The Sadies perform at ONCE Ballroom on July 7.

By Blake Maddux

The Sadies formed in Toronto in 1994 and have the same line-up today as they did more than 20 years ago: brothers Dallas and Travis Good, bassist Sean Dean, and Boston-born drummer Mike Belitsky.

Since releasing its debut in 1998, the quartet has gone on to record whole albums and one-off songs with musicians as diverse in the genres in which they specialize as they are in their levels of fame and popularity. These collaborators have included Andre Williams, Neko Case, Neil Young, Robyn Hitchcock, John Doe, Buffy Saint-Marie, and Kurt Vile, who sings It’s Easy (Like Walking) on the band’s latest release, Northern Passages.

These collaborations are no accident. They are indicative of the myriad styles that figure into the music of the band itself: R&B, folk, country, Americana, rock, punk, etc.

The Sadies performed on this side of the Charles River as recently as May 13, when they opened and served as the backing band for Justin Townes Earle at The Sinclair in Cambridge. However, with a new album to promote and a sizable fan base of their own, it only makes sense The Sadies perform as headliners this year, which is what they will do on July 7 at ONCE Ballroom.

Sean Dean spoke to The Somerville Times by phone from his residence in downtown Toronto, where it was a balmy 26 degrees (Celsius, that is).

The Somerville Times: What do you remember about The Sadies’ show at ONCE Somerville in 2015?

Sean Dean: It’s an amazing venue. It’s nice and big. The people were so friendly. It almost has like, kind of a co-op feel to it. I remember it as a very nice venue. Nice and spaced-out so that people can just wander around and enjoy themselves and dance. And the food was terrific.

TST: When did you start playing an instrument and prompted you to take up the bass?

SD: I got a guitar first. When I was in grade school, I guess it was grade five or six, I made a deal with my parents to maintain a B average. My teacher wrote my parents going, he worked really hard, so if you’re going to reward him by buying a guitar, he loves rock ‘n’ roll, so by all means, you have my blessing.

So I got an electric guitar. I took a couple lessons, but I found that I could pretty much learn songs on my own, so I’m pretty much self-taught. I always found bass to be fun, and it’s a pretty important instrument if you have a good sensibility of what it takes to have a bass in a band or a song. So I think I had that naturally and I eventually got access to a bass and then bought a bass and started playing in punk/new wave bands in the 80s. Me and Dallas met each other in the hard rock/punk scene in Queen Street in Toronto, so we started a band after a few of our bands split up.

The Sadies started out with me playing electric, and we were much harder rock, more like 90s type of hard rock, kind of alternative punk. But we also had a love for country music. Eventually I bought an upright bass, and we started discovering what it was like to play more traditional country or more folky sounds with an upright and acoustic guitar. And so we just started taking more seriously the folk/country aspect of The Sadies. Then Travis, Dallas’s brother, joined and brought the fiddle and second guitar. So we basically became a hybrid of all the music that we loved, like surf, country, punk, garage. We developed our own sound amalgamating everything that we love.

TST: What are some of the elements that you feel have contributed to The Sadies’ longevity with the same line-up?

SD: After a while, you get to know what you want to, what you can’t do, how you want to approach things, what you want to differ on. It’s kind of like a marriage, in which you just find ways of getting along. It just develops over time. We love the band, we love music, and we really respect out career playing music. It’s a privilege, so we try to just sustain it. And because we have two brothers in the band, we’re kind of like a brotherhood family. We get a lot of support from our friends and our families.

TST: Do you ever witness any behind-the-scenes drama between the Good brothers?

Oh no, those guys just love each other. They never fight. None of us ever fight. Yeah, I’m kind of joking! The brothers have pretty strong opinions about our band and the direction. So yeah, we’re privy to some pretty heated sibling discussions, me and Mike. It is pretty passionate. We’ll put it that way! (laughs)

TST: How do some of your collaborations end up being for only one song while others are for whole albums?

SD: If we’re going to do a one-off with someone, we develop the friendship first. We’ll have a couple drinks and say we should work together, kind of like a love fest with some of our fellow musician friends. And then we get around to suggesting one songs as an instrumental would be great if we got someone to sing on it for our own records. If we do a whole album, that’s going to be brewing over many years, conversations, and friendships. Neko [Case] wanted it to happen, and we had some of the same record companies involved. The same goes for John Doe. We met him through our record company. We’ll invite people to do one-offs for our record and people will invite us to make records thinking that we’re going to be their band for that record. Usually the record companies are set in place and we can get funding and things like that. We’re bouncing around the idea of doing a record with Justin Townes Earle, which would be lovely. Collaborations are great because they really help broaden our horizons, but also keep us busy and working during lag periods of our own. It’s quite advantageous for us.

TST: Do The Sadies plan to release another live album, as the title of 2006’s In Concert, Volume One seems to suggest?

SD: If we stay alive long enough, yeah. We’ve got a new batch of people that we collaborate with, so it would be a big undertaking, but sure, we’d be interested in doing a live record. I guess the live recording comes from people telling us that they love our records but they really enjoy us live. It’s a nice way to have a best-of collection and bring our friends together. So we might do another one in the future.

TST: Who might some of the guest stars on that be?

SD: Volume One was a mash-up of people we had been working with up until that time. After that, there’s been a whole batch of new people, so we’ll just go down the list. Maybe we’ll get Neil Young. We recorded a song with Neil Young and went on tour with him. Maybe we can get him off of his yacht in Marina Del Rey or off of his ranch in Hawaii and get him to come and play with us.

Kurt Vile, John Doe, Robyn Hitchcock, Neil Young. We’ve got a lot of friends that we could pressure into coming and playing with us. (laughs)

The Sadies with Governor. ONCE Ballroom, 156 Highland Ave. Friday, July 7. Doors at 8:00 p.m., show at 9:00 p.m. $15-$18.