Chuck Comeau, drummer of Montreal-based pop-punk band Simple Plan [ tickets ], has one simple answer when asked about the importance of his band's MTV Video Music Award nomination.

"Are you joking? It's frickin' awesome," he said with a laugh.

Simple Plan is nominated for Best New Artist for its "Addicted" video, and faces competition from Kelly Clarkson, Evanescence, Sean Paul, 50 Cent and All-American Rejects at Thursday's (8/28) VMAs.

"Addicted"--from Simple Plan's nearly platinum album "No Pads, No Helmets … Just Balls"--was directed by Smith N’ Borin (Good Charlotte, Cypress Hill) and went to No. 1 on MTV's "Total Request Live." On the Aug. 12 episode of "TRL," Simple Plan hosted the world premiere of the video for its latest single, "Perfect," which the group filmed in Los Angeles with director Liz Friedlander (Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch and Clarkson.)

Earlier this year, Simple Plan won the MuchMusic People's Choice Award for favorite Canadian group. (The network is Canada's version of MTV.) The band also headlined the Vans Warped Tour, performing alongside vets Rancid, Pennywise, The Used and AFI.

Comeau--whose bandmates include vocalist Pierre Bouvier, bassist David Desrosiers, and guitarists Sebastien Lefebvre and guitarist Jeff Stinco--talked about Simple Plan's stellar year, their "young" age and writing material for a forthcoming album.

liveDaily: Did you see a lot of MTV growing up in Canada?

Comeau: We grew up watching [the VMAs] every year. We didn't have MTV in Canada, but that's the one time where they would air an MTV show. We saw, like, all our favorite bands play there. It's a huge deal to have our name mentioned next to it. It's pretty rad.

A lot of musicians contend that nominations aren't a big deal.

You know what? Maybe they're old and jaded. We're young and excited about everything. Everything is still a big deal. This whole thing tops off an amazing year for us. We went from being known to our parents and two-to-three friends to a bunch of people caring about our band and coming to our shows. It's been a great year. It started out with absolutely no MTV, no radio and no press. Zero. Basically it was just us touring, and playing shows and doing it the old school way--meeting fans one by one. Now we just finished the Warped Tour and we have tons of kids coming out every day who know the band and know every word to all the songs. I go to the P.O. box to pick up our mail and it's ridiculous. It's like bags and bags. … To have MTV recognize us for having a good year is frickin' awesome.

I saw you open for Blink-182 on the "Pop Disaster" tour, and you seemed like you were collecting the fans then.

When the record came out, there was no TV, no radio. It was all kids talking online. Before the record came out, there were demos, I believe, online. People were starting to talk about it. It was truly word of mouth. The one thing that I'm very impressed and so grateful about is our fans who just felt like they wanted to share the music and the band with their friends--with nobody asking them to. That's how it spread, and also by touring.

On our first tour, after every show we would go and hang out for two to three hours and talk to [fans]. They would go home and say, "I met this cool band. They were very nice and I bought their record." It started to spread. We kept on going through the same towns, playing and playing and opening up. We did the Blink-182 tour. We did a tour with Sugar Ray. We did the Warped Tour. We did a tour with Good Charlotte last fall. It just built from there. To this day we know how we got there. We know we got there through, like, kids spreading the word. That's why every night no matter where we play, how big the crowd is, how big the line is, we just go and hang out with them for two to three hours every night.

You said you're relatively young. How old are you?

I'm 23 years old. That's still pretty young huh? [Laughs] It's funny because we started playing in bands when we were 14 years old. My first big show was opening up for Face to Face and Lagwagon, and all those bands from California that we love, and MXPX. We were the young, young kids on the block. People, like sponsors [in Montreal and Toronto], were making fun of us because we were so little. Our first tour we were 17 years old. We left to tour across Canada. We had like 25 shows. I remember people laughing [and saying], "What the hell is that?" It's weird now to be 23. We're normal now. We're young, but most bands are 23-25.

How did your parents react to you wanting to tour at 17?

It took a long long discussion and outlining of what the tour was going to be. A very, very long discussion. I had to skip, like, three to four weeks of school to go. That's a funny thing about our parents; it's been a mix of amazing support but also misunderstanding and not really understanding why we wanted to be in a band so bad.

Have you started writing music for a new album?

We're kind of doing that every day. We started work in the summer. We've got more time to write, so we're starting now, putting it all together now. We're hoping to go in the studio in January, February or March and have it out by June.

Back to the VMAs: who do you think will be your biggest competition?

I'll betcha 50 Cent wins. I don't think we're gonna win it. For us, I know it sounds corny, but we don't even care about being nominated, but just to have a ticket and see what it's like to be there and be around all those huge rock stars and rap superstars or whatever. It's going to be interesting and it's going to be rad. We're happy because our friends All-American Rejects are in the category with us. We're gonna be happy to lose together. I wouldn't put any money on me, or on them, but I really think 50 Cent is going to take that one. If we do win, or if they win, it's going to be rad.

You said there are a lot of people you'd like to meet. Who do you want to meet the most?

Well, if I could hang out with 50 Cent, that would be pretty dope. I bet his party would be pretty kick ass. Probably, like, Christina Aguilera would be nice. I'd like to say hi to her, if you get what I'm sayin'. Metallica would be cool. I'm sure 95 percent of the people I'd like to have a conversation with. Even if you don't like their music, the fact that they accomplished so much is so rad.