Here are a series of snaps taken by our friend Mark MacKave. If anybody else has some please send them along.

You can check out Allen Trottier’s site at eventseries.com That’s where we found these. Have a peak. Trivia: We came out for the first song and the fire alarm went off and automatically killed the PA system. Since our big entrance was blown we went to the dressing room and switched shirts so that nobody would know it was us who had just been on stage. Pretty crafty eh. That’s why we’re wearing what appear to be the same shirts in these photos.

Craig’s made all the music for a great TV comedy series that begins tonight on CTV at 8pm. It features our long time pals Nancy Robertson and Brent Butt in starring roles. As Brent said about Sidney Crosby’s goal last night, “It’s 9 kinds o’ sweet and 12 kinds o’ awesome”! You’ll have a good time. http://shows.ctv.ca/Hiccups.aspx

This was taken between the 1st and 2nd periods of the Canada vs Slovakia semi-final. Are we proud Canadians? Hmmmm. Barney and Dustin Bentall sat in.

It’s been a whirlwind of ultra Canadian activity for us since Feb 12. We’ve been pumping up people dressed in red and white who seem eager to cheer for any team dressed in red and white . . . even the Swiss. These people are also filled with an insane amount of alcohol. Nobody light a match in Hockey House. Here are a few pics taken from the Kurtenblog. These are from opening night. We’ve had lots of special guests (see Ed Robertson here) and Sunday night should be insane.

Odds play Surrey Olympic Park with 5440 on the 21st. Free concert!
http://tinyurl.com/yccp2t4

What happened to the www.craignorthey.com site you say? Why doth he forsake it? Well…I’ve been pretty busy with Odds stuff and that ends up over here on this page and then this Twitter thing got invented and I find it easier to say 145 characters and go back to work so sometimes I just jot a note up there. To top it off somebody hacked this site and wrecked all my galleries and I don’t have a lot of skills in that department and don’t know how to fix it. Look for a revamp around March when things open up a bit for me.

Currently I’m the scoring composer on two TV series. Right now I’m polishing up episode 7 of “Hiccups” starring my pals Nancy Robertson and Brent Butt. It’s going to be on CTV and I think episode 1 airs in February or March. I’m busy enough with it that I don’t actually know. It’s damn funny and I know fans of their work are going to love it. In fact…new fans are going to love it. You’ll even hear Pat Steward singing in the end credit piece.

I am also sharing duties with musical marvel Jim McGrath www.jimmcgrath.ca on Kids in the Hall’s “Death Comes to Town” for CBC. It started last week with episode 1. Tuesday nights @ 9pm. You can download the first episode FREE at the itunes store right now (in HD). We had 1,054,000 viewers on the first night. In Canada those are pretty great numbers so I am happy that something so good will actually be seen by a lot of people. We’re working on the final 2 episodes right now and it’s a musical Rubik’s cube of tension and release. Odds can be heard playing the theme and all over the place in the score as I hired Doug, Pat and Murray to cut bed tracks with me for all the major character themes.

During it all the Odds are playing quite a bit at the Olympics. There’s a place called Molson Hockey House that will be filled with hockey fans and players from all over the world…having a good time. Odds are pretty much the house band and we’ll also do double duty as Sean Cullen’s band for his talk show there.

The play we wrote “Odds in a Good Weird Story” had a nice little showcase in Calgary a couple of months back. This performance led to 9 others that will take place in Ontario and the Maritimes in the fall. We’re working on spreading that out to a full, big tour. I’ll keep you posted.

A question I get asked a lot…”when will there be new Odds music”? In March we’ll start on an EP that we’ve written but have had no time to record. Doug and Pat are currently out on the road with Colin James “Rooftops and Satellites” tour so go say hi if they’re in your town. Doug, Pat and I were in the band for that record and it’s a real gooder. Colin is a true artist who likes to go where his muse takes him and, this time, he wanted to make a rock record and we got the call. www.colinjames.com

Murray is about to release his first album under the band moniker “Swan”. It rocks you right in your man or woman balls. It will be released on the Pheromone label as was Odds “Cheerleader”. Look for it in 2010. I got to help write one song so I am glad that having Murray join our band worked in MY favour.

Young Liam Titcomb is about to release another precocious album. I hate when the young cats are so good. It might mean I am booted from the lower middle of the totem pole. We wrote some songs together a while back and Liam has put another of them on this new record. It’s called “Raise Your Right hand” and I must say he put a sweet spin on it. I don’t know how these young bucks can out Beatle a Beatles rip-off artist like me…but they can.

Our chums the Gin Blossoms are also in the thick of a new album. Jesse Valenzuela and I wrote a song for this one called “Dead or Alive on the 405”. They send me the track yesterday and its pure pop for now people. I forwarded the track on to Terry Townson and Steve Hilliam (the Vancouver Horns) and they’re going to go all “Tumbling Dice” on its ass. Look for that one.

In recent news Wendy Bird has released her album “Natural Wonder”. I implore you to buy this record. I will personally guarantee it. I don’t know the technicalities behind a personal guarantee but I am doing it right now. I suppose if you bought it and didn’t like it then I would have to buy you a drink or something. We’ll work that out later because it will never happen. You’ll love it. I produced the record and played on it…but the list of people who played on it is pretty amazing…Barney Bentall and all his Legendary Hearts, Elvis Costello, Odds, Colin James, John Ellis, my sister Morag, Geoff Hicks, Simon Kendall, Rick Hopkins and other CJBand members and alumni and Adam Levy (Norah Jones etc). The more amazing thing is that almost all these people played together live on a 2-day session. The songs are all Jeffrey Hatcher songs. Jeff is “the” unsung Canadian songwriter and he deserves a tribute as grand as Blackie and the Rodeo Kings did for Willie P. Bennett. Read this…it explains it all — http://tinyurl.com/yfbr46e

The reviews for this record are coming in VERY strong and I’m stoked for Wendy. She’s a talent that needs some applause. Get it here: www.beaumontclassicrecords.com/

If you’re near a computer or a local Vancouver radio on Thursday’s at 6pm PST you can hear me on Shore 104’s “Music Notes at Six” – 104.3 on your FM dial. I do a turn as “the Connoisseur”. They let me pick a song for their playlist and I make a case for it and then we spin the tune — pretty good gig. I get the power that all musicians dreamt of having over the last 50 years. Shore 104 is the new Vancouver AAA station and it deserves your support. They and the new “Peak 100.5” are exposing Vancouverites to all the music they may have been missing with local radio in the past. I’m very happy that these stations are taking the plunge and giving people choices that they should have always had. www.shore104.com

Tuesday night Jan 12th at 9pm is when episode 1 of Kids in the Hall’s “Death Comes to Town” airs on CBC TV. We are all very excited. Craig wrote all the music with his compadre Jim McGrath (Art of Time Ensemble, all around musical genius). We all played on the score so when you hear drums, bass, guitar or keyboards it is 60% sure to be us. For sure we are playing the theme so for those 20 glorious seconds you can focus on the music because there is none of that crazy dialog going on. Check out Jim McGrath at www.jimmcgrath.ca and start watching the series. Its fantastic.

The Holiday Train has hit some pretty spectacular scenery  and the crowds are really coming out to feed the food bank. We’ll try to put up a few more pictures because all of us are snapping them pretty much all the time. We saw two wolves out on the frozen expanse of Duck Lake in the Kootenays yesterday. Amazing,

Learning to play with Gloves On

Our man Ross “Copper” Bartlett has been filming the whole Holiday Train trip. Here are some stills from his footage.