Mock of ages
Ignoring critics, Nickelback still playing to packed arenas
The Canadian rockers have now embarked on possibly their most ambitious arena tour since Nickelback formed in 1995. The show hits the Spokane Arena on Sunday.
Here’s a Q&A with Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger from a recent phone interview. Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Q: You have Bush, Seether and My Darkest Days opening on this tour. I mean, that’s quite an undercard.
Kroeger: Yes, we got lucky. I think we’ve got a great package. Counting singles throughout the entire night has got to be up around 45 or 50. We even shortened our set up. It was usually about two hours, but we get off stage in about an hour and a half, just because that is a lot of music.
Our weekend sets will probably get a little longer. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, people aren’t looking at their watches so much.
Q: I know it’s only been a couple of days so far in your tour, but would you rather play new material or old? What is the crowd’s reaction to your new material?
Kroeger: The new material went over great, and I think I realized how hard it is to sing some of the old stuff. We brought back “Never Again” from “Silver Side Up.” … And we put in off a new record “This Means War.” … I think “Lullaby” was actually one of the high points of the night. Everybody was definitely screaming along to that one.
Q: How does this tour production compare to past runs that you’ve done?
Kroeger: I just don’t think this even compares to anything we’ve done before. This is – it’s so over the top. We’ve got this flying stage that comes down and picks us up and takes us across the arena and starts spinning.
We were in pre-production for I don’t know, a week to 10 days …
So we get on two nights ago at the first stop of the tour and we’re like, ‘OK, we’ve got this down. We’ve rehearsed a lot, we know everything.’ And then all of a sudden we’re like twice as high as we’ve ever been in pre-production and … we’re trying to focus. We’re trying to remember the words. We’re trying to play our part and look cool while we’re doing this. And I’m trying not to fall over. And this thing starts spinning. And it’s just absolute insanity.
Q: I wanted to ask you guys if you feel like doing this show this way is what’s necessary in this day and age – that you have to keep giving people more and more, bigger and better, just to keep them interested?
Kroeger: Well, it’s a good question.
There’s only so big we can actually get before we get to a certain point where it’s just, I mean everything just won’t fit in an arena. There was actually a point where we were in pre-production and I looked at the other guys and we’d seen absolutely every aspect of the show – minus the pyro.
It was so much eye candy and so much stuff going on it was incredible. But I’m like, how are we going to fit, you know, fire and explosions and the whole nine yards into this, as well?
And sure enough, here comes the pyro team and, you know, it works. We actually scaled a couple of things back just because it was getting to be so production intensive.
… At the end of the day, dude, they’re still coming to hear the tunes.
Q: It seems that when people watch concerts today they’re not really watching the band anymore – they’re watching through their cameras and their phones. What does that feel like for you to look out there and not necessarily see people looking at you? Do you look at it as a way of marketing like when someone does take a snippet from a show and puts it on YouTube?
Kroeger: I think they’re still taking it in. They’re just holding whatever phone or recording device in the air now. It’s just become second nature.
You can tell the songs that they definitely want to put up there, because when you see thousands of hands go up – the only thing I’m thinking is, ‘Oh, don’t trip, don’t screw up.’ You know, this is going to be on YouTube in seconds because it’s just like the world is watching. It has that sort of pressure to it.