Elliott BROOD Out and About Tour with Special guests NQ Arbuckle and Lindsey & The Lonelies
Toronto-based alternative country band Elliott BROOD headlined Rum Runners reopening this past Friday, November 12, with special guests NQ Arbuckle and Lindsey & The Lonelies. The trio consists of Mark Sasso on lead vocals, guitar, banjo, ukulele, harmonica, and kazoo, Casey Laforet on guitar, lead vocals, backing vocals, bass pedals, keys, and ukulele, and Stephen Pitkin on percussion, sampler, and backing vocals.
The show was staged in the smaller upper floor concert bar of London Music Hall called Rum Runners, but that didn’t affect the energy created by the five-time nominated Juno award winners. Elliott BROOD is known for loud, high-energy shows, and this was a full house. The guys started the show with the instrumental "Chuckwagon" from their 2008 album *Mountain Meadows* and got the crowd’s energy going early.
Playing an eclectic range of instruments throughout the show, their sound bounces between bluegrass and what has been called “death country”.
Their latest album, 2020’s *Keeper*, was featured heavily throughout their roughly two-hour set. Casey Laforet paid homage to his and Sasso’s hometown of Windsor, with his embroidered suit featuring patches of roses and cityscape and a large rose and image of the Ambassador Bridge on the back of the jacket.
Their set also featured a couple of obvious callout songs midway, "The Bridge" and "Rose City Ramble". Playing an eclectic range of instruments throughout the show, their sound bounces between bluegrass and what has been called “death country”. The London crowd, many of them diehard fans, sang and danced along to many of the songs, and the energy fed back and forth between the crowd and the band. On occasion, Laforet would rise from his spot sitting on a gear case and join in a guitar jam.
At one point, they performed their version of “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”, the theme song from *Cheers* that they recorded in the midst of the pandemic, which really got the venue in a singing mood. It was the perfect song for a smaller venue like this and was recorded in that spirit of the band missing these kind of shows. The guys showed their appreciation by doing a lengthy set of encores, and it was a great finish to a long-awaited night of live music and hopefully a return to some normality.
London band Lindsey & The Lonelies opened the night with a set of brooding country ballads laced with beautiful harmonies evocative of small dusty towns in the American west. The band had the unfortunate luck of playing for an early sparse crowd but was well received and delivered a solid performance. Toronto’s NQ Arbuckle also opened with an energetic solo acoustic set and got things primed for the feature act.
