates, search for a new recording, check for upcoming books, or explore related work. The goal is not just to read about creative people, but to become a fan, listener, reader, collector, or supporter.
5. Browse by Mood or Mission
- If you want something to hear, begin with Music or Indie Music Artists.
- If you want something to read, try Books/Authors, Book Club, Recent Reads, or Books by Location.
- If you want something visual, visit Art/Artists.
- If you want a trusted starting point, look for favorites and featured posts.
- If you want to wander, start anywhere and let the posts guide you from one discovery to the next.
6. Interact and Suggest
Visitors are encouraged to participate. If you discover an author, musician, band, or visual artist who belongs in the Roaming the Arts universe, share the suggestion. Comments, emails, and social media interactions help shape what gets discovered next.
7. Come Back Often
Roaming the Arts is always growing. New posts, recent reads, featured musicians, and visual discoveries continue to expand the site. A quick visit can lead to a new favorite song, a book for your next vacation, a writer for your book club, or an artist whose work stays with you.
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(Big) Al Anderson
Al Anderson
Listed as one of the top 100 guitar players of the 20th century by Musician Magazine and with over 900 cuts internationally, Big Al’s music career was destined. Raised by his piano teacher mother and a radio that would get WWVA in Wheeling West Virginia late at night, he would devour all genres of music from Hank Williams, The Everly Brothers, The Ventures, Chet Atkins, Elvis, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Motown and Stax paving the way for what would be a giant life in music.
NRBQ years
His first band “The Sixpacks” became “The Wildweeds,” recording a regional hit “No Good To Cry” that went on to chart nationally. With a change in record labels (from Chess to Vanguard) and a change in musical direction, Al caught the attention of the members of NRBQ. In 1971, Al left Connecticut for New York’s to enroll at the “University of Q” — a 22 year planetary course in all things musical. Al’s exposure to a evener wider range of musical genres served him well in the “Q.” His mind and string-bending guitar playing coupled with his giant stage presence had become legendary, and in the course of recording over a dozen albums with them, he had written some of the band’s most memorable songs — ‘Ridin in My Car’, ‘Never Take The Place of You,’ It Was An Accident,’ ‘Comes to Me Naturally,’ ‘What a Nice Way to Go,’ ‘Feel You around Me,’ and many more.
After over two decades of hard touring, hard living and encyclopedic musical knowledge, Al was ready to change his already prodigious song writing talent into a full-time venture.
Two years before he left NRBQ, he wrote a song with Carlene Carter, “Every Little Thing” that she took to top 5 all over the world. That song, and meeting music publisher Pat Daniel McMurry (Escott), were the turning points in Al’s career and life. With the support, guidance and belief that Pat provided, Al became unstoppable. At the same time that Al signed with Pat, he decided to quit drinking and suddenly became one of the most prolific writers in Nashville. “I went from 3 songs a year to writing sometimes 3 a day”.
The parade of hits is long and include singles and cuts by Vince Gill, Bonnie Raitt, Trisha Yearwood, Jimmy Buffett, Martina McBride, Patty Loveless, George Jones, Sheryl Crow, Leann Rimes, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascall Flatts, Zac Brown, Anthony Hamilton, Harry Connick Jr and many others.
He latest love is Music City’s premier rock band “The World Famous Headliners” rounded out with top tier penmen/artists/musicians extraordinaire Pat McLaughlin, Shawn Camp, Michael Rhodes and Greg Morrow
