Our Lady Peace tackles arena shows
By Karen Bliss-- Jam! Music
Canoe Article
With sales of 600,000 for Clumsy in Canada, a sell-out arena tour on the horizon, an opening slot for the
Rolling Stones in Quebec City and current breakthroughs in the U.S., Toronto rock band Our Lady
Peace is most concerned with making its first-ever arena tour as personal as possible.
"We're trying to not make these big arenas seem like big arenas," says lead vocalist Raine Maida, on the
phone from Atlanta, GA, during a rare day off from opening for Everclear in the States. "It's hard to do."
While touring with Everclear, OLP's less hectic opening schedule is allowing Maida, guitarist Mike
Turner, bassist/keyboardist Duncan Coutts and drummer Jeremy Taggart to direct some short films to
project on video screens for the Canadian tour in January.
"That's what we're really excited about," Maida says, shrugging off the U.S. SoundScan numbers and
chart positions, reviews that predict superstardom, and even the upcoming Stones date.
"We talked about showing the lost tapes from some of the videos, like stuff that people have never seen,"
says Maida who directed OLP's current video, "Automatic Flowers", with the rest of the band. "But we
really want to make something that's important to us, so we're going to do some interesting little short
mini-movies that we're directing."
Meanwhile, Maida is finding that Americans are reacting to OLP's inventive rock in much the same
manner as folks back home. Clumsy has sold over 130,000 copies, according to SoundScan, on the
strength of just one single, "Superman's Dead", and Columbia Records is about to go to radio with
"Clumsy" next week.
"Crossing that boundary and seeing that kids are reacting just the same down here as they did in Canada
is gratifying for us because whatever myths people have about America, it's not different," says Maida.
"It's proving that, hopefully, the music we make is universal enough that people get it everywhere -- and
that's really important to us.
"I think that's what a lot of our fans down here are feeling. They don't care that we're from Canada. They
just care that they're connecting with the music and the lyrics. And to me, it leaves all the other bullshit
behind. It's really what we got in his business for, to make music that people could feel just as passionate
as we do about it.
"It feels very natural to us," he continues, "because Clumsy was released earlier in Canada and the way
`Superman's Dead' did in Canada, it's the same thing down here -- people are chanting the song and
singing louder than we do most nights in these clubs and theaters. For us, it feels really honest. It's
mimicking the way Canada received Clumsy at the beginning."
Opening for Everclear, whose shows are selling out, is a welcome break for OLP which has been
headlining shows in Canada all year. "Not that we slack off, but the pressures off for five weeks, and as
weird as it sounds, we can focus on other things and right now we need to," he says, like freshening up
the songs from Clumsy and its debut album, Naveed.
"We're starting to screw around with the arrangements, not for this tour, but attempting the stuff we're
going to do for the arena tour. We're kind of making this our rehearsal. We're changing the set from night
to night. We're really taking advantage of trying to experiment right now because we want to take a week
off for Christmas and then the arena tour starts on the 3rd of January."
As for the Stones date, Maida is nonchalant about opening for the world's greatest rock `n' roll band.
He's thinking more that it'll be a great tale to tell his his kids one day (no, there aren't any little Peace's at
the moment).
"Honest to God, that's what it is. It's definitely more of that kind of vibe attached to it, rather than us
being really excited about it. We're just going to do it because we'd be really dumb not to do it. It will be
fun, but we're just so geared up now with our own tour now, and this arena tour, trying to make it special
for us."
