Rich Aucoin: Halifax Popster Praises Prince, Shares Plans for New Record

When Rich Aucoin puts on a show, it's less of a concert than it is a wild party that Aucoin happily provides the soundtrack for. Confetti, projections and, yes, even a parachute keep his audiences entertained. But that's just the beginning; the Halifax popster behind 2011's 'We're All Dying to Live' plans on stepping it up this summer.

"When I play festivals this year, I'm going to have three parachutes," he tells Spinner. "I've been going to a lot of big spectacle shows in the last year -- Flaming Lips and Prince -- and it's funny when I go to a show now because I can't turn off the fact that I'm there taking notes on everything."

When it came to seeing the 'Purple Rain' pop-maestro, Aucoin was particularly taken aback by his ability to control the stadium lighting. "He's the only performer at that level that I've seen tell people to both turn on all the lights in the place at some points and at other points tell them to turn off all the lights -- it was as close to pitch darkness as you can get."

Aucoin has high hopes for his own show, aiming to one day perform under a traveling circus-like tent. "I need to make the lightest possible tent that I can safely put up in a club," he laughs. "I'm not sure what that cost would be to do it in a larger venue -- then I can actually fill. But it would be my dream to find a show in a big warehouse type of place and then, in the warehouse, make the actual room you can see the show in."

He's even considered sightlines so his far-out fantasy is a 360-spectacle. "I want it so there's no kind of real front of the stage so the stage can just move around during the show. That would be amazing because everyone can see the show then and get the experience of being at the front."

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But it's not all fun and parachute games for the rising indie star. While on tour, Aucoin has raised money for the Canadian Cancer Foundation and plans to continue supporting various charities in the future. "I just want to help as much as I can and I want to keep that up," Aucoin says. "It feels really good to not only have an artistically and entertaining job but I like that I can do practical things like raising money for charity, too; creating a space where you can go out and have a great time and feel good about helping someone out."

Though he's currently touring 'We're All Dying to Live,' Aucoin is already engrossed in its follow-up, which he says will be a more intimate affair compared to the current disc which apparently features a whopping 500 collaborators.

"The reason I recorded that many people was to do it differently from the first record; I'm always going to do each record differently," he says. "I've been working on the new record for about a year now and it's going to be the first time making a record while in constant transit.

"The big thing on this one, that I chose to do differently, was that all my songs were really long on the new record, so I made a rule that I can't be over three and a half minutes and all the tempos are really fast so it's a really energetic record."