THUNDER BAY - After making music for the last 15 years, Elliott Brood has started looking to the past, both personally and musically.
“I think the older you get maybe the more reflective you become on the past and I think that’s sort of where we are at,” said Mark Sasso, Elliott Brood lead vocalist and banjoist/guitarist.
Elliott Brood, the alternative country/folk rock trio, are returning to Thunder Bay on Friday, Apr. 21 as part of a 16-date cross-Canada tour.
Elliott Brood is no stranger to the Thunder Bay stage, but Sasso said this tour is a chance for the band to try out some new material that will appear on their upcoming album, Ghost Gardens, which is expected to be released next fall.
“It’s one of those things where we just want to kind of road test a bunch of new songs we want to put on a new record,” Sasso said. “To play a bunch of new tunes, road test them, and sort of give a preview of some of the things to come.”
Even though these songs will be new to audiences and fans, they actually go back more than 10 years.
Band members Sasso, Casey Laforet, and Stephen Pitkin, recently made the move from Toronto to Hamilton and in the course of that move, they rediscovered a series of demos first recorded in 2006.
“It’s kind of like a harkening back to the Tin Type era,” Sasso said. “What happens is you obviously grow and you reimagine them now as they would be.”
“You can see the beginnings or the start of a great song, but we didn’t get there,” he continued. “Now that we have time, that we’ve rediscovered them, you can now approach them from a new angle and you have perspective on them. A lot more perspective. So I think that actually helps these songs way more than if we recorded them back in the day. I don’t think they would have sounded as good.”
The rediscovered songs will make up the majority of content for Ghost Gardens. But even Elliott Brood’s most recent album, Work and Love, released in 2014, was a return to the past for the band who have come a long way since they first began making music in 2002.
“We’re all fathers, family guys and I think now you are looking through the eyes of your kids,” Sasso said. “I think that is what was happening with Work and Love and I think that is similarly happening here with Ghost Gardens.”
Throughout their career, Elliott Brood has been nominated for several Juno awards, taking home the prize in 2013 for best roots and traditional album of the year, as well as being shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize.
But Sasso said they don’t allow such accolades to get in the way of making music, because for the band, it all comes down to single songs.
“I think we break it down on a more minute level,” he said. “Is this a really good song? Are we doing the best for this song? If you do that, for us, it takes the pressure off you and you are focusing more on those songs.”
During this upcoming tour, the band will be testing out their latest work, while feeding off the energy of the live crowd.
“How you perform them and how you bring out the emotion in a live setting is different and that’s why going to play live is very important for us,” he said. “We are a live band. It’s the conversation between the artist and the people who are actually coming to watch you. That’s the thing you feed off of. The audience, that’s kind of what you need as a performing artist.”
Even though Elliott Brood is looking into the past, that does not mean they are no longer looking to the future, because for Sasso and his fellow band members, the future, much like the past, will always involve music.
“It’s just in our blood,” he said. “I don’t know what else we would do. We need to write songs. It’s kind of in us. When that stops, maybe that’s when the band will stop, but I don’t foresee that. We inspire each other enough to write together and separately and push each other. The energy is still there and the excitement is still there.”
Elliott Brood will be taking to the Crocks stage on Friday, Apr. 21 at 8 p.m.
