Simple Plan Finally Touring Canada

Simple Plan have traveled around the globe and played in front of thousands of people since the 2002 release of No Pads, No Helmets — Just Balls, so you may be surprised to find out that the band will embark on their first-ever cross-Canada tour starting on November 22 in Victoria, British Columbia.

"We've pretty much covered all of the U.S. this year, and now we're heading back to Canada, which is going to be even more crazy and a lot better," said Simple Plan guitarist Jeff Stinco over the phone during a November 16 tour stop in Houston, Texas. "People in Canada just want to have fun and rock out. And it's always great to be home."

The second leg of the band's U.S. tour, which ended on November 20 in San Diego, California, got off to a bit of a harrowing start when the guys found themselves in Cancun, Mexico when Hurricane Wilma was bearing down on it in October. While the group were evacuated quickly, their equipment had to be left behind for a few weeks.

"For the first part of this American tour, we had to play with rental gear and gear that we got from people that we knew, so it wasn't very comfortable," Stinco explains. "And some of the stages looked pretty empty without our props and our stage set-up.

"It became a more intimate version of a Simple Plan show, which was kind of cool in certain venues and not as cool in others. But it all came back together recently and it's good now."

While these Montreal boys have become men of the world through their relentless touring in support of No Pads... and last year's Still Not Getting Any, the transformation didn't come without quite a bit of culture shock.

"I thought that the U.S. was just like Canada until I got there," Stinco confesses. "The biggest shock was the conservatism of some of the people who live here.

"And I was surprised at how different every state is. The first time I went to New York, I was blown away. I could not imagine that you could put that many people in one single city."

But after that initial U.S. experience, Stinco says he was ready for anything, which made it easier to acclimatize himself when the band toured a number of Asian territories. "I was already a big fan of the food and of the culture and, even musically, there were some things that I liked. So it was pretty easy to adapt to their culture even though it's a completely different culture from ours. China was the biggest culture shock of my life because the people don't get in contact with westerners very easily. It's so hard to communicate because there are so few people that speak English, and things are done so differently there. It was really strange."

Music has become divided into minute sub-genres in North America, and Stinco says he found the situation refreshingly different on the other side of the world.

"In Asia, we're just a rock band and they don't make a difference between us or Maroon 5 or Linkin Park. It's all rock music. It has a different flavour, but it's the same."After being certified triple-platinum in Canada, double-platinum in Australia and Indonesia, platinum in Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the U.S., and gold in Japan, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand over the past year, Still Not Getting Any has pretty much run its commercial course through four singles and videos ("Welcome To My Life," "Shut Up!," "Untitled" and, most recently, "Crazy").

But the group have another new album to plug, as the enhanced MTV Hard Rock Live CD was released last month. The band taped a concert in Orlando, Florida for MTV's Hard Rock Live series and, since they were so happy with the performance, they put it on store shelves. "We had released a pretty simple live recording in Japan, and some people heard about it and wanted us to do the same thing in North America," says Stinco, who calls MTV Hard Rock Live "a gift for our fans."

After the Canadian tour winds down in Halifax on December 17, Simple Plan have a month off before they cross the Atlantic for an intense month-long European tour. That jaunt will end on February 19 in Dublin, Ireland, and then it will be time to begin work on a new album.

"We're going to take whatever time it takes to get some songs together," says Stinco. "We don't really write a lot on the road. The schedule is pretty hectic and there are a lot of distractions."The same thing happened for Still Not Getting Any... — we hadn't written a lot of material on tour because it's not something that we're very comfortable doing. But we had an idea of where we wanted to go. And with this record, we've also been discussing a lot about direction and what we want to do. I think it's going to be different. You stop being artistic when you release the same record over and over. For us, it's really important to change things up and try new things."

The album should be recorded and released next year, and another world odyssey is expected in 2007. "Touring is still the main thing for our band," emphasizes Stinco.

"All of us are still in love with it and it's still a lot of fun, so we're going to keep at it as long as we can."

Here's Simple Plan's cross-Canada tour itinerary:

November 22 Victoria, BC @ Save On Foods Memorial Centre
November 23 Vancouver, BC @ GM Place
November 24 Kelowna, BC @ Prospera Place
November 26 Edmonton, AB @ Rexall Place
November 27 Calgary, AB @ Pengrowth Saddledome
November 28 Saskatoon, SK @ Credit Uniton Centre
November 29 Regina, SK @ Brandt Centre
December 1 Winnipeg, MB @ MTS Centre
December 2 Thunder Bay, ON @ Fort William Gardens
December 6 London, ON @ John Labatt Centre
December 7 Ottawa, ON @ Corel Centre
December 8 Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre
December 9 Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
December 11 Quebec City, QC @ Colisee Pepsi
December 12 Chicoutimi, QC @ Palais Des Sports Ville Saguenay
December 13 Rimouski, QC @ Colisee De Rimouski
December 15 Moncton, NB @ Moncton Coliseum
December 16 Saint John, NB @ Harbour Station
December 17 Halifax, NS @ Metro Centre