  Our Lady Peace in a file photo. Shown are band members (left to right) Jeremy Taggart--drums, Raine Maaida--vocals , Duncan Couts--Bass/keyboard and Mike Turner--guitar. (HO) |
Our Lady Peace drummer Jeremy Taggart is very enthused about the Live 8 concert today. In fact, he says it's probably the biggest show he's ever done.
"We've never ever seen or been a part of such a large event," he says. "We played Woodstock in 1999 and there were a couple of hundred thousand people there. But the meaning behind this show and the reality of it is something that we've never heard of.
"If this show does what it is designed to do and the world is a better place, then absolutely it will be the most satisfying show I've ever played in my life," he adds. "Even (the original) Woodstock didn't generate the end of world poverty."
Taggart says the group will unveil a new song, Where Are You, the lead single from the band's forthcoming album Healthy In Paranoid Times.
"I think it's great that we can play it at the show because it reflects upon the world," he says. "There's a lot of questioning (in the song) of what people can do and why they aren't doing it. But then you start realizing you can do it -- you can end world poverty. It all has something to do with finding something and hoping you can make it your best."
Our Lady Peace found out about the possibility of a Canadian Live 8 concert a few weeks ago. The band weren't supposed to start rehearsing for a few weeks, but will hunker down this week prior to the show. Despite their playing only three songs, Taggart says that it's a huge honour for the band.
"It's about the cause and the awareness, people knowing about the show and what the show is for," he says. "It's such an important thing to be able to say that we live in a time when there was a resolution that was the beginning of the end to world poverty."
Perhaps one of the odder things about the concert is that Our Lady Peace, although more than a decade into their career, are one of the younger acts on the bill.
It was short notice, he says, and for some smaller acts it's hard for them to "just fly in and out like it's no sweat. A lot of them need to be on tour, and to stay on tour," he says.
"Arcade Fire just played Glastonbury in England. To try to take a band from Europe and back, that's about $40,000 of traveling and expenses, taking the gear over. That's a crazy amount of money for a young band. I'm sure a lot of those bands that wished they were on the bill were probably asked and had to decline."
As for the band's new album, Taggart says the group spent two and a half years working on it, often working on five or six songs for six weeks and then taking two weeks off. They pared about 45 songs down to 11 or 12 for the album.
"It was a better way to make a record, because we had more perspective in between writing and recording," he says. "Everything is absolutely fresh and there's a lot of rawness, a lot of energy to the tracks. It's been two years of writing and recording."
Our Lady Peace is currently finishing up the album's artwork and will shoot a new video soon. They'll stage a few warm-up club dates around North America before they begin a proper tour in the fall, and they have two opening slots for the Rolling Stones, in Ottawa and Moncton, on Aug. 28 and Sept. 3 respectively.
"There's going to be 75,000 in Moncton, so that will be a real gas," he says with a laugh.
