So you’re back in the country now.

Dave Bidini: Yeah, I’m back from playing hockey in Romania.

With who?

DB: No team, just me. I’m actually working on a book about it. I’m traveling to these unlikely places and bringing my gear and my stick and getting into pick up games.

What kind of hockey, um, scene do they have in Romania?

DB: They’ve been playing hockey in Transylvania, where I was, since 1929 and they were ÔA’ Pool in the early '80s. The program has gone downhill since then, but they have a great tradition. It’s the country most steeped in hockey in Eastern Europe, it pre-dates the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia by 15 years. The city I was in was the first city in Europe to erect a statue of a hockey player. There was tons of great stuff to learn there.

So is the new album really for kids or is it aimed at the regular Rheostatics fan, or both?

DB: "Aimed" is really the wrong word. We just made it, really. But we’re hoping that everyone will like it. There are things we’ve done in the past that I would think kids would like anyways so it’s no different. It stands to reason then that on this one there would be stuff that non-kids would like.

Don was saying that if the record would be performed anywhere live from top to bottom it would be in Toronto because that’s where all your guest musicians live. Would it be on New Year's Eve [where the Rheostatics and others are opening for the Tragically Hip at the Air Canada Centre]?

DB: I don’t think our set is long enough for us to do that. It’s about 25 to 28 minutes. With eight bands it has to be that way. It would be nice to do that in a small theatre somewhere down the line.

Tell me about this musicians hockey league that I hear you play in.

DB: It never really was just that. When it first started out, it was kind of novelty that people who played in bands also played hockey. It’s not really so novel anymore. It was never exclusively a musicians league. I think that was more the case in Vancouver where maybe a musicians team would get together for charity games periodically. In Toronto, about 12 years ago a band called UIC started this hockey league on Sunday nights at McCormick arena. And that’s how I got drawn back into rec hockey through them and I still play. It’s not really like a come-all-ye affair because you wouldn’t want to have 40 people showing up at the rink, but I think it’s fairly common knowledge. I don’t know if we would be much to look at. I think that one of the reasons why we have our livelihood in music is that we’re not that great at hockey. Would you want to go see a band with Mats Sundin in it? Probably not. It’s fun if you’re playing, but I don’t think it would be much fun to watch. Then again if people want to come out that’s fine.

Photos By Graham Kennedy