Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Craig Northey from The Odds: Toronto Mike'd #640

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

Mike chats with Craig Northey about The Odds, working with Kids in the Hall, playing with The Tragically Hip, recording for Corner Gas, playing with Moe Berg, Chris Murphy and Steven Page in The Trans-Canada Highwaymen, and working with his children on This Blows.

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I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me is singer-songwriter Craig Northey. How's it going? I'm pretty good, Mike. How are you? Good. Now that I'm doing remotes, like I used to have this strict rule, the guest had to visit my studio in Southwest Toronto and, you know, sit here far too close for this pandemic. But now that I'm doing remotes, I realized this is my chance to get some of you, you Vancouver people on the show. Is that where I reach you today in Vancouver? You did. You got me in Vancouver.

This is where I've been forced to isolate. It's not my choice. But it's not bad, right? Because you've got much better weather there than we have to deal with here. It was fortunate because actually that's where my house is. So I don't mind that they forced me to be here. It's funny how that worked out uh yeah you get to live in your actual home which is cool but uh uh so thanks for doing this i'm a big fan of the odds and a big fan of yours and uh i hope you have several hours uh carved out for us to chat right now. I'll do my best. If it sounds like a small child is speaking instead of me

at some point in the proceedings, it's me. It's just that that's what it's done to me. Oh, I thought you were going to warn me because I often get interrupted by my four-year-old and my six-year-old. It's you, though. Mine are a little older. They would interrupt me to other things,

and they don't sound like kids. No, in fact, later we'll get to you working with your older children, which is very cool here. But let's begin by me just letting everybody know that Craig has no idea what he's in for here because it sounds like you're going in cold yes so you have no idea I could be anybody right like I could just be some some well I am but some goofball in his basement who just wants to talk to the guy from the odds

I like that I I'm I'm ready all right so you didn't even talk to like uh you didn't even check in with like a steven page to make sure like is this worth my time or anything like that well apparently you've been collecting all the cards of the trans canada highwaymen which you'll probably get into later and i'm the last one you were the uh because you're the one who was although you know steven's tough too because he's like living in upstate new york but the other two are really easy I think Mo just could you could just stroll over and Chris Murphy could just jump on a streetcar but uh let's get to the Trans Canada Highwaymen later let's uh just set the table by saying uh I've been looking forward

to talking to you because of how you intermingle with so many of my favorite things from kids in the hall to the tragically hip to the bare naked ladies so thanks for coming could you maybe start by sharing with us the the origin story like how does this vancouver band the odds uh come to be um we were in the vancouver music scene, this would have been 1986 or so, I met Stephen Drake in one of those Battle of the Bands, where all those, you know, the young bands are duking it out to get a record deal. deal and uh so we were in the top six or something of these bands and so we were on this album together and i met him and saw his band and doug elliott as well the bass player was in one of those bands and paul brennan the drummer was a friend of mine he was a kid he was like 18 and uh so when i finished with that band they, the other three were starting one. And that's how we ended up in it.

We were kind of the person you saw in the other band. When you looked at them, you thought, I'd like to play with that guy. He seems like the weirdo in his band, too. Let's get together. You know, here in Toronto, we talk about our Drake. But there should be more talk about your Drake, Stephen Drake. Yeah, he's a very talented guy. He hasn't been in the band for a long time, but he's a very talented man.

Tell us about the origin of the name. Like, where does The Odds come from? Oh, it was just, it's probably the dumbest name you could come up with pre-internet because the two things that are impossible to search are the word odds because it's gambling or anything pornographic so we should have at least aired on the side of pornography just to gain notoriety but odds just odds just ensured the obscurity. It's funny, all those bands, because nowadays, well, I say nowadays,

but since the internet arrived, if you have a band like Linkin Park, for example, they're going to purposely spell Linkin wrong just so they can kind of own their domains and stuff. So you would be like the odds with a Z at the end. Yes. Yeah, or triple A odds so that you're at the top of the yellow pages.

Right, smart. You should be marketing there. Alright, let me play a little bit of an early song that we'll talk about and feel free to trash it. You're allowed to trash anything I play from the odds here, but let me play a jam

for you right now okay I feel like I should be talking over this intro here. It's too long, eh? Now, Craig, I want to hear what you think of this song, but I'm listening to it now. Maybe it's the nostalgia settling in, but I'm digging it, oh i dig it it's it's a lot of fun it was it was one of those songs that comes out of a one chord jam that you're having it you know on rehearsing or sound checking we you know we're on stage for a gig i think and uh it was it and it cool. It's fun to listen to. It's weird to listen to yourself that long ago and hear how your voice has changed and your sensibilities have changed. And we sometimes do that song now, you know, and it's a voice killer. Everything's so high.

Why did I write it all that way? By the way, nice T-shirt. I just noticed you got a Sloan shirt on there. Oh, yeah, thanks. Yeah, somebody, a friend gave it to me. I know that guy. All right, so this is the first song, those of us here in Toronto, I mean, this is the first odd song I was exposed to.

And again, catchy little ditty, I dig it, man. But love is a subject. Take us back a little ditty. I dig it, man. But love is the subject. Take us back a little bit. I'll bring it down now. But tell us a bit about how do you even get signed? It's Zoo Entertainment, right? It was, yeah. Well, that's a really weird and complicated story.

But I'll try to be as brief as I can. We were... So we formed that band, the weirdos from the other four bands and the name odds actually came from two of the guys steven and paul you know in a small town in bc doing a terrible gig residency saying what are the odds of us ever getting out of doing shit gigs like this and uh that's where it came from but uh so we we formed a cover sort of a shtick cover band it was like a british invasion band with uh tongue in cheek and in disguise with wigs and glasses and so forth we weren't that faithful to the actual words themselves of the songs but we did the songs very faithfully and uh we we took up a residency in vancouver on granville strip

as a an alter ego and that paid the bills for us to travel back and forth to Los Angeles to play house gigs and showcases and things over the course of a couple years really and nobody knew we weren't from there and nobody in Vancouver kind of correlated the two things and so that's how we did it we we managed to meet all kinds of people we still know today down there and uh people in canada weren't that interested in us i suppose and uh we did we would open for ourselves those kind of things and um it was it was an elaborate scheme and that way we met uh somebody in los angeles at ascap and we'd had a few anr people from different labels interested in us who said hey if you're ever in los angeles look us up thinking we're never going to show up we showed up on all their doors and uh we played gigs down there over um a couple year period and met all the people that

lined up and wanted to help us so you got uh you got signed to zoo entertainment yes yeah um the one night this guy i was mentioning we went intoCAP to see somebody who'd come up and seen us in Vancouver and said that fateful, if you're ever in Los Angeles, look us up. And so we showed up, all of us in their office. And this one guy in another office was overhearing the music that this gal was playing, said, who are you guys? I love this. And he's one of our friends today he said come over to my house tonight we went over to his house and that night we met our manager for 14 years and our the person who signed us to zoo eventually when the label was formed later and um he was

pretty instrumental we used to sleep on his floor with the Gin Blossoms and Toad the Westbrook and every band slept on his floor. You know, hearing that story, real quick, I just was reading about this yesterday and I still find it amazing, but apparently Dolly Parton says she wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You on the same night.

Show off. I know. Dolly's the same night. Show off. I know. Dolly's a show off, if anything. But that's quite the night. But I don't know if that's almost, maybe that's a little more impressive than you meeting those people on the same night. But anyway, shout out to Dolly.

It's a little more impressive because she had to write really great songs and all we had to do was meet these two people. So I think your correlation is a little faulty. Hey, you know, I do what I can to jam in these fun facts. So here's a fun fact I was reminded of by my buddy Mark Weisblatt when I said you were coming on. He reminded me that third single,

so we just heard the first single from Neapolitan. That's the 91 debut. Love is a Subject. Great first jam right there. Then King of the Heap. And then that third single, Wendy Under the Stars, was a little controversial, right? Especially for 1991. Yeah.

Having swear words in your songs was not as common as it is now. I like to think we broke some ground in being tools. But it was a poetic thing to us. It was absolutely essential. But you did actually create like a radio edit, right?

You changed the word fucking. So it was I was fucking Wendy under the stars and it became I made love to Wendy, right? Yes, that was a compromise. We didn't want to make, but because it was the third single, they said, yeah, you guys are going to have to come off the road and there's no more singles unless you will do this. And we said, okay, we'll do it. I mean, this is my heyday, right?

1991, I'm listening to a lot, especially a lot of Canadian rock, but alternative rock. I was listening to whatever 102 especially a lot of canadian rock but alternative rock i was listening to whatever 102.1 was throwing at me at the time and uh i still remember the songs that could slip f-bombs in there like i remember um uh it's a bit later but uh hugh dylan snuck in a paranoid little fuckers in uh what was that jam called uh Cubically Contained? I don't know if you remember that. And that would slip in. And then, of course, Radiohead had, they dropped an F-bomb in Creep that would sometimes,

it depends which version the station would play, but once in a while they played the F-bomb version. I always found it exciting when you heard an F-bomb on terrestrial radio. We've heard a lot of radio people later who used the song to as their exit strategy they would just you know had a late night shift and they would put wendy on a loop and walk out and

that was that was their they're leaving their job song or you know there was there's all kinds of uh stories of how how they mixed it up the two versions by accident and got in trouble. Yeah, just like if it's either going to be you or it's going to be Nine Inch Nails closer, I think it's going to be one or the other there. Yeah, probably more effective. I need to know. Or you could throw in Rage, I think.

You could throw in the, you know, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me there. But tell me about your relationship with Warren Zevon. Do you mind taking a moment and talking about Warren around this time? I guess he, uh, no, I don't mind at all. We were on the road supporting that record in a van. We named the stench capsule for a long time. And we, we, uh, we're on tour with voice of the beehive, which you may remember, a British-American hybrid band. And we were in New York starting a tour with them. And we got a call from our manager saying, now, do you guys want to, when you're finished in Los Angeles, one week later, start a tour with Warren Zevon and also be his band?

And we went, what? Yeah, yeah, we do. And so we got finished. We went home. And I guess what had happened is Warren had said to his agent, lay a bunch of albums on me of bands that i would like because i'm thinking of doing this again and of playing with a band and having them open and be my band and uh so he gave him a stack of cds that's what people listen to music on back then and uh he, I like these guys. So that's how it happened.

And we ended up in the basement of that club that we did our shtick in a week later after the tour with him. And we practiced for a couple of days and went on the road for three months. And he was a beautiful guy. And all the stories are untrue and true. I'm trying to think of him in his connection to Canada. And the closest I can come up with is he did have a great song called the

hockey song, which had the great, the cameo from David Letterman, uh, hit somebody. Yeah. Yeah. He did.

He did that after he, we, there was a lot of hockey talk on our tour, of course. And we, Yeah, he did that after. There was a lot of hockey talk on our tour, of course, and we took a lot of ribbing from Warren and his tour manager about our strange brew kind of proclivities. But he was a great mentor, and I used that time very wisely, and we remained friends till the end.

very wisely. And we remained friends till the end. It was, um, he was, as one of his friends said so well, he had a heart as big as the sky, but he was, um, um, you know, he didn't suffer fools and it was always entertaining. So the pertinent question here, uh, before we move on to bedbugs is do you Craig enjoy every sandwich of course of course I do yeah alright let me play a jam from bedbugs here one of my favorites here I want to make every woman I see

I want to make every woman I see Do you know what's the matter with me? I'm a heterosexual man. Just a heterosexual man. I want to do every woman I know. I want to do it to them in their clothes. I want to make it with them, don't you know? I'm a heterosexual man.

It's just a problem with my clans. I'm a heterosexual, heterosexual man. I'm a heterosexual, heterosexual man. Now, I actually played this song on an episode of Toronto Mic'd earlier this year when Kevin McDonald came by. And I got to ask about your hookups, like you guys and the kids in the hall and how this video came to be. I love kids in the hall and how this video came to be i love kids in the hall please bury me in detail okay um well steven steven wrote that one and uh uh and he wrote windy from a personal experience as well let's go back a little bit but he wrote heterosexual men it's a satire it's about the the stupid behavior of guys in nightclubs that we observed over so many years and uh so we thought we were having a it was contentious in the band because the label said this is your single and we thought yeah we're not really a novelty band because people aren't going to get this and uh it's got a good groove

and they they were insistent so it led to some pretty big arguments and uh so when it came to the fact that we were about to cave and say okay well we made the song it's going to be out there anyway um we better get some people to we better be able to frame this well using the video and we had met the kids in the hall a little while before that and thought well if we asked maybe this would be something that they would want to do with us and so I just made the phone call and and they said, yeah, of course. When can you be out here? Oh, great.

And we wrote it, most of it the night, a couple nights prior to shooting it in Toronto. We shot it at the Masonic Hall. I'm not sure what they call that now, the Masonic Hall, but what is it? Probably the, yeah, because I know Bullard took it over for a talk show but maybe the concert hall again actually it's a good question what they're calling that these days

concert hall maybe yeah well there was a lot of brainstorming and everyone came up with great ideas and mark and kevin and dave were uh in the video and and a lot of the staff rachel sutherland a bunch of a lot of ann and a bunch of the people who work with kids in the hall. And it was, uh, so fun. Uh, I believe I had Scott's boobs on and, uh, so we, we had, we had tons of fun and it was a, such a gracious gesture of theirs. And of course, we'll probably get into it more. I remain an ally and a collaborator. Yeah, we will definitely touch again. In fact, right now, we have a question that or a comment more than a question that came in from Greg Brady.

Greg Brady is a radio host in the city. He's not from the Brady Bunch, but, you know, the best and sorry, I'm going to read it verbatim here. The best guy and best interview from the best and sorry, I'm going to read it verbatim here. The best guy and best interview from the best band. That's you guys, by the way, in case you're confused. The odds. That's what he's talking about. Ask him, ask him about riding the Zamboni at Joe Louis Arena. Joe Louis Arena.

Yeah. Joe Louis Arena. While Dave Foley and I watched in amazement, he was having the time of his life. You bet I was. Oh, my God. Thank you, Greg. Yeah, I just came across a photograph of that.

Greg helped us get inside the, what do you call it, one of the great temples of hockey. And I came across a picture of Dave and I, Foley and I, in the dressing room i'm sitting in um eiserman stall and dave sitting in fedorov stall wow and with their gear it smelled awesome and uh anyway al the zamboni driver of the i'm getting this right i hope said you want to ride the zamboni around joe lewis arena with me and i sat in the jump seat and wow that was pretty darn cool i don't know what else is more you can picture it yourself it was the middle of the day and there were three four people

in the rink we had a tour of the whole facilities and it was pretty cool yeah and i remember how like in the 80s you know if the leafs versus i know you're probably a canucks are you a canucks fan yes okay so when i'm watching these like norris division battles between the red wings and the uh in the toronto maple leaves i always remember that arena seems so modern like i know it's replaced already like it's long gone. But at the time, it just seemed like the future of arenas. It just seemed very modern to me. But prior to COVID-19

interrupting everything, this clusterfuck we're living in right now, the Zamboni drivers were having a real moment. It seemed like the world was recognizing Zamboni drivers as the great people they are because of the backup goalie who beat my Maple Leafs. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's not really fair what happened there, but he did do a great job, and everybody was proud of him and happy for him. So it was a great story. It just happened to be the Leafs, unfortunately, that it happened to. Right. It's a fact I was looking at the calendar. This is about the time we'd be losing game seven to the Bruins in the first round. So it's kind of OK if we skip this playoff season. Let us talk about Jack Hammer for a moment, because, you know, you meet you and Warren

Zevon. He appears on this album, right? He does, yeah. So we finished that tour for Neapolitan, and our time with Warren was part of all that. And we were making the next record, so of course we invited him. We were in New York working on the album, and he was there too. And so he came over and he played piano on Yes Means It's Hard to Say No, and he also played guitar on Jackhammer with Robert Quine too. He wanted to play guitar because he loved playing guitar more than piano.

He was so fucking mad when you assumed that he would play piano. But he was one of the greatest, not just a great rock piano player what he's known for he was a great piano player classically trained and amazing and and was versed in most any style of of piano and uh so we would always push him towards it even in when we were playing with him we'd always push for the piano songs because we loved it. He was pushing for the rock songs. He wanted to be in Molly Hatchet.

He wanted all three of us up on the front just soloing at the same time. So he wanted to play guitar after we begrudgingly pushed him into playing piano. And I had just received a new guitar that day that was sent to the studio and he i said hey warren check this out and he goes yeah i'm playing that and what do you got for me so uh so that that guitar battle and jackhammer was born and then later the next day robert quine we went out for dinner with him he was a friend of jim's the producer and uh had amazing stories and a great hang and then we said you want to play on

the record and he said yeah sure he said i'll go get my guitar my apartment's around the corner so that's how that happened that's why you just ask. Like the worst they can say is no, but you never know what people are game for, right? You got to ask. Yeah, sometimes you just pick your spots. But Warren, he wanted to do that because he needed to play some guitar. And Robert, he had a really good time. We had a great time with him.

I really loved Warren's appearance on the Larry Sanders show. Do you remember that episode? To me, Letterman's one thing because he was a regular on Letterman and fantastic on Letterman, and we all know him from there. But that Larry Sanders show, I'm just – and I believe there's a connection with the kids in the hall here, right, because you've got Scott Thompson.

That's right, yeah. So it all comes together. Well, he came out to see me with the kids in the hall in Los Angeles, and we would have these hours-long phone calls afterwards. And I sent somebody, because when the show's over, you're taking off all your things, your microphone packs, and all that kind of stuff. And I wanted to make sure he knew he could come and hang out.

But he was uncomfortable with the hang and the crowd, so he took off. And I talked to him the next day and I said, so did you have a good time? And he goes, oh, Craigie Weggs, you know I loved it. But, you know, I had my share of cross-dressing and crotch-grabbing when I was with you guys. share of cross-dressing and crotch-grabbing when I was with you guys. Okay, a little more bedbugs just before we move on here. Hold on. Being and being out of control You knew the reason, but you let it stop This vice will be your end Now the end has come

You're feeling really dumb You deserve it, baby You had no choice Yeah, but It falls apart. In little pieces. I'll ignore it. Too wild to keep together.

So you want it more. It falls apart. Falls apart. Falls apart. Such a radio-friendly ditty. Holy smokes, man. It's back in like an earworm now. I'm going to be singing that for the rest of the day,

but it falls apart. Did you guys ever win a Juno? No, no. No, no. We don't do that kind of stuff. We get nominated. I was going to say, because I mean, I see here, you're nominated for Best New Group in 1994,

which feels a bit late for you guys to get the new group, but I don't know what their rules are. There's no rules. There's no rules in rock and roll, Mike. No, we got nominated half a dozen times for things, but that's not what we do. It's not one of our things. Winning.

It's an honor just to be nominated. That's the Canadian mentality, I believe. Yep, breaking even in 1995 there's some personnel changes here like can you so what happens uh brennan leaves the band right he uh he moves to the big smoke here in toronto is that right that's right yeah he went uh he went he went big so he went the, he left and Pat Stewart came in. Pat had been playing on and off, mostly on with Doug Elliott since they were 18 years old. And he was around as a pal of ours. And it was sort of the obvious choice.

And it was sort of the obvious choice. He walked in in the middle of the album, actually, and Paul walked out in the middle of the album, Good Weird Feeling. Oh, okay. But he basically leaves you for Big Sugar, is that right? Well, that wasn't later. I think he was initially with May Moore. Okay.

And then later Big Sugar. Yeah. And Pat worked with Brian Adams, who when I think of Vancouver, that's the first name I think of, Brian Adams. Well, now you're thinking sort of the second name you think of is Pat Stewart, right? The drummer. That's what I was about to say for sure. All right. We're going to kick out a big one here. Are you sitting down there? This is a monster jam from sure. All right, we're going to kick out a big one here. Are you sitting down there?

This is a monster jam from you. I mean, they're all wonderful, don't get me wrong. That's why I wanted to talk to you for so many years. But if I can get her to play, here's a big jam. My droopy-eyed Madonna A triple fire alarm. All the other rogues and darlings get sent to the farm. I don't need to deceive you Cause I feel no pain

Maybe I should let you Come on and eat my brain Yeah, yeah, yeah Well, can you tell me about Eat My Brain? Because I remember it being on such high rotation on Much Music. I'm pretty sure we saw it every 20 minutes on Much. Well, that was brilliant. Lisa Mann was the director of that video, and that was fairly inspired.

We had this concept, I believe, since we're name-dropping a lot, because that's what this is, an interview. I love the name-dropping. It's historical. We had this idea that I think was invented between us and the tragically hip in a bus one night, was that one of us should do a video where we're trying to kill each other, like bands, bands that people might know and feed this

idea that there's this rivalry between bands and that they that they'd like to murder each other and so we had we thought you guys will get a lot of guns and crossbows and things and you guys can hunt us this is pre um you know the movies where you hunt people right and uh other than rambo i guess and uh he that wasn't gonna fly with the much music and guns and stuff like that but we developed the idea with um with lisa and we had the pursuit of happiness and junk house trying to kill us and chase us so we actually worked out okay it was a fun thing to do but the song itself I'm listening to it and it's Stevens another one of Stevens and it's a it's a song that was just so freaking hard to do. That groove, it sounds so simple.

It's hard to play the way he wanted it to be played. So I think that's like take 42. Because this is pre-Pro Tools and digital recording. We just had to do it right. And it took forever. So by the time it was actually released we hated it because we had played it so many times but we grew to love it i love the tom wilson uh cameo in this video like he's just he was born to play that role i think yeah we need and we shot it in hamilton

and we had such a great time and those guys are dear pals of ours too. And same with The Pursuit, which you'll probably get to later. Oh man, yeah, for sure. Especially, yeah. And shout out, those are two FOTMs, which by the way, Craig, you're now an FOTM. Now that we've gone this far before you bailed, you're a friend of Toronto Mike. And you join Moberg and Tom Wilson in that exclusive club. So congrats

I hope I can laugh as loud as Tom and be as smart as Moe I often when I start these episodes I think I wish I had Tom's voice wouldn't this be a much cooler broadcast if I sounded like Tom Wilson you sound

great oh thanks man alright now here's a tweet i forgot to write down or type out who tweeted this so i'm sorry to that person who tweeted this but it said eat my brain by odds one of the most underrated songs of the 1990s it's the best song on the Kids in the Hall Brain Candy soundtrack. So again, is this, first of all, soak in that praise. You deserve this, that it's an underrated song of the 90s. And maybe talk a bit about how you get on the Brain Candy soundtrack. Well, the Kids in the Hall eventually got to make a feature film.

And when they went to make it, they asked me if i knew how to do that if i could make the music for a feature film and i of course fake it till you make it i just said of course i do and uh i had no idea how to do it and um so i got the job it was just that easy actually they had to run it by everybody um and i had enough of a reputation to to for somebody to think well he'll probably be able to get help and um and it was it was a amazingly hard and fun and dark time for everybody and um that sort of started me making music for film and television and that was like my hats off to the kids in the hall and and all that they've given me now that i'm stuck doug and pat worked on it with me and we did the score for the film in our underwear in the basement of that same nightclub on Granville Street that we grew up working in. What's the name of that nightclub? The Roxy.

Okay, I don't spend enough time, although I was in your fine city as recently as August 2019, but very, very, very nice city. You got two things we're missing here. You got that thing called the ocean. We don't have that. And you have, we have Lake Ontario, but it's a poor substitute. And the mountains. I mean, have you got, do you take those mountains for granted now that you kind of are used to seeing them? Because they're amazing and we don't have anything of the sort. I spend a lot of time away. So I get to come home and see what it looks like again each time. And I take them for granted maybe less than some. But I've always been an exponent of you can live anywhere and every place has a great thing about it and um i see the faults in places and the great things about places so the mountains i live on the side of those mountains and i blame them also for the fact that it pretty much rains

on me constantly that's that's that i feel better about living here thank you uh because you're right it does rain more there than it does here uh okay i'm gonna play speaking of soundtrack so obviously later we'll talk about another soundtrack we just talked about a kids in the hall soundtrack uh i loved brain candy i know it was kind of i don't think it was a commercial success i I'll be say it like that, except that I absolutely adore that movie, uh, for what it's worth. And that song is great.

And I want to ask you, I'm going to play this jam and then ask you about another soundtrack. Okay. Thank you. Okay. What's the deal with, uh, first of all, a fantastic song. If people are keeping track and following along at home, we're at this album's nest. It's from 1996. Is it true that this was going to be on a Friends soundtrack?

It's true, yeah. We got asked to, they'd done the first Friends soundtrack with, if any of you are old enough with you know hootie and the blowfish and all kinds of people on it like that and it was a huge smash album so they decided to do a second one that's how things go and uh they were looking for bands that had uh something sort of momentum and they asked us to write something for it so we wrote that and when we delivered it played it for our record label they said nope you're not giving it to them that's going to be your single and now you're going to write the rest of an album for yourselves uh so it wasn't

they they took it away from the friends thing and i'm not sure that second album ever happened i i don't if it did it was a very quiet and uh probably a wise decision to keep this jam for yourself but uh it's funny that the the biggest song off the first Friends soundtrack is a cover of another West Coast great Canadian band, 5440. That's right, yeah. Yeah, it did well for those guys too to have that happen. Do you guys ever hang out? I just think all you Vancouver bands just hang out together. We hang out at gigs and things that we're at together.

And yes, I see some of them socially. Uh, but, um, yes, of course we all live pretty much, you know,

those attached row houses that you see all over, you know, we all live in a one block of those row houses. I feel like, uh, Jody Vance might live near there. I don't know. Jody Vance.

I just had her on the show a couple of weeks ago. She's a former Sportsnet personality who now is back to her hometown of Vancouver. Yeah, she lives right next door. Go call her over. Stick her on the Skype here. I've got to ask about my friend, Biff Naked. So Biff Naked, forever, like Vancouver. Vancouver and Vancouver. And now she lives in my hood. gotta ask about my friend uh biff naked so biff naked uh forever like vancouver i was vancouver and vancouver and now she lives in my hood so uh have you ever felt any uh any like any have you

ever had the thought that maybe you should move to toronto like biff sure yeah i've had i've had the thought to move to a bunch of different places that I should not be here this whole time. But you have family, you have parents, you have things that you want to people you want to see. And then early on, I had kids. And so uprooting them and my wife has her own things to do. She's a, has her own things to do. She has a say in this and she has her own career. So it's kind of, all of a sudden,

the roots are there. So I never did. And you're right. How selfish of me to think that you could just up and go, Craig will do what Craig wants to do, but you've got a family to consider. So there's lots of things to weigh in there.

Of course, of course. Now, why do you leave the odds? wants to do, but you've got a family to consider. So there's lots of things to weigh in there. Of course, of course. Now, why do you leave the odds? Oh, I love a cliffhanger. Why does Craig Northey leave the odds? That answer in just a moment. Please bear with me as we celebrate those who have partnered with Toronto Mic'd to help fuel the real talk. In no particular order,

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for your Garbage Day notifications. Wonderful free service. Sign up today. Thank you all for listening. Craig Northey was fantastic because I'm recording this post. And you're in for a treat. Enjoy the rest of my conversation with the odds, Craig Northey. Now, why do you leave the odds? At the point that we did nest it wasn't everything I guess I had the best way I described it is you kind of know

you know it's time about a relationship or about a functioning organism and things were kind of slowing down and the uh the ideas that just fell out before weren't coming as quickly for some as than others and we operated as a complete democracy and still do to this day so um i started doing stuff on my own i had started doing scoring work and steven was producing records and engineering records and everybody was off doing all kinds of things so i thought hey maybe i'll just do my own record i proposed that because the odds record wasn't coming very quickly. And they said, nah, you can't do that. You have to give us this record. So I said, okay, well, then I'll just leave. It was just kind of, I suppose in those days,

you don't treat those things as seriously. All the work you put in building up and making something and um and you figure out we'll just do that again some other time we'll just get back together some other time and do it right but other people have uh legal things and stuff like that by that time that say this is what you're supposed to do. And as a musician, most musicians you'll find, or comedians or anything like that, got into it simply because they didn't want anybody to tell them what to do.

Right. That's true. Now, I got to take you back to New Year's Eve 1999 because as we flipped over, and you might remember the Y2K and what will happen but I was at the Air Canada. I lost my shirt in Y2K. I lost everything.

Well we weren't sure except I knew where I was going to be when the shit went down and I was going to be at a tragically hip concert at the Air Canada Centre and one of the bands I saw there were actually a lot of great bands played. If I have the right show, by the way sometimes I've been to so many hip shows sometimes they get conflated but I believe is this the sharkskin show or am I messing up my hip no you got no

it was sharkskin yeah so tell me a bit just a little bit about uh if you don't mind about uh sharkskin and then maybe we could segue that open into your history with the Tragically Hip. And I would love it if you would say a few words about the great legendary Gore Downie. Well, let's start with Sharkskin then. Well, that was a career strategy. People thought, you know, what's the first thing you should do out of the gate when you leave a band that's going really well we thought let's start an instrumental retro soul organ combo that's probably and with matching suits that's going to solve everything we've never had matching

suits before and this is going to put us right over the top. Actually, it was a music therapy kind of move because we are big fans of Booker T and the MGs and the meters and instrumental soul music, which some would guess from our music and some would not. And so we thought, let's do that as a kind of a learning and fun experience to cover some of that music and start writing some of that music. We made the record with the producer from Bedbugs, Jim Rondinelli, straight to tape, to stereo, like no multi-tracking live. And it was really fun he he had recorded a bunch of the montreux jazz festival live recordings so he recorded a lot of heavy cats in a live situation so that's how we did it was we employed him to sort of set it up so that it had a vibe anyway the hip

really loved that and we'd had a relationship with them as friends for a while and included us on their y2k new year's eve show which was really cool their initial concept was that we were going to be a segue band where we would have a B stage and we would play the bumpers between everybody. But it got too complicated to have two sets of microphones and a PA going both ways. So we were just on the bill, which was great, too. Now, later you would be working with Rob Baker with his Strippers Union band. So you definitely, again, I love the Tragically Hip and you're all over there. But is there anything you could share with us about playing with Gord and knowing Gord as a human being?

It's always a tough one to answer. You know, he's your pal and he's he's like you you know musicians find a lot of similarities in each other in the lifestyle and you kind of lead each other by the best of what you do um if i you know in parenting in art and reading and he was always a guy who gave you a book that he knew you would like and you liked it and um i i don't know what to share of gourd that people haven't already known about him but he was funny as hell and and a great friend he was a really great friend. Yeah, tremendous loss to the world, I'd say. Absolutely. In fact, if you were in my studio, like it used to be pre-pandemic,

you had to come in my studio, which is probably why it was so difficult to get you on Toronto Mic. But I have a picture of Gord hanging in the TMDS studios here. Well, it's great. And all those guys, I mean, it's awful when the history writes something for you that you don't actually want.

But it happens. Right, right. Here's something that happened on a much lighter note here. I'm going to play a song people will recognize. heard everything you say. You think there's not a lot going on, but look closer, baby, you're so wrong. I roll my eyes back into my... Kevin in Alberta asked me to,

well, he wrote in and said, I'm sure it'll come up organically, but ask Craig about corner gas. So here I am fulfilling Kevin in Alberta's request. Talk to me about what you did with Corner Gas. Hi, Kevin. So back in the long time before Corner Gas, I met Brent, but I believe, we believe that we met when he was opening for Kids in the Hall in 91 or so. And we became friends.

We hung around a lot of comedians in Vancouver. Because in those row houses, the row house that's full of the musicians, where I live beside Jody Vance and 5440, there's another row house right across the street. If you need a cup of sugar from a comedian, you walk across there. They're all there. Brent lived over there and man, he had some good sugar. And he said one day, you know, five years in or so, if I ever get a television show, would you do the music for it? This is true. He said this to me. And I said, yeah, of course I will. And so one day he called me and said, guess what? Remember that thing you said about if I got a television show, you'd do the music for it? I said,

yeah. And he said, well, I got one and this is how it goes and i'll describe it to you so he described the show to me and he said so i need this i need a song that feels like you're driving across the prairies and it comes on the radio so you just crank it and you gotta boot it and i said okay so um i was working with here's another it just is a convoluted thing. I mentioned earlier that we used to sleep on floors with the Gin Blossoms. And Jesse Valenzuela and I had made an album together and we're making one, I think, at the time. And we've been friends and collaborators since the 80s. And we had had the germ of this idea. So I thought, well, I can't just use it.

So I called Jesse and said, do you want to write this song on the phone with me? And he said, okay. And so we wrote that song on the phone. And then I thought, well, maybe he's not going to like that. So I wrote another one. And I just used the drums from the first one. And I wrote another tune.

And I sent them both to Brent. And he goes, great, we'll take both. We'll put one at the front, one at the back. Almost as lucrative as the Big Bang Theory theme song was for the Barenaked Ladies. Yeah, I think in my own vision, it's more lucrative. I will say, when I look back at great Canadian sitcoms, they don't get any bigger than that.

That was a huge show in this country, without a doubt, and probably beyond. I don't know what's going on in the rest of the world, but I'm sure many other countries were enjoying Corner Gas as well. So good stuff. It's all over the world, and I'm in season three now scoring the animated series, so it just keeps giving. See, all these friendships you make along the way, it all comes back to you.

So I'll do some quick hits here, because I want to get us to the Trans-Canada Highwaymen and Stephen Page. So basically, FOTM Colin James, you worked with him? Were you his backup band for a while? Paul and James, you did some, like, you worked with him? Were you his backup band for a while? Yes, I wrote with him the album Fuse and then co-produced that with Joe Hardy. And then I've worked on maybe seven. I usually have something to do. He gives me an odd job, pardon the pun, in most records,

and we're pals. And I toured with him a long time in the band. Doug was in the band from the odds. Right. Doug Elliott. Now, and again, I have many friends who have been on these

ships and dips cruises with the Barenaked Leagues. I don't know how those will fly post-COVID, but they used to tell me, you know, it was great to be a Canadian on those cruises because a lot of Americans would be Barenaked Ladies fans and would go on the cruises. And the Americans didn't have the same love,

for example, for Sloan or for you guys, dare I say. And that it was amazing to see these huge Canadian bands that, you know, we absolutely adore in that kind of an environment where the americans were and this is the stories i would hear but you you you've performed on these ships and dips with bare naked ladies uh right yeah yes yeah we did all of them yeah and maybe a little uh a little uh tidbit about why you had to be the new odds for a period of time oh okay yeah well the ladies were our old friends too and and uh we've toured a lot together in that period the hip the ladies the blossoms we were the opening band uh that was forced on all of us and we played a lot around america and uh canada and stuff with those guys and uh when they heard that the three of us doug and pat and i were writing together

again um they said hey we hear that you guys are doing that would you like to come on this cruise thing we invented and we said that sounds cool yes and um we hadn't really named ourselves or anything like that we were just writing music again and uh we thought firstly before the name we should decide whether we're doing it as a three piece or not and if we're going to do some of the old music too which they we throw in there um it really does require another guitar player and we all sing so there's a lot of vocal parts and uh doug and pat had been playing with this guy murray atkinson and i knew him from chin and Jetty's band, who you might know from Bass is Bass, a Toronto staple. Of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Chin and I had worked together and

Murray was in his band and he was so funky. I thought, man, I went to see Doug and Pat playing with him and thought, man, this guy's great. And I said to them without saying to Murray, do you think he'd want to do this? And they said, no, no, no, Craig. You don't want to do that. As soon as you and Murray get drunk together, he's in the band. And I said, ah, we'll find out. So yeah, we got drunk together.

And then he joined the band, and we thought, what are we going to call it? And we wanted it to be funny, so we went with the New Odds, because the Spinal Tap had been the originals and then the New Originals. And nobody got the joke. We put out an album, called it by the New Odds cheerleader, and we went on the cruises we had a great time we did our shtick that we used to do that i told you about at the roxy on granville that led to us

going to los angeles because the ladies were big fans of that they'd show up and they they were on the stage with us every time they are around doing that shtick with us so we did the shtick on the cruises for the other musicians because we would just start to play and soon there'd be 30 people on the stage and the song never ended and it was five in the morning and everybody was running up to sing one line of some song by bananarama and and And we, the new odds thing never, we decided to go and actually use the name because nobody got who we were or why we did that. Well, sometimes you can be too cool for school.

Like you forget, not everybody is as sharp and witty as you are. So you got to dumb it down for the people. That's a nice way of saying stupid. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, one last thing before we get to TransCanada Highwaymen, and that is the fun fact that you guys were the house band at the Canada Hockey House during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Oh, yeah, that was a blast. Yeah. We did a show, a full comedy show with Sean Cullen as the band. 2010 winter Olympics. Oh yeah. That was a blast. Yeah. We had, we did a show full comedy show with Sean Cullen as the band in the day. And we did, uh, yeah. Canadiana there.

And we had a lot of guests and, um, we had a lot of fun. Did Sean have the juice pigs with him or was it just Sean doing his thing? Who's fantastic. I have a lot of time for Sean Cohen. I think he's very, he's almost too cool for school. He brought the juice, but he didn't have the juice pigs with him.

He did bring the juice, though. All right. Were you, by the way, able to score a ticket to the Canada versus USA gold medal final by any chance? I gave my tickets to the women's final, which I really wanted to see. They were, they were just, those guys were the gals were the shit to us.

And we wanted to see that, but because they would position us at hockey house on stage so that when the game ended, if it ended positively or negatively, we could launch. And then either if it ended poorly, we were to make everybody feel good, which was a terrible idea to be that band. And then if it ended well, it just like fireworks going off

and then we'd start playing basically. So we couldn't actually be there. So I gave the tickets to the the women's game to my parents who got to see them win that's nice and and uh and the the actual men's game i can't remember who got those tickets i think my wife okay well that's a loving gesture to somebody i'm assuming you love because they were both great games, but the Sidney Crosby overtime winner is legendary. Oh, man, it was just, well, it's pretty well documented.

I'm telling you, if you look out there, you'll find all the information you need as to what happened that night. I just remember Jerome McGinley yelling, no, it was Sidney Crosby yelling, Iggy! Just like 2.5 seconds before he slips it

by Ryan Miller there. But fantastic, fantastic. All right, we teased it off the top. I'm a collector. I was collecting the Trans-Canada Highwaymen. I had visited,

it visited my home where the great Moe Berg from the Pursuit of Happiness, lovely gentleman, Toronto boy. Chris Murphy, who now lives in, even though he's from, I guess, Halifax, but he now lives in Toronto, and Sloan, fantastic band. I recently saw them at the Phoenix. And I was, during this pandemic, I actually did a Zoom with Stephen Page

from the Stephen Page Trio, formerly of the Barenaked Ladies. And I know that those three gentlemen are all in the Trans Canada Highwaymen with some guy named Craig Northey from The Odds. And now I've completed my collection of the Trans Canada Highwaymen. How did the Trans Canada

Highwaymen come to be? A. B. Will you record any original music together? Cause right now you guys tour and do your songs from your previous bands. And we'll leave it at two things. Cause if I throw a third on there, you'll probably skip one of the questions. So.

Right. Or I might not know as far as coming to be. Steven and I, I think we're, and Chris, we're talking about doing something where we went and played each other's songs and we floated it past uh our people and nobody seemed that keen and uh so it kind of went away and Mo, we all knew each other. Now, as you figured out from this whole conversation, everybody knows each other.

So then Mo, who incidentally is from St. Albert, Alberta. He's from Edmonton and then came to Toronto. You're right, of course. Yeah. You're right, of course. Chris would want to do it and me and you. And I said, well, funny thing is, Stephen and Chris and I were talking about this. So why don't the four of us do it? And perfect. So Jim was the director and we kind of came up with archival footage and a storyline-ish to the show. And it was more of a intended asas-a-theater kind of performance

where we would talk a lot, which is perfect because that's what we do. And so we did that. We did a run of shows in theater with this big screens, and Jim helped us put that together. And we realized as well that just the rock shows were a lot of fun as well. So we did those too. as well that just the rock shows were a lot of fun as well. So we did those too.

Which odds, like obviously you'd play, when it came time to do an odd song, which were the go-to jams that you would typically play as a foursome there? Well, we get to kind of curate each other's music

like we choose. So, Satisfied, Someone Who's Cool, Making Man Falls Apart, those songs. Awesome. Any plans to, when all this settles, when we have the vaccine in our bodies, any chance to tour again as a trans canada highwayman oh yeah well we've been very active during the covid situation making these videos that when uh the odds started i i sort of thought well let's do some of these something in isolation

split screen thing and uh the highwayman said why don't we do that too and so my son cole is a director and he so it's easy to um pawn off the hard work of the video part on somebody else so that's what we've been doing well wendy blankenship did right in and i was going to ask you this next uh ask craig how long it takes to put those videos together and it sounds like cole's doing the heavy lifting how long does it take him i think i spend as much time as he does but uh so it it does it depends which one it is it depends how into it he gets because he tries he's kind of guy who wants to do something new. So he tries some new technique and he's kind of using us as his guinea pigs. So it takes him anywhere from a few hours to a few days to put them together. Well, Craig, this blows. Not the interview, but this blows is a web series that your children

created that you perform some music for. So can you talk a little about working with your kids like that and maybe pump their tires a bit and talk about This Blows and anything else related? It's my favorite topic. Thank you. Yeah, my daughter Alita is a writer and actor, and my son, Cole, is a director. And so they had done a video for a band called The Dirty Nill from Dundas, Ontario. Yeah. The Dirty Nill wanted something that was fun and crazy and didn't involve them in it. So my son came up with this idea about a gal who has the superpower to blow people up

and created this kind of Romero-looking effect where you could blow people up and did this video for the dirty nil for the their song zombie eyed and it was pretty popular kind of culty and and um i played it one day um because we're all you know there's this is a big family as we said everybody knows each other i was with bruce mccullough in los angeles and he said what's that thing cole did and so i showed him the video and he goes this is cool and when alita my daughter was staying with the mcculloch's bruce said that thing that that you did with cole there's more to that there's more to that idea we should flesh that out so they she was there for a few days and they started writing the characters.

They started writing who these people are. And then Bruce said, how about I write it and you guys and I'll pitch it. So he pitched it and CBC decided that's a good idea. And so they did eight short episodes for cbc and um of course when they were going to make music for it they went to see they went to steven page i get a gig from my kids oh they didn't go to steven page okay uh is it by the way i shared it with my friend jim mcgraw who uh who made the music for young Drunk Punk and for Death Comes to Town, Kids in the Hall with me.

And he's a Torontonian and he's amazing. Can you see this blows? Like, can people literally pause us right now, although we're coming to an end, but pause us right now and load up their CBC Gem app, which is free, by the way, for all Canadians, CBC Gem,

and find this blows right now by Cole and Alita Northey and with music from the great Craig Northey. Yeah, do it. I've got it queued up for you. I actually feel the CBC should do a better job promoting this app because there's actually a load of great stuff on this free app that we all could access and uh i don't feel it's uh getting the attention it deserves everybody talks about netflix and uh you know prime and crave meanwhile cbc gem has great stuff like this blows just uh

ready to be watched on demand i agree yeah there, if you took nothing else from this deep dive of Craig Northey, you know that you can actually right now go to the CBC Gem app or stream it online and watch this blows. Thanks so much, Craig, for doing this. I completed the set and I absolutely loved this interview. And I know you gave me a lot of your time. And I really appreciate that. Well, I appreciate you calling me. And I'm glad you completed your set.

Now you can paste them all in the book and put it away. And then your mom can hand it back to you 20 years from now and say, you left this under your bed. And do you want it still? I'm just glad she didn't throw it out. Now it's worth something. to your bed and do you want it still i'm just glad she didn't throw it out that's uh yeah that's now it's worth something and that brings us to the end of our 640th show you can follow me on twitter i'm at toronto mike craig you're you're at craig nor the but we can also follow the odds at the

odds music oh no just odds music no d oh okay well i've been tagging the wrong people maybe okay odds music is how you uh follow the odds on a twitter our friends at great lakes brewery are at great lakes beer palma pasta they're at palma pasta sticker you is at sticker you the keitner group are at the Keitner Group. CDN Technologies are at CDN Technologies. And Garbage Day are at GarbageDay.com slash Toronto Mike. Before I play us out, Craig, did you ever play with the house band of the Toronto Mike podcast, The Lowest of the Low?

Yes, I know those guys. I don't know if we actually ever did a gig together though well maybe i need to fix that i don't know fantastic you i would say the uh the lowest of the low are toronto's the odds can i say that you're both they're okay with it i just asked them first you're both great bands see you all next week this podcast has been produced by tmds and accelerated by roam phone roam phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RomePhone.ca to get started.