Sprightly lead singer Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies [ tickets ] admits he's a bit relieved that tickets for his group's upcoming Peepshow Tour went fast.

"I'm happy they've sold out quickly. If they hadn't, I'd be very frightened," he said with a laugh. "Realistically, we should be able to go through now and play arenas. But you can't take anything for granted."

The theater tour is the band's first in support of "Everything to Everyone," the follow-up to 2000's "Maroon." The disc, which hit stores as the tour launched on Tuesday (10/22), includes a limited-run CD/DVD edition that includes an 11-song acoustic video.

Robertson talked to liveDaily about the "Peepshow" tour, writing songs for "Everything to Everyone" and the possibility of a b-sides album.

liveDaily: Tell me about the format of the Peepshow Tour.

Ed Robertson: It's very stripped down, production-wise. We're playing small theaters. We just thought it would be an interesting way to present the new material. We wanted to play everything off the new album on this tour, and that's tough to do in an arena setting. Our plan, over the course of the entire tour, is to play everything we've ever recorded. We're going to do the whole new record every night, plus favorites, greatest-hits kind of things, with a heavy focus on rarities and b-sides and everything we've ever done, essentially. Plus, we haven't figured out exactly how we're going to do it yet, but the crowd is going to be able to ask the band questions. Somehow, there's going to be interaction with the band every night. People will be able to ask us those burning questions, like where we got our name. [laughs] It's going to be really cool, I think. We're looking forward to it because it's going to be an intimate setting and very relaxed.

Playing everything you've ever recorded must take a lot of rehearsal.

No, actually, we're not going to bother. [laughs] We're just going to do it. We're rehearsing the new record, because that's stuff that we haven't played live yet. But the other songs we'll just decide on the day which ones we're going to do that night and we'll just go over them on soundcheck. It really just takes refreshing for us because we wrote them. [laughs] We're really planning to have fun with it and experiment with stuff.

The song "Aluminum" is one of the highlights of the album. It seems like such a sweet ballad at first. You sing about how someone shines, but then sing in the chorus, "You can shine like silver all you want/but you're just aluminum." … "You're not as precious as you contrive."

That was one of the first songs we wrote for the record and we had a ton of trouble with it. It was an early favorite with the band. It was in the first four or five songs that we finished. By the time we finished 30 songs, I think we were kind of tired of it. We had been living with it for six or eight months, and kept writing and kept writing. I think we thought the newer stuff that we'd written was the really good stuff. But we kept going back [and saying], "There's something really good here in this track." It was really hard to record. It was hard to figure out the important elements of it. I'm glad we stuck at it, though. I love it.

What was difficult about it?

It went in so many different directions. All we try to do is serve the song. Whether it be "For You," "Shopping" or "Aluminum," there are very diverse approaches to recording a track. We just want to get it right for the sentiment of the song. "Aluminum" has this thing where it rides an edge of being very rock, but having this really mellow atmosphere. It's a tough line to walk and we wanted it to have both. It was just hard to get. It was hard to figure out how to get that. We wanted it to have this rolling, atmospheric vibe, but we also wanted it to be dark and punchy.

What were some of the last songs you wrote for the album?

The last one to get finished was either "Take It Outside" or "Upside Down." They were while we were recording.

Is it difficult to write in the studio?

We had never done it before. And, yes, it is, because, I find, you're so involved in everything else, the last thing I want to do is open a new can of worms. [laughs] But we knew those songs were important to us.

Tell me about the Barenaked Ladies' songwriting process.

This is the first time that we took a lot of input from Kevin [Hearn, keyboardist] and Jim [Creeggan, bassist] in the writing process. It was really a good thing. We afforded ourselves the luxury of time for the first time in over a decade. Generally, we tour exhaustively and we have three weeks to write an entire record. So Steve [Page, singer-guitarist-songwriter] and I would just do what was familiar to us and woodshed and write a record. This time around, we had more time and Jim and Kev wanted to be involved. We wanted to have them involved. So we did it, and they contributed some amazing stuff.

What did they contribute?

Steve and I generally still wrote all the lyrics. But "Celebrity" is a Kevin song, "Shopping" is a Kevin song. "Maybe Katie" is a Jim song. "Next Time" is a Jim song. There's a bunch. Then they brought them to the band and we all worked on them. Steve and I did lyrics and it was really good.

That must have brought a fresh approach to the writing process.

We ended up with way more songs than we ever have before. In the past, we'd have 16 or 17 songs together before we went into record. This time we had 30 ready. It was actually really tough [to figure out] what to put on the record.

Are you considering a b-sides record with the songs that didn't make the cut?

We'll see. I don't know. I'd love to. We actually put one together just for ourselves of all the stuff, not even the stuff from this record, just the stuff in the past that we've written and hadn't put on record. Jim came up to me and said, "I think this is my favorite record." [laughs]