Our Lady Peace Talks Pumpkins And Summersault Additions

05/09/2000 12:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(5/9/00, 12 p.m. ET) - Our Lady Peace is spearheading the biggest rock tour in Canada this year, Summersault, and it's getting bigger -- A Perfect Circle recently signed on, and talks are continuing with Supergrass. Those two bands would join Our Lady Peace, Smashing Pumpkins, and Foo Fighters on the tour.

According to Our Lady Peace guitarist and Summersault organizer Mike Turner, a miscommunication almost ended the Pumpkins' interest in the festival. "It originally went back and forth between agents and stuff -- you know, the normal pipeline," Turner explained. "We sort of have mutual friends, [and] when I was talking to said mutual friend, 'We're talking to Billy [Corgan] about doing this Summersault thing,' my friend Tommy was like, 'Yeah you guys offered, like, embarrassingly low money -- man, he was totally offended,' and I was, like, 'What are you talking about? We said we'd split everything.' It's like, 'What? That's not what they told us.'"

Turner told LAUNCH how he and OLP singer Raine Maida went to straighten everything out. "So eventually me and Raine went, 'Screw this!' And we flew out to Montreal and sat down with Billy and said, 'Look. We want to have this nice fun festival where there's no egos involved, and hopefully we can all just enjoy ourselves.' Once we got all that on the table, it came together pretty quickly. The Foo Fighters had sort of wanted to go out with the Pumpkins as well. . . The beauty of it is, in Canada, with those three bands we can sell out the whole tour."

Our Lady Peace's Atlanta Music Midtown Festival was the first gig back for Maida, who had been suffering from strep throat and an ear infection and had to cancel gigs in West Palm Beach and Jacksonville, Florida; and Huntsville, Alabama.

-- Darren Davis, Atlanta

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