Cheap Trick lays out recording, touring plans

Cheap Trick

Cheap Trick

AUSTIN, Texas — Cheap Trick is contemplating another run of full-album shows, similar to what the veteran band did during the late '90s.

During a public interview Wednesday at the South By Southwest Music and Media Conference, frontman Robin Zander said "We're thinking about doing it again, starting with 'Dream Police,' and keep going." No time frame was put on the project, and guitarist Rick Nielsen noted that "It's hard work. You've got to learn the songs that those young guys play."

Nielsen did add, however, that Cheap Trick felt the late '90s shows — during which it played its first three studio albums and "At Budokan" during multi-night stands, resulting in the 1999 live album "Music For Hangovers" — set something of a trend. "Since then we’ve seen a lot of other kind of acts trying to do all their records in order," Nielsen noted. "If you think about it, nobody did their albums in order... It was a hit, so we might do it again."

Zander, Nielsen and bassist Tom Petersson spoke about Cheap Trick's durability and its recent recreations of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Nielsen also talked about his and drummer Bun E. Carlos' experiences recording with John Lennon, even playing a recording on his phone of Yoko Ono crediting Cheap Trick with influencing her late husband.

Nielsen revealed that the group had finally completed its re-recording of its 1977 sophomore album, "In Color," with Steve Albini. Though bootlegged versions have proliferated on the Internet, Nielsen contended that they were not representative of the finished product, which will likely be released with fresh recordings of "some outtakes that didn’t make that record."

"We started it 10 years ago," Nielsen said. "We do stuff for the right reason, I think. We do stuff from the heart. Nobody is in any big hurry to get anything from us."

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