If you had asked anyone within the insular world of alternative country a year ago who the Sadies should tour with, you'd probably get a fairly predictable, underground-y answer.

Neko Case seems like a good fit, or how about Calexico? Like the Sadies, those acts take fine and flashy old sounds and breathe sparkly new life into them, adding a slice of jagged art.

Everyone involved in these bands is young and raggedly well-dressed - their sex appeal is not about oiled muscles or complicated dance moves, but reverence of at least the crucial parts of the history of country music, not to mention rock 'n' roll's story. Not just the sounds of Willie, Waylon, George and Johnny, but their lifestyles as well.

But the Sadies, playing at the Black Dog tomorrow afternoon at 5 and (despite what pollstar.com says) the Strathcona Legion Sunday night, had an entirely different kind of benefactor, one from the world of singer-songwriter pop.

Sadies drummer Mike Belitsky calls him "the John Lennon of Blue Rodeo," but we just know him as Greg Keelor around here. And so it was that Keelor fully immersed himself in the Sadies as last year faded to dusk.

"I think he saw us live," Belitsky shrugs. "He just became really excited about the band after that. He took us under his wing and he's done everything in his power to give us maximum exposure. He doesn't try and manage us. He just nudges us in the right direction. He's no Svengali. We're all friends with him, and him and Travis have a tight friendship."

That would be Travis Good, the thin man in the photo there, brother of Dallas Good, who's also in the band. Those two boys, the studious amid you will remember, are actually spawned from Bruce Good of the Good Brothers, another Canadian act from the East. But that story's been beaten to death, and Toronto's Sadies, it can be argued, are more important right now, even if they don't have fantastic moustaches.

Anyway, Keelor's contributions included singing on the newish Stories Often Told, as well as co-producing the album with the band. You can hear his psychedelic influence on a Byrds-like song called Of Our Land, ripped right out of a 1960's San Francisco acid trip. It's an absolute evolution from the Sadies' typical spaghetti western sound, and the whole album is similarly compelling. Everyone talks about the Sadies' more recent team-up with Welshman Jon Langford, but Stories Often Told redefined them, priming them for the killer Langford project, Mayors of the Moon.

But the biggest favour Keelor tipped the band's way, however, was taking them on tour with Blue Rodeo last year.

"I'm speechless," Belitsky says from his Saskatoon hotel room. "I'm kind of overwhelmed by the trickle-down effect of that tour. The actual sales of merchandise at those shows were nothing we'd ever experienced. It allows us to keep going.

"When you set out on a tour like that there are three possibilities. You can bomb, or nothing at all can happen, or it can blow you away. I wasn't being overly optimistic. Blue Rodeo is kind of a mainstream pop radio kind of band compared to us. I didn't think our audiences would necessarily click. I think we're a great band, I just didn't expect things to go so well. I think by economics a lot of the Sadies fans were priced out of the show.

"But we were running out of merch every week, and now when we tour through those cities there are way more people in the crowds in Winnipeg on Monday and Tuesday nights. So thanks, Greg!"

Thanks, indeed, Mr. Keelor. But let us recall that it was the talent of this four-piece that inspired action in the first place. And that without the Sadies, we wouldn't even be talking about Blue Rodeo here and now, but, like everyone else, how to avoid catching SARS.