"Bran Man" James DiSalvio was a little shaky when he took Bran Van 3000 out of the garage and onto the road.

Considering the hip-hop-pop hodge-podge he patched together to form the Montreal band's debut album, Glee -- and the unruly 26-member crew that helped him do it -- you can hardly blame the guy.

But, surprisingly, losing control of Bran Van 3000 wasn't so much the concern.

"I wanted to keep it from being too safe, too boring and sterile," says DiSalvio. Bran Van 3000 play the MuchMusic awards tonight and headline Lee's Palace tomorrow night.

"I said, 'If the show doesn't rock, we'll shut it down.' That was my biggest challenge: Keeping a very rock 'n' roll spirit, in the sense that it's a great raunchy party -- not some studio session band."

BV 3000 actually began as both.

A filmmaker, DJ, and late-blooming songwriter and singer, DiSalvio decided to make an album last year while procrastinating on film projects in L.A. and New York.

The experience -- which he details in the recent video hit Drinking In L.A., which he directed -- was a sort of colon irrigation for his creative psyche. Hence the "Bran" theme.

"There's something about a city like New York," he says. "It's a great slap in the face: 'What do you want to do? Shut up and do it.'

"In Canada, we have a tendency to intellectualize every movement. You can't get a grant from the Canada Council unless you explain why what you're doing is innovative.

"I'm just putting hip-hop over a country narrative. I don't have to explain that to a council. In New York I learned to buy-beg-borrow-steal and do it on my own.

"I wanted to destroy narrative when I worked with film," adds DiSalvio, who's also made videos for Branford Marsallis' Buckshot LaFonque and big-in-Quebec popster Jean Leloup.

"I had the same agenda when I started making music. But I became bored of that."

His distinct love of pop music can be heard on Glee, where violins, horns and acoustic guitars cozy up next to beats, samples and scratching.

DiSalvio got help from the extended family of Montreal musicians he pieced together to form the Bran Van collective.

"I'm not in front of the camera but behind the camera on that album," he says. "There's a director and a big cast.

"It was like a midi shrine where people would come to worship. The person on track three may never have met the person on track eight. Now we're all friends."

DiSalvio's since cut the BV 3000 live roster down to nine: Himself, singers Sara Johnston, Jayne Hill, and Stephane Moraille, DJ "Electronic-Pierre" Bergen, MC Steve "Liquid" Hawley, drummer Rob Joanisse, bassist Gary McKenzie bass, and guitarist Nick Hines.

"We've become a real band," he says.