Dan is always interviewing indie bands or underground acts, so we thought we would give him a change of scenery with the glitz and glamour of V-Fest Toronto. Dan had the pleasure of speaking with Sean Kingston, Mutemath, Plants and Animals, The Von Bondies and more!

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War Child’s second annual Busking For Change fundraiser will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 29, according to ChartAttack. The Toronto-based event, which is largely run by Chantal Kreviazuk and her husband, Our Lady Peace’s Raine Maida, are hoping to raise $30,000 to build and run a youth centre in Darfur, Sudan’s war-torn region.

The event was inspired by Maida, who spent 12 hours in 2007 busking and raising $22,000 for War Child Canada’s School Rehabilitation and Revitalization project in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Busking For Change will feature some of Canada’s most prominent musical acts and will take place between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Using major streetcorners and downtown buildings as home, the downtown Toronto area will become alive with the sound of music. The musicians will play in exchange for donations that will go to War Child.

Students across Canada will also be showing off their artistic talents and busking in their schools and communities. Those who are unable to attend Busking For Change are encouraged to donate online.

The full musician and location schedule will be posted on the War Child Canada website on Monday, Sept. 28. For now, some of the confirmed artists are The Arkells, IllScarlet, Sass Jordan, Protest The Hero, Shiloh, Toronto Children’s Chorus, Toronto Chamber Choir, USS, and The Cliks.

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Yesterday, Our Lady Peace performed at a secret location to launch their latest album, “Burn Burn.” andPOP was part of this exclusive concert where OLP played their latest songs as well as fan favourites from the past.

The event took place at the Sony Soundstage in Toronto and was broadcast live-to-air through 102.1 The Edge and Explore Music.

Throughout the concert, OLP played songs form their new album, including the single “All You Did Was Save My Life” featuring “90210’s” Shenae Grimes in the music video, and “Paper Moon.”

To the excitement of fans, OLP performed “Innocent” and “Somewhere Out There,” off their 2002 album “Gravity,” among other hits. Since only a fraction of their fans were able to see them live in convert, the band answered questions sent to Alan Cross’ Twitter page for those who were unable to attend the event.

So why did they take so long to release another album? OLP vocalist Raine Maida explains.

“The last record we made, a combination of too’s. It took too long, it’s too expensive and there was too much drama attached to it so we needed to kind of extricate ourselves from that whole recording process…the time away allowed us to come back and really, it sounds cliche but we’re better than ever,” Maida said. “We really came back to this trusting our own instincts.”

OLP also talked about the recording process.

“We really kind of stayed true to recording things live. Every guitar part you hear, every solo,” Maida revealed. “And I think the guitar work on this record is unbelievable…If I wasn’t in this band and I heard this record, I would play tambourine…I’d just want to be in this band.”

OLP are playing a number of shows this summer. For concert details and to check out their new songs, go to myspace.com/ourladypeace

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As three of Canada’s biggest bands of the past 20 years, I Mother Earth, Our Lady Peace and the Tea Party, used to go head-to-head for supremacy on the rock charts.

Now, former members are teaming up on a new project.

The as-of-yet unnamed supergroup is made up of former IME singer Edwin, former OLP guitarist Mike Turner, former Tea Party drummer Jeff Burrows and Amir Epstein, bassist for Toronto band Zygote.

The band is currently not attached to a record label or management.

Burrows recently revealed that the band has been working on material.

“We have four songs in the can and six more ready to record in December,” he said. “Everyone’s got the itch and desire to get it going.”

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Perhaps taking a cue from his wife, songstress Chantal Kreviazuk, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida has recorded his first solo album.

Maida’s concept for the record may surprise some OLP fans. “‘The Hunter’s Lullaby’ is a collection of poems put to music,” he described to ChartAttack. “It was written and recorded without the persuasive hand of a major record label.”

All ten tracks were recorded independently in his private studio. Maida says the beatnik-style acoustic songs were influenced by Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg and Saul Williams. The album will also address significant social issues, defined with the help of activists Amy Goodman, Howard Zinn, Jared Paul and David Suzuki.

Kreviazuk plays piano and sings on several tracks.

Maida’s first single is entitled, “Yellow Brick Road.” Look for “The Hunter’s Lullaby” in stores November 13.

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A headlining performance by musician Alicia Keys will open the six-day-long International AIDS Conference in Toronto next month.

Blue Man Group, Our Lady Peace, Barenaked Ladies, Amanda Marshall and Chantal Kreviazuk will also perform during the kick-off show, to be held on August 13 at the Rogers Centre. Actor Richard Gere will also make an appearance.

The first portion of the evening is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. with a speech by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. Bill and Melinda Gates, who support a number of HIV/AIDS programs through their charitable foundation, will follow with a keynote address. Then Canadian opera singer Measha Brueggergosman will perform with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

The benefit concert will start at 9 p.m. Proceeds from ticket sales to the event will support various AIDS-related organizations.

“These two events in one evening at the Rogers Centre — the opening with the concert — promise to make this a memorable evening that will bring even greater attention to the AIDS issue here in Canada and around the world,” said Andrew Pringle, board president for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research, according to the Associated Press.

Other notable guests set to attend the conference include former U.S. president Bill Clinton and UNAIDS special representative Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway.

Tickets are already on-sale through Ticketmaster. Prices range from $30 to $150 each.

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Our Lady Peace will be hitting the road for 14 Canadian dates starting April, in support of their latest album, 2005?s ?Healthy In Paranoid Times.?

The tour kicks off April 26 in Victoria and wraps up three weeks later in Ottawa on May 16, reports monstersandcritics.com.

Joining the band will be Neverending White Lights, Jets Overhead and Pedestrian.

Last month, the platinum-selling ?Healthy in Paranoid Times earned Juno Award nominations for rock album and band of the year.

Following is a complete list of dates:
- April 26 Victoria, BC @ Save-On Foods Memorial Centre
- April 27 Vancouver, BC @ The Centre For Performing Arts
- April 28 Vancouver, BC @ The Centre For Performing Arts
- April 30 Kelowna, BC @ Prospera Place
- May 1 Calgary, AB @ SA Jubilee Auditorium
- May 2 Edmonton, AB @ Rexall Place Theatre Bowl
- May 3 Saskatoon, SK @ TCU Place
- May 7 London, ON @ John Labatt Centre
- May 8 Kitchener, ON @ Centre In The Square
- May 9 Montreal, QC @ Metropolis
- May 12 Halifax, NS @ Metro Centre
- May 13 Moncton, NB @ Coliseum
- May 15 Quebec City, QC @ Theatre Capitol
- May 16 Ottawa, ON @ Scotiabank Place

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The famous smirk sported by George Bush — usually at times when he shouldn’t be smiling — inspired a track off Our Lady Peace’s latest album, “Healthy In Paranoid Times.”

The song is appropriately titled, “Wipe that Smile off Your Face.”

“George Bush was definitely a launch pad for it. That’s for sure,” Our Lady Peace guitarist Steve Mazur told andPOP recently.

“It’s not just an anti-Bush song. That would be a big part of it. But you can also interpret it as anybody who lies to your face and does it with a smile or a smirk, which politicians have done to us a lot of times. A lot of different people in your life may do that to you. It’s more of that whole context.”

Mazur says that when it comes to political songs like this, the band is lucky because they all are usually on the same page.

“Being in a band is like a marriage, a friendship and a business partnership; it’s everything. You have to live together on a bus so if people have different views, it’s going to be really magnified.”

The album, the band’s sixth studio offering, was released at the end of August.

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Reports that Our Lady Peace almost broke up are not just something they’re saying to bring attention to their new album. They really almost disbanded, says guitarist Steve Mazur.

While recording “Healthy In Paranoid Times,” — a process that took almost three years — the band was so frustrated trying to find perfection, lead singer Raine Maida told the other members that he could no longer be a part of the band.

“It was pretty much it for about a day,” Mazur says, “until everybody got in a room and started talking.”

Maida just needed to cool off.

“Tensions start to rise and things got to the breaking point a couple times,” he recalls. But the conflict was always centered around the music and not between group members. “I think that’s why we knew that we wouldn?t stop doing it. We all love each other like brothers and we all knew we wouldn’t just bail. We were just frustrated and we didn’t know what to do.”

The members of Our Lady Peace initially went to Maui to record, like they had done on their previous album. Working with producer Bob Rock, they recorded 10 songs before leaving on a summer tour. When they returned, they recorded another 12 songs. Now with over 20 tracks recorded, the logical step would have been to cut the list down to about a dozen and put out an album.

“We didn’t feel like we had what we had envisioned in our heads,” he says.

So they recorded some more, then took time off, recorded some more? and it took about six of these blocks to finally get it complete.

Our Lady Peace formed in 1992, when guitarist Mike Turner placed an ad seeking other musicians in a Toronto newspaper. Maida responded first, followed by drummer Jeremy Taggart. The band has gone through several lineup changes over the years, and is now formed by Maida, Taggert, bassist Duncan Coutts and Mazur, who replaced Turner.

The band’s first album, “Naveed,” earned the band four-times platinum status in Canada, but it was the follow-up, 1997′s “Clumsy,” that shot them to massive fame. Led by the single “Superman’s Dead,” the album sold a million copies in Canada and a million in the U.S.

Since Mazur joined the band while they were putting the finishing touches on 2002′s “Gravity,” this was his first opportunity to give input on the music he would be performing.

Currently on a North American tour, Mazur expects Our Lady Peace to be on the road for several months. Looking ahead to the next album, he doesn’t expect the process to be easy, but he does hope it’s quicker.

“I’d love it if we could release it in a year,” he says. “We’re eager to get another one going because we have some great songs leftover from the last batch that aren’t on this record. There were some great songs that didn’t fit with the ones we picked.

“We’ve all experienced a lot of growing pains and learned a lot about each other and about ourselves making this record. The torchue is over.”

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Our Lady Peace has announced a four-stop Canadian club tour to promote the release of “Healthy in Paranoid Times”, their first studio album since 2002.

The tour starts August 29 at Toronto’s Mod Club, then heads west for shows at Vancouver’s The Commodore on September 6 and Calgary’s The Gateway on September 7. The tour wraps in Montreal with a show at La Tulipe on September 14.

Tickets for the Toronto and Montreal shows go on sale August 19. An on sale date has not been announced for Vancouver. The Calgary show sold out in 90 seconds.

“Healthy in Paranoid Times”, the band’s long overdue sixth album and follow-up to 2002′s “Gravity”, will be released to Canada on August 30.

The album will be released in conventional CD and DualDisc formats. The DualDisc will feature the entire record as well as a detailed look at the making of “Healthy In Paranoid Times”, interviews with the producer and the band, and documentary studio footage.

The first single, “Where Are You” currently sits in Canada Rock Radio’s Top 5.

Our Lady Peace’s Full 2005 Tour Schedule:

08/12/05 San Diego, CA Brick by Brick
08/18/05 West Hollywood, CA Viper Room
08/25/05 West Hollywood, CA Viper Room
08/28/05 Ottawa, ON Frank Clair Stadium (w/ The Rolling Stones)
08/29/05 Toronto, ON Mod Club
08/31/05 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
09/01/05 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
09/03/05 Moncton, NB Magnetic Hill Concert Ctr. (w/ The Rolling Stones)
09/06/05 Vancouver, BC Commodore Ballroom
09/07/05 Calgary, AB The Gateway Lounge
09/10/05 Stratford, ON Packham Road Park (Ovation Music Festival)
09/14/05 Montreal, PQ La Tulipe
09/19/05 Detroit, MI Royal Oak
09/21/05 Philadelphia, PA The Trocadero & Balcony Bar
09/22/05 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
09/23/05 Providence, RI Lupo’s At The Strand
09/26/05 Boston, MA The Roxy
09/28/05 New Haven, CT Toad’s Place
09/30/05 Clifton Park, NY Northern Lights
10/02/05 Chicago, IL Vic Theatre

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