If you would have told 17-year-old me—clutching a brand-new driver’s license and white-knuckling the steering wheel as I navigated a group of equally naive friends through a “scenic” (read: sketchy) part of Cleveland enroute to the long-closed venue, The Odeon, for one of my first concerts unaccompanied by mom & dad—that I’d one day be sitting down with Raine Maida, I probably would have stalled the car in disbelief.
That night was the start of a lifelong obsession. Our Lady Peace isn’t just a band I cover; they are one of my all-time favorites. They provided the soundtrack to my formative years, and apparently, they provided the decor for my freshman year of college, too. My roommate at the time managed to catch Raine’s sweat rag during a show, and it held a place of honor on our dorm room wall for the entire year. (Disgusting? Maybe. A legendary piece of rock memorabilia? Absolutely.)
For Cleveland fans of a certain age, 2002 was the “Summer of OLP.” Over just three months, the band practically took up residency in Northeast Ohio. From an intimate ‘Gravity’ album release party at the Mentor Mall (yes, a mall!) to taping an MTV special at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the connection between this band and this city has always felt a little more like a second home to OLP.
Now, as the band embarks on their 30th Anniversary tour, I had the chance to catch up with Maida on a recent phone call. We took a deep dive into the massive catalog of material they’ve built over three decades, discussed the dizzying evolution of the music industry, and touched on the vital, life-changing work he and his wife, fellow music artist Chantal Kreviazuk, continue to do with War Child.
Whether you were there at the Mentor Mall in ’02 or you’re just discovering the depth of their latest work, Raine Maida remains one of the most thoughtful voices in rock.
“I think Ohio was always just a good state for us to go play a bunch of shows,” Maida said of the Buckeye State. “I remember playing at The Flats when that was a thing and you kind of grow with the city. It’s just been an amazing relationship that we have with Cleveland and Ohio in general.”
Maida, along with bassist Duncan Coutts, are the only two remaining members from the band’s inception. Asked to think back to the band’s first rehearsals and early gigs in their native Toronto, Raine was asked if he ever imagined that three decades later, Our Lady Peace would be on a primarily sold-out national tour to celebrate 30 years of making music together.
“No, I think my whole view of being in a band was always about what’s next,” Maida admitted. “It’s like, even when we had really good success with albums like ‘Clumsy’ and ‘Gravity,’ where had big hit songs and everything was going great, I never was in the moment. When you live like that, I find the creative aspect of it was always important to me. I was always staying creative and wanted to write the next song or the next album, but it makes things go really quickly and you miss the moment. I’ve really enjoyed taking a step back and marking this anniversary. I’m not big on doing that usually, but this has been important and I think the fans enjoy it. I tell stories at the shows. It is a bit of a celebration.”
One of the special things about being elder statesman in the music industry is that when artists inevitably age, their fans age with them. Thinking back to The Odeon show in 2001, I was one of the youngest fans in the audience. At 42 years of age, many of my peers that ‘grew up’ and started families (while i was still busy chasing the high of Our Lady Peace concerts) now have offspring of the appropriate age to attend concerts. Looking down from the stage at a sold-out House of Blues next Sunday (March 22, for those interested in being gouged on the secondary ticket market), Maida and his bandmates will see fans that were crammed into the record store at the Mentor Mall or being dropped on their head while crowd surfing at X-Fest rocking out to their music alongside their teenage children, both enjoying the show equally. This isn’t lost on the band members.
“That’s probably the ultimate compliment,” Maida confirmed. “Look, as parents, the things you pass down to your kids are ultimately the most important things in your life, whether it’s a watch, or a car, or a band… To be included in that is humbling. Honestly, it’s humbling.”
A social media reel circulated on OLP’s official channels where fans were being interviewed the first night of the tour, where they were quizzed on their favorite songs and what tune hooked them on the band, and the variety of answers was astonishing. (Shout out to the guy who said “Automatic Flowers.” You’re a real one!)
“I think it speaks to maybe the depth of work, which I’m really proud of,” Maida said. “It seems like in every decade we’ve had an album or some songs that really resonated. I think that’s a great thing about music, especially these days, is you can kind of find it anywhere. You’re not just limited to MTV or the radio like we used to be. I love that people are not all saying ‘Superman’s Dead.’ That’s the only song we kind of really heard from them. It’s much more … And I get to give a good credit to our fans. They go deep.”
Maida and his wife, Chantal Kreviazuk, work closely with War Child, a non-profit devoted to assisting children that are innocent victims in war zones. I have a “no politics” policy in interviews, but War Child doesn’t meet the exclusion criteria.
“War Child is apolitical. They go into war zones. Their mission is really to avoid politics and just get to the heart of the matter of helping kids that have seen kind of unspeakable sadness and need support on like the human rights level, whether it’s food, shelter, or security,” Maida explained. “I was just in Afghanistan and what you see there in terms of like the children is crazy. I have a bunch of teenagers. I have three boys and the kids that I saw in Afghanistan really aren’t much different than my boys. They just don’t have access to a lot of this stuff because the government is one of the most oppressive governments in the world. But the importance of it, and I always say this War Child’s done way more for me than I’ve ever done for them, even though we’ve been raising money for them for the last 20 years. But the idea is just that I think traveling and being able to really see cultures where they are is really important because it really makes you realize how small the planet is, how most people are good.”
The music industry can be cruel, unforgiving, and is ever-evolving. Surviving for 30 years is incredible feat. Few of the band’s peers are still recording and touring 30 years after their first rehearsal. Flashback to 1996: The internet was accessible via dial-up connections, FM airwaves and MTV reigned supreme, and gatekeepers controlled what music fans were able to hear. Streaming services and social media platforms only existed in Ray Kurzweil books (IYKYK).
“I love the idea that it was democratized with the streaming platforms where anybody can write a song in their bedroom and put it up and other people can hear it,” he said. “You didn’t have to go save and go to rent a studio to do it and find a producer. Those kind of barriers no longer exist, which is amazing. That communal experience, I mean we’re seeing every night on tour, that experience of being in a room together where politics don’t matter, age doesn’t matter, none of those things matter.”
According to Genius Data, Our Lady Peace has recorded 151 songs over their 30-year run. Narrowing it down to a setlist suitable for a one-night concert is challenging. Sure, they aren’t going to play a single show that omits “Clumsy,” Superman’s Dead,” or “Naveed,” but filling in the gaps is tough.
“We want to make this as much about the audience and our fans as it is about us,” Maid said. “We use a company I built called Fandrop. When people get to the venue, they just have to type in fandrop.com or there’s some QR codes around the venue. They can actually vote on what songs they want to hear. I look at that during the set and literally, it’s kind of like taking requests in a way. We’re just using a little bit of technology to do it, but I wanted the fans to be a big part of it.”
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