Elliott BROOD have always been time travellers. The Toronto trio writes songs steeped in history that feel very present. They’ve done their share of actual travelling, too, these musical troubadours, acoustic guitars and banjos slung over their sharp suits as they barnstormed across Canada and beyond. For the new album Days Into Years it was century-old stories encountered an ocean away that brought them closest to home. On the band’s first European tour back in 2007 they found themselves driving through the backroads of France. Vocalist Mark Sasso, guitarist Casey Laforet and drummer Stephen Pitkin, all enthusiasts of military history, raised on the harrowing stories of Canadians in World War 1, were simply looking to avoid the toll highways. Then they came upon a sign for a WW1 military cemetery.
“We’d been driving through Belgium and France, always passing by these historical war places and we decided to pull over and take this one in,” recalls Mark. “We saw all these Canadian names, and it really resonated with us, these young guys that had gone off to war. I knew all about it from reading books, but when you actually visit a place where the battles were, it hits you a lot harder. We said, ‘We need to write a record about it.'” Days Into Years is Elliott BROOD’s third full-length recording, the follow-up to 2008’s Polaris Prize short-listed Mountain Meadows. Like its predecessors, including the 2004 debut EP Tin Type and 2006’s Juno-nominated Ambassador, it mines real history to connect songs that are deeply personal in a cinematic, narrative way. Unfolding like a series of movie scenes, it looks to the future by starting with the past. Opening track “Lindsay” invites you into process of revisiting one’s life while cleaning out an old family home. “If I Get Old” daydreams of making it through difficult times, be they in the trenches or a sickbed, and finding a nice place in the country to live out one’s final moments. Days Into Years presents these reflections as a celebration of life, particularly on the perfect summer single “Northern Air”, a love letter both to the rural Ontario landscape and the memory of a departed friend whose spirit now resides there.
Recorded with co-producer John Critchley at Green Door Studios in Toronto and Avening Town Hall (a former army barracks) in rural Ontario, the album showcases a more amped up Elliott BROOD that will put the knell to the “death country” tag that described their early work. Now, the roof-raising rhythm stomp and mandolin collides with luscious harmonies, piano and, for the first time, electric guitar in a mix Casey admits is “loud, heavy and rock ‘n’ roll.” Since forming in 2002, Elliot BROOD has become a Canadian music institution. (The 2004 campus radio hit “Oh, Alberta!” remains a national treasure.) But after touring with acts like Wilco, Blue Rodeo, Corb Lund and the Sadies, playing festivals across North America, Europe and Australia and scoring the 2010 film Grown-Up Movie Star (for which they earned a Gemini nomination for Best Original Song), the band now also has a global presence. With Days Into Years they will bring their music, and of one of the greatest Canadian stories, to the world. Elliott BROOD are Casey Laforet (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass pedals, bass guitar, mandolin, banjo, lap steel,vocals) Mark Sasso (banjo, guitar, harmonica, vocals) and Stephen Pitkin (percussion, drums, piano, vocals).
Vanessa Peters
Since 2002, Vanessa Peters has played over 1000 shows in 11 countries, sharing the stage with the likes of Rhett Miller and Sarah Harmer. For years, she lived a musician’s dream life: based in Italy, she toured most of the year and released her albums to an ever-growing fan base. Then her band dissolved in 2009, and Peters moved back to Texas. “I wasn’t at all sure that I was even going to continue making music,” she said. “I was worn out emotionally and physically.”
But last year, almost on a lark, she recorded “The Christmas We Hoped For,” which found its way onto a number of Top 10 Holiday lists. “It was a wonderful way to tiptoe back into making music. It made me missing writing and performing. Soon thereafter, I wrote most of what became the new album.”
Still, the split with her band had been painful on many levels, and she wasn’t sure about going into the studio again. “There was a lot of uncertainty in the whole process. I knew that if I didn’t have some outside motivation to push me, I might chicken out.”
Enter Kickstarter. Vanessa has self-financed all of her albums using fan-funding, but Kickstarter was different. “It was such a public platform. I was nervous about taking what used to be a very small and private exchange between me and my fans and broadcasting it for the world to see. But I knew that it would push me to get into the studio; there’d be no going back.”
Thanks to that push, 2012 will see the release of “The Burn The Truth The Lies,” Vanessa’s first solo record in three years. Recorded at the legendary Texas Treefort Studios in Austin and engineered by Jim Vollentine (Patty Griffin, Spoon), the album features terrific performances by some of Texas’s finest musicians: John Dufilho (Apples in Stereo) on drums, Jason Garner (The Polyphonic Spree) on bass, Grammy award-winning guitarist Joe Reyes, and producer Rip Rowan on keys. “I turned everybody loose,” Vanessa says. “These guys are amazing and creative, and there was no reason to ask them to play a song a certain way. We just tackled them one at a time, and we usually found the right arrangement within a few takes. If there was a struggle, we put it aside and moved on. It was a pretty fluid process, and I love the way it all came together.”
This is a stark and honest album, driven by a sense of urgency. “I’ve already been told by people that have heard the record that it’s the most open and truthful collection of songs I’ve written. And I think that’s true. I wasn’t trying to cloak my lyrics in shades of gray. I was trying to tell stories in black and white, sifting through “truth” and “lies” …. which is, of course, a fool’s errand. But it was great fun to try.” And fun is a key word here; for all of the struggle to write and record the album, the listener will discover that it’s an undeniably catchy pop record, driven by clever, hooky melodies and whip smart lyrics.