Amanda Ash

EDMONTON – Mark Sasso is painting the trim of his house. In the background, his dog barks at a field mouse that’s crept into his Toronto yard.

The vocalist for Toronto death country trio Elliott Brood enjoys these little pleasures. For a small band, Sasso says they tour incessantly. The simple life comes as a meditative reprieve.

It’s moments like these that help Sasso and his bandmates — guitarist Casey Laforet and drummer Stephen Pitkin — recharge and reflect, especially right now. Time always seems to fly by for Elliott Brood, which is why Sasso can’t believe the three-piece band has been together for 10 years. As he paints, he marvels at how far they’ve come and what they’re doing to celebrate.

Elliott Brood will be re-releasing their debut EP Tin Type on vinyl in mid-August to mark their decade-long existence, adding three more songs to the record — The Trail, Rusty Nail, and a cover of Parkdale’s Cranes — that initially didn’t make the cut.

“We didn’t expect to be a band. Here we are 10 years later, and we get to play music for a living,” Sasso says over the phone. “(Tin Type) was more of a demo that turned into a platform for us to get out there. We always wanted to do a hard pressing of it and we always wanted to do vinyl. Being that the initial idea was a demo and it was only six songs, we kind of afterwards wished we had recorded a full record. So this kind of makes it a full record.”

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