When I reached Elliott Brood’s lead singer, Mark Sasso, on his cell phone, the band was in their tour van on their way to a show in Montreal. Though Sasso held the phone, the raucous interview was a whole-band affair, with Casey Laforet and Stephen Pitkins calling out interruptions and additions each time Sasso spoke.
The alt-country rockers are in the middle of Exclaim! magazine’s Wood, Wires and Whisky coast-to-coast tour with Ottawa’s The Acorn and Montreal band Plants and Animals.
The three guys who make up Elliott Brood met in high school—where they “didn’t like each other,” according to Sasso. Reintroduced years later, they became friends and eventually began playing music together. Their first show was in Toronto, at a little bar called Holy Joe’s, where they played under a different name and with a different line-up.
“The first show, Casey wore a wig, and all the other band members were called the Sassettes,” Sasso said. “The other band members left, and we really wanted to keep it going so we did.”
The band’s new name is one Sasso had picked out long before he started playing music.
“It came from me mishearing a name in a movie. It was just a lady in this film, The Natural, with Robert Redford. I thought her name was Harriet Brood, and I just thought if she ever had a brother, he would be Elliott Brood,” he said. “I came up with it one drunken night in college.”
Beyond the kooky stories, the band is unique right down to the instruments they play. They’re unlike other three-piece outfits, which usually fit the cookie-cutter recipe of having one guitar, bass and drum player each.
In Elliott Brood, all three members share the vocal work, Sasso predominantly plays the banjo, Laforet plays the guitar and Pitkin plays the drums (using a large plastic suitcase instead of a bass drum). With no one left to play the bass, Laforet created a way to play two instruments at once—by playing the bass with his foot. As Sasso begins to explain the dynamics of a Moog foot pedal that plays the bass organ part of a piano, there’s a shout in the background.
“Long toes,” Laforet said. “And that way I get two paycheques.”
“You can quote him on that,” Sasso said.
“Even though it’s not true,” Laforet added.
For a band that can have this much fun on a rainy afternoon spent travelling the 401 between Toronto and Montreal, Elliott Brood is ironically known for the dark tone of their music.
Called “death country” by some and “blackgrass” by others, the Brood’s particular take on the roots genre covers topics laden with melancholic and nostalgic imagery, from their song “President (35)” about former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, to “Second Son,” a song about the scandal and heartbreak of a small-town betrayal.
“It’s called death country because we want to kill country music,” Sasso deadpans. “No, I don’t know—it’s just a darker side of country music as opposed to your happier side. It’s more a kind of a Johnny Cash way of looking at it. Maybe mixed with Neil Young.”
As musicians playing in what is often thought of as an American genre, with a history and institutional status in southern states far from the Toronto streets the band calls home, Sasso said the band has had to piece together different influences and traditions.
“We grew up on the border, so we’re kind of influenced by both Canadian and American music,” he said. “Then again, we’re influenced by a Canadian-American or American-Canadian, Neil Young.”
He pauses.
“I’d say we’re more influenced by Canadians than Americans—by way of America.”
This tension with identity and influences is nowhere better illustrated than the band’s first album, Ambassador, which is named after the Ambassador Bridge, connecting Windsor, Ontario with Detroit, Michigan.
Beyond regional influences, music writers have also found hints of the metal genre in the band’s music—something Sasso said he wasn’t expecting because he’s never listened to metal.
“I guess it’s because of the distorted guitar,” he said. “Maybe it was our upbringing in the ’90s when everybody kept bringing in distortion. Or maybe Casey thought it was a tuning pedal and so it just came on during one of our songs.”
For almost a year, the band has been working on a new album—their third full-length—aimed for release in spring 2008. The recording process has been slow, with sessions squeezed in between touring and spending time with family.
And because Elliott Brood is so adamantly unlike most musicians, extra care and quirkiness is also slowing production time. The band aims to record each song in a different space that fits and adds to the song.
“We’ve been recording everywhere we possibly can: Wayne, Alberta; Toronto; Healey Lake Lodge near Parry Sound; our bedrooms; our front rooms; town halls,” Sasso said.
“Wherever it works for the songs. Different rooms give different sounds for the songs. It’s like another instrument; that’s the way we look at it.”
Besides work on the new album, Sasso said Elliott Brood has big plans for the months ahead.
“Christmas shopping. Stuff like that. We’re going to do that because Thanksgiving is over now,” he said.
Elliott Brood plays with The Acorn and Plants and Animals tonight at the Grad Club. Tickets are $10 in advance, available at the Grad Club and Destinations.
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.