Time: 8 p.m.
Cover: $20 advance $25 at door
Odds www.oddsmusic.com
In 1987, four highly individual Vancouver musicians put together a guitar-based, power pop strike force to write catchy melodic
songs built on crunchy rock guitars, full-voiced harmonies and
walloping drums. Original members Doug Elliott, Craig Northey, Steven
Drake and Paul Brennan worked the bar circuit and honed their sound.
After a long, hard slog at some flea-bitten dive bar gig, they found
themselves asking the musical question: “What are the odds of us ever
escaping bullshit gigs like this?” That weekend they became simply,
Odds, and proceeded to do what a lot of frustrated Canadian acts had
done before them: they headed to L.A. and got a major label deal.
Shortly after the release of their self-produced debut, Neopolitan (Zoo
Entertainment 1991), they were recruited to back up Warren Zevon on his
Mr. Bad Example tour. They channeled this master class into their next
recorded work, Bedbugs (Zoo 1993), and raised their profile further when
their comedian pals, Kids In The Hall, appeared in their video for the
irony-laced single “Heterosexual Man.” After Paul Brennan’s departure in
1995, Doug Elliott invited his longtime friend (and former Bryan Adams
drummer) Pat Steward into the band, resulting in a weightier wallop and
groovier groove for their next release, the platinum-plus selling Good
Weird Feeling (Warner Music 1995), which featured the hits “Truth
Untold” and “Eat My Brain.” After their involvement in the Kids In The
Hall’s feature film, Brain Candy, for which Northey composed the
original score, the band released their final album as Odds. Nest
(Warner Music, 1996) yielded the chart-topper, “Someone Who’s Cool,”
(which enjoyed 8 weeks as the number 1 song at Canadian rock radio and
went Top 40 in the U.S) and the hit single “Make You Mad.”
In
2007, the original Odds members were busy as bees, cranking out more
music than in their life as the Odds, Northey, Elliott and Steward
collaborated on projects by Strippers Union with Rob Baker of the
Tragically Hip, Northey Valenzuela with Jesse Valenzuela of the Gin
Blossoms, Northey’s solo album Giddy Up, several Colin James albums,
session work for Jeremy Fisher, Matthew Good, Payolas, two feature film
scores (Kids in the Hall in Brain Candy, Dog Park with Luke Wilson) and
the themes for CTV’s hit Corner Gas.
It’s obvious that although they
had been on a “walkabout” from Odds, the core unit — Steward, Elliott
and Northey — never really “split up.” It is this nucleus, along with
new guitarist Murray Atkinson, which forms (and informs) the Odds on
their album Cheerleader.
“One day, Pat and Doug pointed out
that it felt like it was time to put on the band hat,” recalls Northey,
“just like in 1999 it felt like it was time to take that hat off.”
“Since the last of the Odds shows,” adds Doug Elliott, “Pat and Craig
and I have done hundreds of shows together under all sorts of different
names. The best ones always seemed to feature Craig Northey songs and
Odds songs. This is where my soul is. This music is in us; it just flows
out.”
Northey, Elliott and Steward started jamming out new
songs in much the same way the Odds had done ten years prior. Around
this time, their old friends Barenaked Ladies invited them to debut the
new songs live, during one of their Caribbean concert cruises.
“How do you say no to that?” Northey asks rhetorically.
Initially hesitant to add a fourth member, they soon realized that a
second guitar was needed in order to attain their signature band sound.
“Pat and Doug had been gigging in another band with Murray Atkinson,”
Northey recalls, “so it seemed obvious that it should be him. I taught
him some parts that I’d written and he instantly made them better.”
“Murray’s cut from the same cloth as us,” says Elliott. “His personality and his musicality fit in with us totally.”
While a decade younger than his bandmates, Atkinson – a rock guitarist
raised on grunge, funk and KISS, and a talented solo artist in his own
right – instantly fell in with the former Odds members.
“We all
share a deep love of KISS,” says Atkinson, “as well as Stax and old
R&B. Plus, they’re all such super nice guys and world-class
musicians. It’s the best band situation I’ve ever been in and I feel
lucky to be learning so much from them.”
2008: Four Men and a Cheerleader
“Cheerleader,” says Elliott of the new release, “is the culmination of
the music that we’ve created in our lives up to this point, and I think
it’s the best music we’ve ever made together. I believe in Craig so much
as a songwriter; his songs come from the same place I’m coming from.
But there’s no real leader of this band. We’re all in this together. We
all share in the work and we all share in the wealth.”
“The
music is something we all create together,” says Northey, “The beauty of
pop music is that you can sing some pretty dark or intense lyrics, then
put a bit of jangle and a nice melody on it and everybody dances to it.
When we were looking for a title, ’cheerleader’ was one word that
encapsulated what the music was. It’s almost comical when you put it up
against the underlying lyrical themes of the songs.”
The
“walkabout” years provided the new Odds with a broader, fresher outlook
when it was time to come home to their “happy place.”
“The idea
that ‘it was good once, so let’s do it exactly the same way,’ always
leads to disaster,” says Northey. “So we all went out to get new ideas
and make other kinds of music. And while we’ve returned to the comfort
foods of power-pop music, I would hope that we’re coming back with a lot
of those outside experiences in our DNA. All of that, plus all of
Murray’s experiences, make it possible for this music to happen this
way, at this time.”
Finally, Northey is adamant that what’s going on here is “more than your typical rock band reunion.”
“We never really felt like we went away! We were always working
together under different names and trying different things. So we just
came back to the old rock band way of working together and added a new
guy. That’s not a reunion; it’s just the next phase of a long and
musically rewarding relationship.”
ewarding relationship.”rewarding relationship.”
Jesse Roads http://www.jesseroadsband.com/
"Classic rock sound combining elements of Neil Young and Crazy Horse and
ZZ Top. So there were plenty of big, dirty riffs and some excellent
vocal harmonies."
The place is an arcade/nightclub— 420 - 6 Street South.