In late October, I had the opportunity to speak with the most Canadian of Canadian bands, Etobicoke, Ontario's Rheostatics. Beginning with drummer Don Kerr, calling from the West Coast and following up with guitarist Dave Bidini, we spoke about their new children’s album The Story Of Harmelodia,what the band has been up to lately, and the good old hockey game...

What are you doing in Vancouver?

Don Kerr: Tim (Vesely, Rheostatics bassist) and I are on tour with Ron Sexsmith and we just did Vicki Gabereau. We’ve been touring for almost seven months straight with Ron. We took a little bit of time off in the summer to finish up the record but so far we’ve been to the States for a month, England, Japan and now we’re touring Canada.

What have Martin and Dave been doing in the meantime?

DK: Martin’s been painting frantically, coming up with the artwork for the new album. It’s a giant 32-page book that really adds to the record when you see the story all written out beside the pictures.

Who narrates the story?

DK: That’s Janet, Dave's wife. There’s a lot of guests on the record. "The Monkey Bird" song is sung by Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies. He co-wrote this record with us as well as (Music Inspired By) The Group Of Sevenone that we did.

Will you be performing the whole record live from start to finish?

DK: We hope to do that in Toronto because that’s where all our guest musicians live. But across the country it would be kind of hard so we’ll just included some new songs in our set.

What was your role in the making of the album?

DK: I wrote one of the songs, "Father’s Sad Song," and I sing it on the record and I sing "The Sky Dreamed" as well. Originally, I had just put out a children's record and book myself when Dave first said, "Hey, let’s make a kids’ record" and my story was considered being used, but Dave ended up writing a giant, epic tale.

What’s your story about?

DK: It’s called the Sniffing Princessand it’s about these two little kids, a prince and a princess, and they have a lot of fun in this forest smelling flowers and eating berries. But they do it to excess and they end up killing the forest. Their father the king has no idea that it’s them, he thinks it’s some kind of plague and everyone is banished from the forest. The kids go nuts trapped in the castle all day because they’re like junkies (laughs). It’s written out in rhyme and it’s definitely suitable for kids. So the kids break into the royal garden, the last place where there are any plants and they destroy it like they did the forest. Now all these bees go after them because they’ve sucked up all the sweetness from the flowers. It sounds more violent than it actually is (laughs). Eventually, the girl sniffs the last living flower in the kingdom and she starts to sneeze and all the pollen that she’s taken from all the flowers starts to come back out of her. It forms a big purple pollen cloud and the bees move into it [and repollination begins]. The little boy kisses one of the dead flowers and it comes back to life and between her sneezing and his kissing the dead flowers, everything comes back to life.

I read the article you wrote for Exclaimabout XTC and I was wondering if you ever heard back from Andy Partridge?

DK: I met him when he came to Toronto on a promo tour after that magazine came out. I went to CFNY and hung out and gave him a copy of the article. I wanted to say that I was that guy who plays with Ron Sexsmith and who sent you his CD but I was to chicken, so I just showed him the article and he said "Oh, I’ll wipe my ass with this later" (laughs). He’s got extreme stage fright so he panics whenever he’s in public and he thinks of the most rude and funny thing to say.

Do the Rheostatics do well in any country besides Canada?

DK: No, but we’re going to Europe for the very first time. Before I joined the band they went to Ireland, England and Scotland, but this time we’re going to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia. We’re touring with Veda Hille who does well over there, she got hooked up with a German label. And she got some government funding for her and us to take our Canadian art projects over to Europe. So we’re going to join forces - she’ll play piano with us and I’ll play cello with her and Martin will play guitar. But it seems like wherever we go with Ron, someone will come out of the crowd and say "I’m here because I’m a Rheo’s fan." In Hamburg Germany where the band’s never been, some German guy who had bought a Rheostatics CD in Scandinavia brought it home, loved it, and ordered everything else over the internet. And there are people spread out over the United States who fly or drive up to Vancouver to see us whenever we play.