Slap-happy bassist Les Claypool has a lot on his plate, ranging from his multitude of side projects to a book that he penned.

Recently, he added to his pile a Primus [ tickets ] reunion, which includes a new EP (the band's first new recording since 1999) and DVD titled "Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People," and a tour.

Claypool, guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Tim Alexander re-learned the entire Primus catalog before the tour launched in October, and are featuring a different set list each night.

Claypool talked to liveDaily about the reunion and the tour, and about how Primus faded away instead of burning out.

liveDaily: Why was now the time to get the band back together?

Les Claypool: Well, we had a few things we were talking about putting together like a live record of old material, this DVD, a greatest-hits thing. As we came closer and closer to assembling these things, we were talking more over the phone, and we just decided to get together and jam one day. We did, and we had a lot of fun. Then the record company heard that we had gotten together and played. They got all excited and encouraged us to go in the studio and write a few songs, so we did. We were going to do a couple-week tour, but we decided to do a full tour. It's not like we made a decision to get back together as much as we're slowly starting to work together again.

When you were in the early planning stages of the greatest-hits package, did you see it snowballing into this?

I knew at some point we would all be playing together, just because there's so much history together and there's so many songs that we all sort of yearned to play. There's a great many songs that we didn't play when Brain [drummer Brian "Brain" Mantia] was in the band. There's a lot of material that we haven't played in seven, eight years.

Does it take a lot of rehearsals to get back in the groove of playing those songs?

We will soon find out. [Laughs]

Tell me a little about the DVD.

The DVD is pretty amazing. The original concept was, "Let's assemble all of our videos and let's put some live footage on there." It turned out we have so much stuff. We have some VHS live footage of us playing a little radio station in 1989. There's a couple of things that are even before Larry and Tim were in the band. There's stuff of us at Woodstock. There's videos and there's the making of the videos on some of them. It's pretty comprehensive. We had these friends of ours, who are amazing artists, design the interface, which is pretty incredible, the whole sort of animated 3-D environment. It's really cool. It's one of the better interfaces than I've ever seen.

How long did it take to put together?

It took them a handful of months. They've conceptualizing and working on it for about six months.

How long ago did you decide to put together the DVD and the CD?

It's just one of those things that's always been talked about. Is the band ever going to get back together? Maybe we will, maybe we won't. Maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that. There's always talk of things, just like there's always talk of many things. It's one of these things that's been kicking around. Many ideas have been kicking around. This was the one that we felt was most appropriate for this time.

How has playing with the Les Claypool Frog Brigade and with Trey Anastasio [of Phish] and Stewart Copeland [of the Police] in Oysterhead inspired this EP?

I've really become in a world where people open up their music quite a bit. There's a lot more free-form spontaneity and whatnot in the music I've been doing for the last three years. That's the whole notion of playing two sets for this tour, having the first set be different every night. It'll be completely different every night. There won't be two shows that will be the same. The projected visuals are all going to be different every night as well. The second set is going to be
"[Sailing the] Seas of Cheese" in its entirety. It's gonna be an evening of Primus. More Primus than you would ever want. [Laughs.] Especially seeing how ticket sales are going, I think it's something that people have missed from this band for a good number of years. There's going to be songs that we're gonna play that we haven't played, like I said, in seven or eight years. But there's going to be songs that we've never played live that we're going to play.

Like what?

I don't know. There's quite a few songs on some of these records that we maybe played once live. Or some of them never played live. I want to make sure we play all the stuff at some point or another throughout the tour.

Is that in anticipation of people seeing more than one show, or is it more for the band?

I think it's for everyone. I've already gotten people who have told me they're going to buy tickets for the entire tour and follow the tour around. There are people that tend to follow my band around. Part of it is for that. Part of it is because we're going to record every show of the tour and we're going to release every show of the tour to the public. So you'll actually be able to go to the show and purchase that show that you see. So, I think every show needs to be different. Phish has been doing it, The Dead has been doing it.

The projected visuals are going to change each night as well?

That's sort of in the works. I'm not sure what exactly is going to happen. We have a friend who's very familiar with our material who's been around us forever. He's coming up with this visual package where he'll be performing along with us. He'll be jamming along with the music with his visuals. It's going to be very unique

How was the feeling with the band when you decided to get together and jam?

Well, Tim Alexander has been playing with me in the Frog Brigade since last summer. We had sort of rekindled some things. Then once we got Larry in there, everything was hunky dory. The main thing with Primus is it's not like we had a big blow-out as much as a burn out. I had been playing with Primus since 1984. Me and Larry had been playing together since 1989. That's a lot of years to spend with anybody. How many years does anybody spend with another individual working and living that close? How many marriages last that long? You don't even live with your parents that long. [Laughs]