TransCanada Highwaymen: New band, familiar faces
You can practically hear Craig Northey wince over the phone as soon as he hears the words: Supergroup.
The frontman for The Odds is on the line from Vancouver talking about his latest project, The TransCanada Highwaymen, when the dreaded tag comes up. Inevitable, when your new band includes Chris Murphy of Sloan, Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness and former Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page.
“None of us see ourselves as super, as you’ll find,” he says with a laugh. “We’re as mortal and as ordinary as they come. I don’t know how you get past that. I think the idea about all super groups is that they fail, so why put pressure on anybody?”
As Northey describes it, this new foursome pieced together from old bands is all about the fun. Fun to watch. Fun to listen to. And for all them, fun to hang out with. All have been friends for years, this is just another way to spend quality time together.
“This is just an extended ‘hang,’” he says. “Jim Millan, the person who’s kind of the producer of this show, was one of the people who shepherded it together. I worked with him with The Kids in the Hall for a long time, and he’s also a friend of Moe’s. He though this would be a great thing for people to see four frontmen who were all in bands talk about what that means and articulate the music.”
The music, for now, is all familiar. Each member brings some of their old hits to the table, which is like playing fantasy football with actual players, says Northey. He’s not just playing One Week or
I’m an Adult Now, he’s playing it with the guys who sang them.
“I think all of us look at the set list and go ‘Oh, next song’s my song, OK …’ and then ‘Oh man! It’s one of Moe’s!’ You don’t really think about your own songs that much. It’s one you didn’t have to learn.”
The band kicks off a 10-day tour April 19 at FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. A fitting start, since it was at Niagara’s Jackson-Triggs Winery they played their first show last summer.
“We knew it would be a continuing thing, we just didn’t know how well it would go,” recalls Northey. “I think after we rehearsed once, we weren’t legitimately worried about anything, but we wanted to test it out and see how all the parameters fit together.
“Just don’t screw up everyone else’s songs, that was my mind set.”
That Jackson-Triggs show included Brian Wilson and Jane from The Barenaked Ladies, The
Other Man and Underwhelmed from Sloan, It Falls Apart from the Odds and I’m an Adult Now from The Pursuit of Happiness. For the tour kickoff, Northey says a few cover songs will be thrown in as well.
If all goes well, an album should follow.
“It would be a place to start,” he says. “To begin with, it’s for the fun of playing our stuff. I think after we’re together and we realize it could be even more fun, we’ll go further.
“I’m hoping we don’t put a bunch of pressure on each other. We really enjoy each other’s company so much and enjoy the music. That’s part of how music starts … the hang.
“It’s not like we needed verification we had common ground, but this is just an extended hang.” jlaw@postmedia.com