Elliott Brood hitting their stride after 15 years

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After 15 years together, Hamilton/Toronto folk/ alt country trio feel like they’re just hitting their stride. they are looking forward to returning to Lethbridge to play their usual haunt the Slice on a Tuesday, Sept. 25.Elliott Brood retuern to the Slice, Sept. 25. Photo by Richard Amery
“After 15 years or however long we’ve been together I feel we‘re just hitting our stride as a players. not that we didn’t play well before, it’s just that every night we feel like we’re playing in the pocket,” said frontman/banjo player/ guitarist and ukulele player Mark Sasso from a tour stop in Moncton. He is joined by Casey Laforet on guitar, vocals and bass pedals and  Stephen Pitkin playing suitcases, percussion and vocals.


“We‘re going back to Hamilton to play the Supercrawl festival. It’s a huge event. It’s such a great experience for us. It‘s putting Hamilton back on the map. It’s right downtown in the street.  They get like 100,000 ,150,000 people or about 50,000 people a night. It will be our third time playing it and they keep asking us back so  we must be doing something right,” Sasso continued.


“We’ve been playing a lot and touring a lot. We‘re on the east coast now, where we haven’t been for a while,” he observed.
They are still touring in support of their 2017 “Ghost Gardens,” which  is doing well with fans.
“Fans have been listening to the music and buying the album and singing the songs back to us, same as they always do, so we must be doing something right,” Sasso said.
 Part of their success is road testing new songs as they are now and will be doing in Lethbridge.

“We‘ve got three new songs we’re road testing now.  It’s part of what we do. We play them live. We like to steal energy from the crowd and see where it takes the song/ It’s part of the process we really love,” he said, adding songs change quite a bit with repeated playing.
“We have to live with them and these songs may sound like they are now  when we record them for the next album. Or they may not,” he said.

 “ This way people are familiar with them by the time they come back,” he said.

They have had an interesting summer.
“ Other than just playing, personally, for me, we went up to Dawson City to play the Dawson City Music Festival. And I ended up competing in a  seven kilometre walk/race. And I actually placed second behind a 16-year-old kid. Stephen actually placed fifth. It’s one of these this you never expect to be doing until you do,” he said, adding the band is still mostly based in Hamilton.


“Stephen still lives in Hamilton too and Casey just moved back to Toronto,” he said.
 After this tour we’ll be touring on and off until November. Then we’ll write some more songs.We have a couple that aren’t quite there yet. So what I’m looking forward to most is  sitting down and crushing out some songs. That is always a pretty great experience,“ he enthused.


They always enjoy returning to Lethbridge.
“The story that is ubiquitous with us is Lethbridge is the first place we ever played outside of Toronto. So it has a special place in our hearts because of that. We have a lot of friends there who we are always excited to come back and visit,” he enthused.
“It’s a Tuesday night. But we‘ll tear it up there like we always do. Every night is a Saturday night to us,“ he said.


Tickets for Elliott Brood are $25.
The show begins at 8:30 p.m. Steven Foord is opening the show.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
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