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Or maybe it's because that over the course of a decade, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida has learned that when you're a rock star in this country, you have to learn the fine art of diplomacy.
Whatever the case, getting him to pick sides when it came to which of the two Alberta cities yielded the most and best tracks on the band's new live album -- recorded during January shows in Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal -- proves to be as fruitless, though nowhere near as funny, as pieing an Alberta politician.
"I will says this, picking Calgary and Edmonton was the best decision we made," offers Maida, who brings OLP to Camrose for Stage 13 tomorrow night.
"For whatever reason, the crowds are incredible there."
The disc, which precedes the release of a two-hour live DVD, is something that Maida calls the "end of a chapter in Our Lady Peace."
But rather than taking time to dwell with sentimentality on the past, the Canadian quartet have already begun the next chapter, by spending a month in Maui recording with producer Bob Rock, who also helmed their last studio release Gravity.
After their current tour, they'll spend October putting the finishing touches on it.
A possible title for the album?
The way Maida talks, St. Frustrated might be a fitting moniker.
The disc is being recorded with the same approach Rock took with Metallica's latest release, St. Anger, for a straight-up, rawer feel.
"What we're trying to do with this, it ended up that it was six months before Bob went to do the new Metallica with that whole sound that he helped develop," says Maida.
"He was like, 'Guys, I can't make another overdub record and something that sounds so polished ... that's not where my head's at.'
"And we were like, 'Bob, that's not us. Thank God you're like that because that's what we're feeling as well.'
"The timing was perfect in terms of where we were both at musically."
Lyrically, Maida says his words will follow the music and will be very much a product of the times.
"I think it's going to be a little more raw, a little bit more in your face, not a lot of relationship stuff," he says, noting that fans will get a preview of a couple of the tracks, Wipe That Smile Off Your Face and Walking In Circles, on the current tour.
"My head, with what's going on in the world and being able to reflect on all the (stuff) that I've done in the last few years in terms of going to Iraq, working very closely with War Child (a charity that supports children in war-ravaged nations), I'm in that mode.
"I'm not angry, but kind of frustrated."
One thing that remains a source of stability and joy in Maida's life is his marriage to fellow Canadian musician Chantal Kreviazuk.
Not only do the pair spend their extracurricular time working together with War Child -- both she and OLP contributed tracks to the Peace Songs compilation -- but they've also been collaborating musically.
Maida co-wrote a few of the tracks on Kreviazuk's last release, What If It All Means Something, but he says the latest material they've produced will be for a project entirely separate from either of their current musical incarnations.
"I think the next thing we want to do is after the Our Lady Peace record -- we want to make a record together," says Maida, guessing they'll get to work in earnest over the Christmas holidays.
"The couple of songs we've done so far and demoed just sound really cool. They don't sound like Our Lady Peace and they don't really sound like Chantal, which is exactly what you want.
"It would be stupid to have me singing on Chantal-sounding songs or her to sing on an Our Lady Peace song. We spent the last year and a half writing together and not really thinking about it, and the last six months I've gone through tapes and tried to weed out stuff like 'Well, this sounds cool, this is very unique' -- different from what we both do.' And that's the kind of direction we should take."