Instead of taking the typical route in touring to promote their current album Burn Burn, Canadian rockers Our Lady Peace took a different, and somewhat unique approach: performing two-night stands in cities, including Edmonton May 7th and 8th and Calgary May 10th and 11th. Night one features the album Clumsy in its entirety, while night two features Spiritual Machines. Both shows will then feature a second set of OLP hits.
“There has been some confusion about these shows. It is a two part show. We are basically being our own opening band. If you don’t care about the record we are playing, you are still seeing a regular OLP show. It is a really cool experience. The two parts of the show look and sound very different. It is an experience and we are really proud of it,” guitarist Steve Mazur explained. “It has been better than we could have hoped. We come out and do the first set, we don’t jump around as much because we want to play it really well. People tend to just listen a little bit more and don’t go as crazy. Then we get done playing a song and people are freaking out and loving it. The reaction has been cool to talk to people about these records. Doing a whole show with no opening band, it is an hour of Our Lady Peace, take a break, and then another hour and a half. By the end of the night the audience feels like it is an experience, not just a concert.”
The idea came about from hearing Cheap Trick do something similar, and then Mazur saw the band Devo do the same idea in Los Angeles.
“We had heard about Cheap Trick had done three nights in a row at the Metro in Chicago, each night doing one of their three records. We thought it would be something cool to do in Toronto, a seven night stand doing a different album every night. I went to see Devo in LA, they were doing two nights in a theatre, doing a different full album each night. The night I saw wasn’t the record I wanted to see because the other one was sold out, but I thought it was great. We were all having dinner, the band and our manager, and talking about our Canadian tour for Burn Burn. We wanted to do something different this time, we’ve always done the big hockey rinks and theatres. It is great but we’ve done it and wanted to do something different. The Devo show came up and we got really excited about it. Let’s do two nights in each city, a different record each night, a two part night with an intermission, no opening act just an evening with Our Lady Peace. We got really excited and said to our manager, lets do it. He said it would be a logistical nightmare and we said, Well ok, cool, deal with it and send us the routing.”
Then came the hard part of choosing which of the band’s seven studio albums to play. To do so, the band (Mazur, vocalist Raine Maida, bassist Duncan Coutts and drummer Jeremy Taggart) went to their fans.
“We originally came up with Naveed and Spiritual Machines. We ran into a lot of fans in person and online that say Spiritual Machines is their favorite record. We all love it as well. We thought we would do those two records, but we decided to ask the fans what they wanted to hear if we did something like this. We put it up on our website and facebook group asking what album the fans would want to hear, and Clumsy and Spiritual Machines came back the strongest. We were glad Machines came back so strong because we really wanted to do that one. It is definitely two different periods of the band so we went with it.”
It presents an interesting challenge for a band to tackle a project like this. To play songs you haven’t played in years is difficult enough. Mazur, who replaced Mike Turner in 2002, was not part of the recording process for either album and had to learn them from scratch.
“We really wanted to recreate them as close to the record as possible. A big challenge included how to recreate some of the sounds. There are songs you record that would be really hard to play live so you realize you probably never will. You can’t do that with this. We don’t play to any tracks when we play live. So the challenge was how to make this happen with the sounds and multiple guitars. How to recreate the album live when all we have is drums, bass, guitar. We had to do some mind bending to make the songs come across. We worked our butts off and for the most part the songs sound a lot like the record. Remembering all these songs we have never played, the notes, chords, Raine remembering all the lyrics. We usually played 1 song live at our shows off of Spiritual Machines and there are 11 songs on that record. It is kind of like memorizing lines from a high school play.”
Maida has changed his vocal style since the albums as well.
“He doesn’t do as much of the falsetto stuff, he likes the register he has been singing in the last few years, it suits his voice. He had to go back and revise and get his mind back into the approach he had for those records. He has been able to pull it off note-wise no problem; it was just getting into that mindset again.”
The tour will be almost a “revisiting of youth” for both the band and the audience. Clumsy was released in 1997 and Spiritual Machines in 2001. Many fans were teenagers at the time and band members were not yet married with kids.
“For me going back through these records - from knowing the guys and where the band was at in different periods and dissecting the songs a bit - I got an inside perspective of where the band was at different periods. On Clumsy, there are some songs on that record that, holy shit they are so crammed with notes and so much singing. As you get older you tend to not want to fill all the spaces with a note, you mature and let stuff breathe more. We will be done with songs some night from Clumsy and it’s like, Jesus man could there be any more notes in this song?”
It may also be a chance for fans who haven’t seen OLP in awhile to rediscover the band.
“When we first started doing it, it was a tip of the hat to the fans who have supported us. That is something we felt really good about this tour. But we are getting people who are going, they are playing Clumsy, that was my favorite record junior year in high school. So they see us play that and some of our newer stuff and hopefully that re-ignites the flame.”
One comment that receives scrutiny is when Maida says, at the start of the second set, that “the work is over” and it is time to have fun. Mazur clarified that statement.
“It has been a lot of hard work for us trying to perform these records. We know there are people in the audience that love these records so we feel a little more on our toes and nervous in playing those first sets. A lot of the music especially in Clumsy is pretty challenging so we have to focus pretty hard during that set. The second set is songs we have been playing almost every night for years, that is a little more ingrained in us and we don’t have to concentrate as hard.”
Another unique thing about the tour is the VIP experience. A limited number of packages were available for $199 that included prime seats, merchandise and a meet and greet with the band. VIP packages are becoming something many artists, from the Black Eyed Peas, to Bon Jovi, to Lady Gaga are offering. The difference is the price tag ($250 - $1000), and still you don’t get to meet those bands.
“It has been really cool to meet fans. At the most we usually meet them on the way to the bus, we might get to talk to 20 or 30 people who have stood out there for a long time. Other nights we have to leave right away. Some nights in Canada it is too damn cold for people to wait. So to get to meet people in back and take a picture and talk to everyone for a couple of minutes, it is a one-on-one thing; a nice relaxed time. Everyone is not crowding in. We have heard way more people’s stories. I have never felt so warm and fuzzy from meeting OLP fans and so fullfilled by what our music does for fans up until this tour. It does just as much for us as it does for them, honestly. After a show I can be tired and not feel social but I look forward to the VIP events after the show. Towel off, grab a drink and meet a bunch of the fans. I think I will miss it now, when we don’t do it.”
It seems like OLP has played every venue in Calgary - Saddledome, Edgefest, Coca-Cola Stage, small clubs, MacEwan Hall, and the Jubilee Auditorium. This is their first time in such an intimate venue as the Jack Singer Concert Hall.
“It sounds diplomatic but they are all different and I love them all. Playing a festival is one kind of amazing experience, playing a theatre or club is another. We wanted theatres for this show because we are being meticulous with the performances, really trying to get as close to the record as possible, we wanted to make sure people could really hear that. You can hear better in a theatre because it is smaller.”
I know a lot of LGBT OLP fans. An OLP audience ranges from gay and straight, men and women, people in their 40’s down to teens who were not alive when the band broke through with Naveed in 1994.
“We are definitely not a band that writes about chcks and cars. A lot of bands, that is what they are about, and we love those bands. I am not going to say I don’t love AC/DC just because their songs are all about girls. Raine has always lyrically steered towards things outside of that. One thing I know for us is that all four of us didn’t start playing music to become famous; we were bit by the music bug at an early age. When you get bit by that bug, that inspiring thing, it is addictive and you want to keep doing it. That transcends sexual preference, age, race, everything. When you feel that, you feel it, it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are or where you come from. That is hopefully inherent in our music. I don’t think we could write songs from a place of wanting fame, that is not how we started or how we know to do things.”
Alberta has always been a rock-n-roll province. Bands often comment that Calgary and Edmonton are some of their favorite cities to play, and OLP is no exception. Mazur said they can’t wait to bring this tour to us here.
“Pretty much on all of our Canadian tours Calgary and Edmonton are two of our strongest places to play every time. It is where people automatically come out, we always know we will have strong shows. We never have to worry about attendance, and the vibe of the crowd is just out of hand. We are so thankful for Calgary and Edmonton, every time we know we will have good shows there and that is a great feeling.” 