Sheep Dog and Wolf: My Inspiration, and My Pen Pal?

I must first explain that Sheep Dog and Wolf is a band that makes a creative and strange style of Indie-Rock. I had discovered them at the end of school last year on a Pandora station. I was just studing… or trying to study for finals when I was struck by their incredible harmonies, hella rad beats, new style, and instrumental diversity. The song that was playing was called Glare.

I spent the entire summer listening to them. I tend to go too far with musical obsessions, so I listened to them almost all the time (when I wasn’t listening to Regina Spektor: don’t get me started on her), including falling asleep to their now familiar music.

Once school started up, I had plenty of distractions to quiet the S,D,&W fandom, but I still enjoyed the moments when I could be sucked into their utopia of guitar, saxophone, clarinet, drums, and harmonies.

A little over a week ago, when I tried to find the chords of a song of theirs, I ended up doing some research of the band. All this time I thought that it was a group of, like, maybe five or so kick-ass 30-year-olds who were well known, but I WAS SO WRONG.

1. The entire band consists of ONE now 21-year-old guy, Daniel McBride, who has mastered the guitar, bass, sax, clarinet, and looping audio. He is also from New Zealand.

2. Half of the music that I was listening to was made when Daniel was 17.

3. Their Facebook page had only 3,129 likes (Lots, but they deserve more).

After getting over the shock that this one young guy created such great music at an age near mine, by himself, AND in his bedroom (No professional studio), I composed a super professional message to him, and sent it via Facebook. It read,

“Holy s**t, man! So I heard your song, Glare, on Pandora earlier this year and have been listening to all of your stuff all summer. I never actually looked you up until today, and all this time thought you were a band of hella rad, like, 30-year-olds or something. This is so cool that you make your music at home because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do! Also your style and creativity is way beyond your years, and I can’t thank you enough for all the moments I’ve had while inspired by your music.”

Really composed, right?

I thought that that would be it, but later that night, I received a responce that was along the lines of (not verbatim) “Thanks for the message! Are you a musician? I can give you tips on DIY home studios.”

After exploding for a minute, I wrote him back way too energetically saying that I’d love to get advice from this music god, and that I really appreciated the energy that he was putting into this. He said that he was busy for a few days, but would send a list of recommendations my way when he could.

This was too good to be true.

I thought that I needed to contribute to this in some way. I mean, I know that it doesn’t take that much time to just type up a list of what you use to make fantastic music, but the dude didn’t even know me, and he wanted to help me. So in the spirit of home-made music, I decided that I would make a cover of one of his songs in trade for his advice.

I decided to cover a song of his that had cool harmonies, not-too-hard instrumental parts, and a really personal meaning. It’s callled Fades. McBride wrote this song for his grandfather while he was dying in the hospital.

(If that link doesn’t work, use this one: http://download.sheepdogandwolf.com/track/fades )

I spent an entire day learning the song, and piecing together the different parts. I substituted the sax for my violin, and used my amateur guitar skills to make the instrumental part. I didn’t have access to a drum set, so I just knocked on a piano, and added extra reverb.

Here’s what I came up with:

I spent the next few days editing the sound, and never quite finished. Now, it’s not the best sounding thing because I was sick, and the volume is off,I had a bad microphone, and I was using Garage Band without any training, and a ton of other pointless excuses, but I still feel that I accomplished something, and that’s a good feeling.

When I recieved round one of tips and tricks from Daniel, I sent him the cover hoping that I did it some justice.

Last night, he replied with a very sweet, very thoughtful bit thanking me for the cover. It warms my heart so much knowing that I was able to share something so personal with someone that does just that for a living. I just wish that everyone was this fortunate with their idols.

This little interaction with McBride has really opened my eyes to how possible it is for me to pursue music performance and music composition, and I plan on making much more music in the near future.

This has been a truly amazing situation, and I now eagerly await round two of his advice.