North Shore Disability Resource Centre presents An Evening with the Odds, Saturday, Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m. Tickets $35. Tickets available by phone or in person at Centennial Theatre Box Office 604-984-4484.
Famous coast to coast for their immaculate post-punk pop tunes North Vancouver's Odds have toured the country many times.
When Warren Zevon was looking for a band to back him up on the road he handpicked the Odds and when the Canadian Pacific Railway needed some hip ambassadors to accompany their Holiday Train across Canada they called on the band as well. They are go-to guys for a specific kind of high energy, literate pop esthetic that has been filtered through The Beatles on down.
The band, who have built a solid fan-base worldwide with critically-acclaimed albums and live shows, rarely play in their own backyard. In fact other than a private gig at the Raven Pub last year the band have never played live in North Vancouver.
That will all change on Oct. 18 when the Odds headline a show at Centennial Theatre with all proceeds going to the North Shore Disability Resource Centre.
Frontman Craig Northey talked to the North Shore News about the concert and what's coming up for the band.
North Shore News: When you guys started out as The Odds you were playing music non-stop: recording demos at Crosstown Studios in North Vancouver while doing gigs downtown as cover band Dawn Patrol. Was much of your first album, Neopolitan, put together during this period?
Craig Northey: We were the Dawn Patrol at the Roxy on Granville where we would put on wigs and glasses and (become) this phoney British Invasion band. A lot of schtick you know, a lot of humour.
We used the money, to not have jobs for one and in the daytime we'd record. I don't know when we slept, maybe the next decade we started sleeping. We'd go into places like people's basement studios and eventually Crosstown and each day we'd record and then start disseminating those demos to see if we could get anyone to help us. The tracking was done there and I believe we mixed it in Burnaby so yes the first album was recorded on the North Shore.
North Shore News: How did you guys meet up with Warren Zevon?
Craig Northey: We had the same agent. Warren was looking for a band to go out on the road with him that was new and would open for him to support whatever they were doing and then be his band so he was looking for the right combination. He asked our agent, "What's new? Give me a bunch of CDs." That's what people used to listen to music on. I'm making an arcane reference here. He gave him a stack of things and he picked us and said, "Can you contact these guys?"
That's how we met. He just came up and all of a sudden we were on tour. When we got home he showed up a few days later in our basement practice space at The Roxy on Granville and then we were gone a week later again.
North Shore News: The opening track on Bedbugs ("Jack Hammer") features a guitar duel between Zevon and Robert Quine. How did that come about?
Craig Northey: It was pretty cool. They weren't in the same room doing the guitar duel. Warren came by to play piano and we knew by that time that he loved to play guitar way more than piano. You had to force him to play piano although he was brilliant. So he said, "Oh yeah, boys I'll come by and play." We thought this is a free-ranging outro to this tune so let's just let Warren go to town on it.
I'd had a new guitar arrive in the studio that day, just crispy and fresh, and I handed it to him. He provided us with a bunch of riffs and then Robert, who was a local and a friend of Jim Rondinelli who was producing us at the time, came around to hang out. We went out to dinner and so of course we asked him if he'd like to go grab his guitar. He went and got his and we turned it into a guitar duel between two of the greats.
North Shore News: During that period you also started working with Kids in the Hall - how did that come about?
Craig Northey: Bruce McCulloch came to see us when we were with Zevon in Toronto. Toronto and Vancouver were the only Canadian dates on that tour. He was aware of us and they started using our album as the intro music before their shows when they were touring the Kids in the Hall live show. When they came to Vancouver our tour manager was working that show. It was two nights and on the first night he said, "Who decides what music you guys play for the walk-in" and they said, "Oh the Kids do - they love that record." We got introduced the next night and became friends from then on in.
I'm still working with the Kids when they do stuff. With Bruce right now I'm the scoring composer on his new series Young Drunk Punk. I've been working with him as he develops that as a one-man show and I produced one of his records and wrote with him quite a bit. Same with Kevin McDonald and Dave (Foley) and everybody.
North Shore News: You've also worked for many years with Brent Butt and his Corner Gas gang.
Craig Northey: Originally Jesse Valenzuela (from the Gin Blossoms) and I wrote the theme for the TV show and since then I've done a few things with Brent and composed for Nancy Robertson's starring vehicle Hiccups TV show. I'm delivering my music today for the Corner Gas movie, I scored the film as well.
North Shore News: Have you seen enough of Saskatchewan yet?
Craig Northey: I love Saskatchewan. People assume I'm from there because of my connections to Colin James and Brent Butt and Wide Mouth Mason. Everyone goes, "You must be from Saskatchewan." I love Saskatchewan but I'm not from there.
North Shore News: If Corner Gas and Kids in the Hall weren't Canadian enough you guys have also toured coast to coast on the CPR Holiday train.
Craig Northey: We're doing it again this year. We've done it a few years before. We've taken a couple off but it's a fantastic vehicle for community involvement and supporting each other. They donate so much to the food banks across Canada.
You're coming into town in a big lit-up train and playing for kids of all generations and injecting money into the community for people who need it. It's the best way to get ready for Christmas.
North Shore News: What a great way to see Canada.
Craig Northey: It's an amazing way to see Canada. It's a total privilege. You get to ride through the back yards, as I put it - you see it from the other side. Now the whole country seems to be centred on the car and you go through these strip malls on the way into town and on the way out you get to see more strip malls.
When you're on a train you go the old-fashioned route. They haven't built that stuff along the side and you're staring into someone's back window. It gives you a different impression of what a town is or was.
North Shore News: What's the route you're taking on this year's train?
Craig Northey: Traditionally it's Montreal to Vancouver, ending in Port Moody, the Golden Spike city. We're travelling on a section of it this time, I think we're Winnipeg to Calgary, but we've done the full trip before. We've done it twice before all the way. It's become a bigger thing and they also have one in the States.
North Shore News: Any special logistics involved in travelling in winter?
Craig Northey: Oh yes. They put so much work in because these are the royal CP cars from the turn of the century and into the '30s. As Will Ferrell would say "They'e bound with leather and rich mahogany."
They're the ones the Queen or Winston Churchill might travel in and so they're full of all the attendant complications of minus 40.
They're really built now for taking people around the Rockies in the summertime but they take a risk and they bring those cars out because it looks so cool. Sometimes the toilets freeze up. Everything freezes up basically and by the time you get to Calgary they drive you inside to let the things thaw out and there's teams of people working on the cars to get them going again.
North Shore News: During the Odds hiatus a few years ago you worked with a number of other artists such as Rosanne Cash. What was that period like? How did people know about you?
Craig Northey: Just a fluke. Like the Zevon thing. You get a phone call and you say "What? she wants me to write a song?" People hear your music I guess that's your best calling card.
Rosanne, and her husband John Levanthal, who's a brilliant guitar player/ producer, liked the Odds album so they gave me a call and the hunch played out. I wrote a song for her and we remain friends.
North Shore News: When you're writing songs on commission are you writing them for a particular artist?
Craig Northey: Usually, unless they picked an Odds song because they like it and could see themselves in it. The ones say for Colin James or Steven Page, I'm usually sitting down with them and collaborating. The ideas are then reflected in what they want to say.
North Shore News: Do you see the song go right through the process to the end?
Craig Northey: Usually that happens in the time we're together and then in some cases you become part of the production team for the recording process depending on who the person is and how much of you they can stand to be around.
North Shore News: At some point does the song becomes theirs and you lose control of it?
Craig Northey: At some point I do and I'm happy to. Frequently I will get together with someone for an afternoon and they'll come to Vancouver or I will go somewhere, we'll sit down with a couple of guitars and write something.
Then I'll leave and the next time I hear it is when it's done. That's often a surprise, it might have taken a slight left turn here or there - it's kind of like unwrapping a present.
North Shore News: You guys are playing at Centennial Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 18. A rare hometown gig.
Craig Northey: It's been 27 years. We're playing down the street at Centennial Theatre for the North Shore Disability Resource Centre.
They do amazing work. We've gone and met some of the students and staff at the centre to see what they're doing and are really happy to be performing for them. Also our friend Jeff Stansfield's band is going to open. We've worked with Jeff on the VAMS recordings. I was a musical director for the Vancouver Adapted Music Society's 25th anniversary compilation recently so a bunch of our friends are in that band and we've collaborated with them.
North Shore News: Why have the Odds not played here before? No appropriate venues?
Craig Northey: When we started it was kind of the post-punk era. I don't think we ever did Sey- Lynn Hall or anything like that. It just didn't happen. There weren't very many venues to play, it wasn't a conscious decision to stay away. I've played North Van many times in other situations but as the Odds we've never headlined a show over here.
North Shore News: The Odds played with Elvis Costello on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada during the playoffs a few years back. How did that come about?
Craig Northey: That was from the 2011 playoff run. For about four years we did interstitial music at the Canucks games, sort of big rock riffs as a kind of instrumental Booker T mundo rock band. We'd jump out into the crowd in different locations in the building and play once a period. We would also play up in a suite for the puck drop so the idea was born; first we started with the bagpiper and then had other guests in that one spot.
Dave Levinson, the DJ at Canucks games, had a connection to the Costello camp and I'd met Elvis before in another situation and so he said, "Sure I'll come do it." They always play 'Pump it Up' at the games. He jumped into play with us. It was a riot.
We had Randy Bachman, Paul Rodgers from Free and did "All Right Now," Colin James, it was great. It was like Huck Finn painting the fence: make it look fun and then all these people start showing up.
Odds Albums
1991 Neopolitan
1993 Bedbugs
1995 Good Weird Feeling
1996 Nest
2000 Singles: Individually Wrapped
2005 The Essentials
2008 Cheerleader
2009 Noise Trade EP
2013 The Most Beautiful Place on Earth EP
