Eliott Brood live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 20 September 2018

A hard drive that had sat in a suitcase for close to fifteen years is the reason Elliott Brood had a record to tour in 2018. The band was setting up a studio in Hamilton, Ontario, when it found old song ideas on the drive, unfinished and half forgotten.

Those ideas became Ghost Gardens, which Paper Bag Records released on 15 September 2017. The album was a year old, almost to the week, when the band reached Crocks, and it was still the newest record the band had.

The date was Thursday, 20 September 2018. The ticket was listed at C$25, and nothing else was published about the night: no opener, no doors time. The shop spelled the band’s name Eliott Brood, dropping an L.

Three people and a stomp

Elliott Brood formed in Toronto in 2002. The trio is Mark Sasso, who sings and plays guitar and banjo, Casey Laforet on guitar and bass pedals, and Stephen Pitkin on percussion and sampler. Their music is usually filed as alternative country, and the band helped popularise a label for it, “death country”. Laforet has described the approach as foot-stomping, good-time music.

The name is a character as much as a band. Each album is treated as that figure turning up in a different period of history, and Sasso designs the artwork himself. That habit of a concept and a look for every record made the group easy to follow across releases, and it gives a Thursday-night club show a slight air of theatre.

What stood behind them

Two records set their standing. Ambassador, from 2005, was Juno-nominated. Mountain Meadows, from 2008, was shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize, and Days Into Years, from 2011, won the 2013 Juno Award for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year.

By 2018 the band had opened for Wilco and for Blue Rodeo, and had played the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler. A Thunder Bay ticket at C$25 was a modest price for a group with that record, and the price may say more about the market than about the band.

The album, and its name

The title Ghost Gardens refers to perennial flowers that keep coming up at abandoned properties long after anyone has stopped tending them. The image suits an album that swings between loud and tender songs, and it suits the old ideas too, brought back to bloom with better equipment.

Stephen Pitkin said the songs deserved a place in the world once the band had its own studio. A song sketched near the start of the band’s career and completed in 2017 reached Thunder Bay in its third life. No set list was printed for the night, so nobody can say which of them were played.

A month of touring bands

The room had a busy September. Future Islands had played twenty days earlier at C$31. A week after this night came Great Lake Swimmers, and two days after that Dear Rouge, both at C$25, the same price as this one.

Three of the four September nights carried one price, which suggests C$25 was the room’s usual figure for a touring band with a following. That is a reading of the numbers and not a stated policy.

The road through town

A Toronto trio that plays banjo has an obvious northern route. The Trans-Canada Highway from southern Ontario to Winnipeg passes through Thunder Bay, and a club date breaks the drive. That is a reading of the map, not a reason any booking notice gave.

Thunder Bay has roughly 108,000 people, enough for a working club calendar, so a band on that road could stop for the night and be paid for it. The next big city west is Winnipeg, and the drive between the two is long enough that a night in between suits everyone.

Of everything above, the detail that lingers is the suitcase. A band that keeps its earliest demos in luggage and then finds them by accident is a band whose next record might be hiding in the same place.