Some bands chase the charts, but Sweetwood Mac chases a feeling: the moment a room full of strangers starts singing “Dreams” like they wrote it themselves.
That feeling is the whole business model for this six-piece Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks tribute from London, Ontario. Since 2018, Sweetwood Mac has turned the Rumours songbook into one of the hardest-working live shows in southwestern Ontario, logging more than 100 shows from legion halls to festival main stages.
Their 100th show went down at London’s German Canadian Club in August 2025, and the calendar has not slowed since.
Here is our deep dive into who Sweetwood Mac are, how the band came together and what makes their show work.
Who Is Sweetwood Mac?
Sweetwood Mac is a six-piece Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks tribute band from London, Ontario, fronted by vocalist Jennifer Vanderheyden.
Since forming in 2018, the group has played more than 100 shows across Ontario, recreating the Rumours-era songbook with period costumes, stacked harmonies and a full rock band.
The name is a wink, not a typo. Sweetwood Mac takes the most famous rhythm section in rock history and gives it a made-in-London twist, which is exactly what the band does on stage: the songs everyone knows, delivered by musicians who grew up on them.
Vanderheyden fronts the show with powerhouse vocals, channelling Stevie Nicks across the hits and the solo material. Behind her sits a band of veterans from the London, Kitchener and Sarnia scenes, including a keyboardist whose sister is one of Canada’s best-known singer-songwriters.
The group describes its mission simply: to spread the joy through the tribute.
Eight years and 100 shows later, that mission has carried Sweetwood Mac from legion halls and ribfests to theatres, wineries and a river cruise.
How Two Childhood Friends Started a Fleetwood Mac Band
Sweetwood Mac began in 2018, when childhood friends Jennifer Vanderheyden and Tony Gryner reconnected in London over word that Vanderheyden wanted to pay homage to one of her favourite bands.
Gryner, a keyboardist who had stepped away from the music scene in the nineties, heard that his friend and fellow Forest, Ontario native was looking for what he later called a sweet keyboardist for a Fleetwood Mac tribute, and he said yes.
The rest of the band came together one musician at a time. Some players came and went in the early months, but the lineup eventually settled, and the first documented Sweetwood Mac shows took place in the summer and fall of 2018, with dates in July and October plus a private event in Wardsville.
Vanderheyden’s own account of the beginning is straightforward. After singing in a couple of cover bands, she discovered a deep passion for Fleetwood Mac tunes and went looking for five other musicians who shared the same desire. What she found was a group of players who wanted to celebrate the catalog rather than simply cover it.
There is a telling detail in how the band talks about itself. The members describe their goal as spreading joy through the tribute, not as impersonation for its own sake. That framing explains a lot about the show Sweetwood Mac eventually built: faithful to the records, but aimed squarely at the feeling in the room.
London, Ontario turned out to be fertile ground for the idea.
The city has one of the most active live-music ecosystems in the province, with a deep bench of veteran players and an audience that never stopped loving classic rock. Sweetwood Mac tapped directly into both.
Jennifer Vanderheyden: The Voice Out Front Performing the Part of Stevie Nicks
Every tribute band lives or dies on its frontperson, and Sweetwood Mac was built around Jennifer Vanderheyden’s voice.
She grew up in Forest, Ontario, a small town northwest of London, and by her own account she performed any chance she got. High school plays gave her an early taste of the stage, first through dancing and acting, and vocal lessons followed as singing took over.
Before Sweetwood Mac, Vanderheyden sang professionally for years, including stints in a couple of cover bands, learning the unglamorous skills that make a tribute show work: reading a room, pacing a set, and delivering someone else’s famous vocal night after night without sounding like karaoke.
The Fleetwood Mac obsession came next.
Vanderheyden has described discovering a passion for the band’s tunes, and the tribute grew directly out of that discovery. Stevie Nicks is one of the most imitated voices in rock, which makes her one of the hardest to do well. The shawls, the twirls and the throaty contralto are easy to parody and difficult to honour.
There is also the physical reality of the gig. Singing Stevie Nicks for a full night is an athletic event: the songs sit in a demanding part of the voice, the stage persona requires constant motion, and the audience knows instantly if the energy dips.
Doing it across more than 100 shows, in rooms ranging from legion halls to festival main stages, is the kind of durability that separates working tribute singers from weekend hobbyists.
She also runs the band as a working unit, not a pickup project. The current six-piece lineup reflects years of settling into roles, and Vanderheyden’s original vision — five other musicians with the same desire to celebrate the music — is essentially what Sweetwood Mac looks like today.
Meet the Band Behind Her
A six-piece Fleetwood Mac tribute needs six players who can cover a lot of ground, from three-part harmonies to Lindsey Buckingham’s fingerpicked guitar lines.
Sweetwood Mac’s lineup mixes long-time London scene veterans with players who joined along the way.
Tony Gryner: Your Keyboardist Who Doesn’t Miss A Note
Tony Gryner plays keyboards, and his resume might be the most colourful in the band. He got his first real guitar from a five-and-dime as a kid and later traded it for a Korg Poly-800, the affordable polysynth that defined countless eighties records. In 1988, his band Heaven’s Edge won Sarnia’s Battle of the Bands.
He went on to play in Talkative Oxen and Crib Zillion through the nineties before stepping away from music entirely.
Then came the 2018 phone call from his childhood friend, and Gryner was back. He also happens to be the brother of Emm Gryner, the celebrated Canadian singer-songwriter, which makes the Gryner family one of the more musical households in southwestern Ontario. Emm herself sat in with Sweetwood Mac at a show on July 29, 2023.
That early trade, guitar for synthesizer, turned out to be prophetic.
In Fleetwood Mac, the keyboards belonged to Christine McVie, whose piano and Hammond organ parts are as load-bearing as any guitar line in the catalog. A tribute band without a committed keyboardist cannot do “Don’t Stop” or “You Make Loving Fun” properly, and Gryner’s return gave Sweetwood Mac the real thing: a player who grew up on the same records as everyone else in the room.
Anthony Krieger: Lead Guitarist Who Captures the Best of Lindsay Buckingham
Anthony Krieger handles guitars and vocals, and he joined Sweetwood Mac in 2019.
He started playing guitar at eight years old in Kitchener and cut his teeth on the London scene in the acoustic duo DNA before becoming the lead singer and guitarist for Broken Blue through the 1990s and 2000s.
Like Gryner, Krieger stepped away from music for a stretch to raise a family, then returned to writing, recording and solo acoustic gigs. The band credits him as an integral part of its fresh take on the classics, which makes sense: a guitarist who spent years fronting his own band brings a different authority to Buckingham’s parts than a hired gun would.
Chad Archibald: Bass Guitar That Holds Down Every Classic
Chad Archibald plays bass guitar and has been there from the beginning.
He picked up his first bass at thirteen, and the band describes him as a real guiding force with Sweetwood Mac right from the start. In a tribute context, the bassist is the anchor — John McVie’s lines are deceptively simple and absolutely load-bearing — and Archibald has held that chair through all 100-plus shows.
Warren Stinson: Drums That Rattle and Shake But Never Collapse
Warren Stinson plays drums and joined in 2023, making him the newest instrumentalist.
He got his first drum kit at fourteen and has played in bands across genres since, contributing to countless studio projects along the way.
Before Sweetwood Mac, he was the backbone of a band that won Blues Band of the Year at the Forest City London Music Awards twice. He counts himself an admirer of Mick Fleetwood’s drumming, which is exactly the right influence for the gig: Fleetwood’s feel — loose, tom-heavy, unmistakable — is the engine room of the whole catalog.
That influence matters more than it sounds. Fleetwood’s drumming is the hardest part of the catalog to fake, loose in a way that sounds easy until a drummer tries to copy it. He famously chased a roomy, unconventional drum sound on those classic records rather than a close-miked punch.
A drummer who admires that approach understands that the job is feel first and flash second.
Jennifer Petzke: A Vocalist and the Newest Addition to the Sweetwood Mac Lineup
Jennifer Petzke sings, and she is the newest member of the band.
She has a lifelong love of singing and a strong vocal presence, and it frames her role explicitly as a celebration of Christine McVie’s contributions to the music.
Petzke sings the McVie parts: the warm contralto leads and the high harmonies that lift the choruses. Earlier band bios named vocalist Lois Kelly in the second-singer role, so Petzke appears to be a recent addition.
Six voices, six players, one catalog. That is the whole formula, and it has carried Sweetwood Mac further than most tribute acts ever get.
The Rumours Songbook
Sweetwood Mac’s repertoire centres on the era everyone means when they say Fleetwood Mac: the seventies and eighties hits, from the Rumours juggernaut through the Tusk and Mirage years, plus a dedicated bonus round of Stevie Nicks solo material and some Christine McVie.
The signature numbers are the ones you would expect. Get ready to sing along at the top of their lungs to “Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way” and “Rhiannon,” and those three songs essentially map the band’s territory: the shimmering Nicks mystique, the Buckingham bite and the McVie warmth.
Fleetwood Mac’s sound was built on the blend of three distinct voices — Nicks, McVie and Buckingham — and a tribute band has to recreate that blend live, without studio help. With two dedicated vocalists in Vanderheyden and Petzke plus Krieger’s vocals from the guitar position, Sweetwood Mac fields the voices to do it.
Then there is the Stevie Nicks solo bonus. Tribute bands usually stick to the band catalog, but Sweetwood Mac leans into Nicks’s solo hits as a featured part of the night.
It is a smart move: it gives Vanderheyden a showcase beyond the Fleetwood Mac harmonies, and it acknowledges that for a large share of the audience, Stevie Nicks the solo icon is inseparable from Stevie Nicks the band member.
Sweetwood Mac Has Performed More Than 100 Shows Across Ontario
The most impressive number attached to Sweetwood Mac is also the simplest: more than 100 shows.
The band publishes its full gig history on its website, and the list runs from 2018 through 2026 across dozens of Ontario towns.
Sweetwood Mac has played Thunder in the Valley, the Railway Music Festival in St. Thomas across multiple years, Captain Kidd Days in Corunna, the Stonetown Heritage Festival in St. Marys, the Chatham and Woodstock Ribfests, the Forest Fall Fair, Summer Streetfest in Woodstock, the Iron Horse Festival and the massive Canada’s Biggest Party Ribfest and Craft Beer Festival.
Sweetwood Mac has headlined the Kiwanis Theatre in Chatham, Capitol 33 in Delhi (more than once), the Port Stanley Festival Theatre, Kincardine’s Centre for the Performing Arts, the Grand Theatre in Fergus and the Kineto Theatre in Forest.
Then there are the rooms that built the band. The German Canadian Club in London has hosted Sweetwood Mac repeatedly, including that 100th show. The Cherry Lounge in Windsor, the Twisted Arm and RUSTR Music Hall in Sarnia, Call The Office back in London, the Fox and Fiddle and Mustang Sally’s all appear in the gig history.
Legion halls in Forest, Mount Brydges, Strathroy, Exeter, Lambeth, Delaware and Aylmer round out the grassroots circuit where tribute bands are truly made, one community hall at a time.
The odder dates are the most charming. Sweetwood Mac has played the Frisky Beaver Winery in Port Dover, the Birch Pines Sanctuary near Ipperwash, and even the Duc d’Orleans II river cruise out of Sarnia.
A Fleetwood Mac tribute on a river cruise is either inspired or inevitable, and the band has more of those dates booked, including a return cruise in June 2027.
The calendar keeps filling: a December date at the Cherry Lounge in Windsor, then Capitol 33 in Delhi again in April 2027, and a band with dates booked eighteen months out is a band with nothing to prove about demand.
Ready to Hear the Rumours Songbook Done Right? Buy A Ticket to Sweetwood Mac’s Next!
Tribute bands are easy to dismiss and hard to do well.
The easy version is a costume and a setlist. The hard version is what Sweetwood Mac has spent eight years building: six musicians who know the catalog cold, harmonies that hold up without studio help, and a frontwoman whose voice can carry the most imitated female singer in rock music.
Sweetwood Mac is part of a deep Canadian tribute tradition. Across the country, acts like Blushing Brides channel the Rolling Stones, Symply Skynyrd salutes Lynyrd Skynyrd, Classic Purple takes on Deep Purple, After the Gold Rush inhabits Neil Young, Bad to the Bone covers George Thorogood, Rod Clark’s Crazy Babies tackles Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, Bon Jovi Forever recreates the arena years, and Paul Anthony steps into Johnny Cash’s boots — all keeping the classic rock songbook alive on stages large and small.
If you have ever sung “Dreams” at full volume in your car, you already know whether this band is for you.
See them live this Halloween and grab your ticket for the Sweetwood Mac Halloween Party Oct. 31 at the German Canadian Club in London, Ontario.
