The Odds

 

Name: The Odds   Country: Canada Genre: Post Punk, Power Pop, Rock Website: Click Here   Follow The Band:

 

 

Clips of The Odds in Action

 

About The Odds

 

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?”

 

The Odds persevered and enjoyed success – including a classic Canadian appearance by the Kids in Hall on their music video in the 90′s– but decided to go their separate ways in 1999.  But the “split” didn’t last.

 

“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.”

 

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.”

 

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.”