What was EdgeFest like?

M: EdgeFest is like going camping with all your friends and talking to them then going to work for 40 minutes.

D: Yeah, it's like musician's summer camp where you can just sit around and talk about guitars with guys and every once in a while you turn around and go, "Hey, where'd so-and-so go?" "Oh right." He's doing his 40-minute set.

M: Someone rotates off the ping-pong table and goes and plays [their set].

D: It's a great social event for musicians. It's a fantastic - and this sounds cheese, but - it's actually very good for the Canadian music community, for everybody to get to know each other.

Kinda a unifying thing?

D: In a lot of ways, yeah. I don't think that was the original intention. From a players' standpoint, it's just really quite exciting. The year before, EdgeFest '98, when we were on the second stage, I learned so much from that tour by watching the big bands on the big stage. Within the first couple days you sniff out which bands you're really into and you go out of your way to see them every day. You just learn how to use a stage that big.

Like by wearing foam antlers onstage in Edmonton?

D: That was Rachel Perry's idea.

She's trouble. She said that whenever she was around you guys it always seemed like there was something wrong.

D: There is something wrong going on.

M: Yeah. With us there is always something wrong going on.

So it wasn't just her?

M: No, we're always in some sort of state of trouble.

D: We've got a black cloud over our heads all the time.

M: ...And not one of our own production either. We duck into buildings to see if it will go away. Jump into cabs... it never works. To tell you the truth, it's a hell of a lot more fun than it is bad, but interesting shit happens and you just go "Ah, I don't know." We'll see what happens next year.

During the tour you guys brought cheerleaders onstage, threw ice cream into the crowd, and you wanted to do more. What else can you expect from the Matthew Good Band live show?

M: I don't know, there's lots of stuff to do. There was stuff I wanted to do that would've been inherently dangerous. Roman candles, that sort of thing. Next year, if we do it, I'm going to get one of those boards that spin [with firecrackers on it].

The ones that whistle?

M: Yeah. We're gonna get a couple of them. Body-painting. I think we're gonna do that next year. We're gonna get a big, white wall-type thing and get people from the audience and they can just spread paint all over each other and roll around on this thing or something.

D: Kinda like that Farah Fawcett Playboy special.

M: There'll be a kind of arts and crafts period during the show. I had the idea this year of running one of those giant miniature trains through the venue. That's transportation. And then you have different stations. "Backstage." "The Stage." So you see the little train come up and you get off and you play your show and when you're done it picks you up, 'cause let's face it, the monorail would have been too much money.

But this just gets back to my original point of making the stage actually hover in the first place. Because there'd be nothing fucking cooler than starting your show a couple hundred feet in the air, descending onto where the crowd can see you. With a kick-ass laser light show or something, that would be the shit.

If you started the show on a stage 100 feet in the air, wouldn't the audience just see the mechanical underbelly of the stage?

M: Well, there again we run into a little bit of audience danger 'cause there'd be rockets involved and some people would get hurt. But you have to pay a price for rock. You stand in the front row, you may be incinerated. The disclaimer's on the back of the ticket, that's all I've got to say - "The band is not responsible for loss of property or personal injury."

There's a lot of things you can do really. A Velcro wall would be cool. Play all in Velcro suits and jump up against the wall.

D: ...And the techs would run out and tear us back down.

M: I've often thought about playing with weights on my ankles, and that way I could get an aerobic workout. Get healthy and do my job at the same time, that would be alright. Everything else has been done - the fellatio, the anal sex. It's all old hat now. Everyone's done that. Fire's out. Everyone's done fire. It's a brave new world man. You gotta find something to do.

What was Courtney Love's birthday party like in Calgary?

M: There's nothing like going to a party and getting Serial Joe drunk. The whole tour I think that was everybody's aim - make sure those kids were as hammered as possible.

D: "Mom's not lookin', get those kids drunk."

M: No. Mom was drunk the whole time, too.

What about Silverchair, now those guys are drunks?

D: Well those guys just turned 19. I guess and it was their first tour without minders.

M: They've been looking for this for a few years.

D: Salivating.

M: They'll learn. They'll learn moderation fast. Wait 'til you're pushing 30, it ain't fun and games any more. You have a great night out where you don't get in until 7 a.m. and you pay for days.

You just have to keep drinking, though. You have to be sauced the entire time. Which to me is a kind of a good and a bad thing, because I'm the only one in the band who doesn't drink, so, sometimes we'll get onstage and the guys would be pickled and I'm playing some other song and they're playing "Freebird."