NICKELBACK's CHAD KROEGER: Touring Is 'A Lot Of Hard Work'

On March 30, Samuli Väänänen of Finland’s Radio Nova conducted an interview with NICKELBACK frontman Chad Kroeger. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below.

On the biggest misconception people have about touring:

Kroeger: “Well, the first thing is that they think it’s easy, and that you can do this, and it’s one big luxury event. And it’s a lot of hard work. I’ve had buddies come out and tour with me for about a week, and they just look at me and go, ‘How do you do it? I couldn’t do this.’ Different hotel room every night, trying to sleep on the bus on bumpy roads. I mean, it’s kind of like camping. You’ve got a nice tour bus, so it’s kind of glamorous camping, but it’s hard traveling all the time in all the airports and all the hotels. It is a lot of work, and you really have to get used to it, and you’ve really gotta love it. Because if you’re homebody and you like being in your own bed every night and seeing your dog or your cat and just having your own favorite food, this is not the job for you. And I’ve seen a lot of people who’ve tried this job that I knew were gonna struggle with it — bands that I’ve produced, and bands that I’ve signed — and you can always spot that one, that you’re just looking at him, going, ‘You’re not gonna last six months.’ [Laughs] And it’s hard.”

On the first NICKELBACK tour:

“There’s been lots of different stages of first tours. There’s the very first tour you do in the van, and then there’s the very first tour you do in the bus. There’s the very first tour you do after you’ve gotten the record deal. And they’re very significant and incredibly different. So the most interesting one would probably be the very first tour we did once we got to America after we signed the record deal. Our first show [was in] Atlanta. We toured for 14 months on that record, and opened up for absolutely everybody. We played every festival that they would let us on. And there was probably 12 of us on one tour bus. And it was one long 14-month party. [Laughs] I mean, just every single night. The drum tech and the guitar tech were out there… We’d finish up a show and they would be out there getting a ton of people to come back to the tour bus. And it was party, party, party… every single night.”

NICKELBACK‘s latest album, “No Fixed Address”, sold around 80,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 4 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD arrived in stores on November 17, 2014.

The 11-song set is the first through the Canadian act’s new deal with Republic Records.

The band launched a six-month North American tour on February 14 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

NICKELBACK has sold more than 50 million records worldwide since breaking through with its 2001 album, “Silver Side Up”.