The Odds musician Doug Elliott comes home to vacation in Jasper

They’ve been off doing their own thing for nearly a decade, but with a new member, new album and new name, the Vancouver-based band The Odds are back as The New Odds. 

And bassist Doug Elliott took his summer vacation in Jasper. It’s a natural choice of destination, as Elliott spent most of his childhood here after moving to town with his family when he was in Grade 3.

“I’m still so at home here,” he said. “People have changed in the town and the town has changed but I come here and go ‘Pow, this is where I belong. But I can’t do what I do here.”

Three of four members reincarnated the band with guitarist Murray Atkinson replacing Steven Drake after their friends the Barenaked Ladies invited them to join a gig. “They asked us a couple of years ago to do this cruise out of Florida, a music cruise,” Elliott said. “They asked ‘What are you going to call yourselves?’’ And we called it The New Odds because Stephen wasn’t there.” 

Since then The New Odds released the album Cheerleader in May and went on tour in June to “let people know we’re back.”

The band’s sound may have changed since they were last together, but Elliott wouldn’t know the difference. “We can’t really tell, we just do what we do,” he said.

“Most of the news I’ve seen has said, ‘Yeah, they’re back’, which is cool, but it would be nice to say we’ve evolved somewhat over the past ten years,” he said. “With our instincts and Murray’s instincts we all go back to the same place.” The Odds were known for songs such as Heterosexual Man, Someone Who’s Cool and Eat My Brain.

Though playing alongside the Barenaked Ladies doesn’t sound half-bad, Elliott says they’re perpetually waiting to really make it big. “We’ve had this career that’s always gone up but it’s never skyrocketed, but I think the careers that skyrocket fall off at the same speed,” he said. 

“We are there, we’re in the scene, we don’t go, ‘Hey we’re great’, but we are part of the artist scene.”

Another record is on the band’s to-do list, despite a handful of projects pulling at their attention such as making a guest appearance on the Canadian television show Corner Gas, for which singer Craig Northey wrote the theme song. 

“This is the last season of Corner Gas and they want us to be a cheesy wedding band in the last show playing Happy Place,” he said. There’s also a draw to play with Barenaked Ladies, and the band has worked with singer Colin James, something they will do again in September.

“We’re gonna do it again but we gotta do a record,” he said.

Elliott’s interest in music started in Jasper when he played first the trombone, then the electric bass in high school band. “Band got me through high school really, playing in the concert band and the stage band,” he said. “Of the 100 credits I needed to graduate I figured out if I took band it would give me 48.”

But he remembers what it was like getting to school early for practice. “It was fun but there were some of those winter mornings when you would get up at 7 a.m. and look out. It’s snowy, cold and it’s dark and you gotta cut your path through the snow to get to school with your instrument case, and you see these trails and these kids coming in the dark,” he said, adding he can’t get over the beauty of the landscape. 

“You sort of take it for granted when you’re a kid but when you come back you go, ‘Oh this is amazing, I just can’t believe it’.”

With his wife and two young sons in tow, Elliott was spending ten days at a family cottage on Lake Edith when the Fitzhugh caught up with him on Aug. 15. “I have hiked and gone running and swimming and sailing every single day, everything that everybody does,” he said.

Elliott recalls playing with The Odds at the Atha-B in the early 90s, particularly one Halloween. The members donned wigs and opened for themselves as “crazy” 60s cover band Dawn Patrol, an act they did often. Because they were short on Halloween costumes, the guys drew lobotomy scars on their heads with eyeliner.

“Then next time we’re back we see an article from the paper with a photo of ‘local guy Doug Elliott’ with this lobotomy scar and wig on but no reference to the fact it was Halloween,” he said. “Oh my God, it was hilarious.”

Elliott left town after high school to study music and head to Vancouver, but he’ll never forget the high school band lessons that set him on his way. “I’ve been playing music ever since,” he said.