What prompted the mayor to make today [12.21] DOA day? Was he a fan of the band?
Not really; it was kind of a funny thing. We had this stupid right wing council for about 9 years or so and the mayor had his head up his ass. And Larry Campbell came in about 2002 and he was kind of a centrist actually but he ran with the left wing party and they pretty much swept the council eight seats to two, plus the mayor’s chair, plus the the school board and a few other seats, because people got tired of the old right wing party. Larry Campbell had previously been the coroner and a CMP officer. So what happened was one of the guy's working for him was a DOA fan and the head councilor was an old friend of mine. Vancouver is kind of known as a no fun city. The bars close early. If you’re at a festival and the cops catch you with a beer, it doesn't matter if you are acting out of hand or not, if they catch you then they’re trenching you. The Vancouver police have a terrible reputation for corruption and beating people up and stuff like that. No, Vancouver was coming to be known as a no fun city so the idea was to make Vancouver seem like a more fun place. So the first thing they did was to have a DOA day. We did it here at The Railway, at a show. Jim, the councilor, came down with this thing, it’s like a big scroll that said “whereas DOA did blah blah blah, whereas blah blah blah,” so he said this kind of stuff about five times. Finally I just grabbed it away from him. But I have the scroll and my wife framed it for me and it hangs on the wall. Well, it would be on the wall, but we just moved so it’s in a box with a bunch of other shit. Anyways, so that was the story behind that.


What would you be doing if you weren't in a band?
I would be a mercenary somewhere in Africa. No, maybe I'd be studying something or maybe I'd be a professional politician. I tried to be an amateur one and that didn't work out. About ten years, I did think about going back to law school. My wife and I talked about it. Then I thought, oh god, that probably has worse hours than being a musician! I have friends that are lawyers that have like 16 hour days. I think my oldest son is going to study to be a lawyer. I encourage him. I said if you become a corporate hack, you'll still be my son. I might hate that part of you, but I'll still love you. I have tried to instill a sense of justice in him and I think he's got it so if he does become a lawyer, hopefully he won't be a horrible one.

This is an except from the interview done in Vancouver, BC on DOA Day December 21, 2005. Full text in the print issue.

You can find more info here.