Chad VanGallen in action, before he shaved his head.

The prospect of interviewing Chad VanGaalen, a reputed recluse, was quite daunting. The first question was simple: the proper pronunciation of his last name. Is it “Van-gay-len” or “Van-gahl-en”?

“You can pronounce it however you want,” VanGaalen said over the phone from Calgary.

The interview started off with ease, and I could tell by the background noises emanating from the VanGaalen house that the singer was in fact living on a diaper island. He was holding his younger daughter while chatting with me on the phone, frequently distracted by the three-year–old’s interruptions. (“That’s a duck. It’s a duck.”)

We chatted about his most recent album, Diaper Island, self-described as a “rock album,” and about having to finish his current tour across Canada after feeling like it’s already officially ended — he tries not to think about the last few concerts.

Many of his fans know that he doesn’t care for touring. He finds it boring and dislikes being away from his girlfriend and his young daughters who are “the sweetest kids in the world.”

When on tour, VanGaalen doesn’t believe in “bad concert etiquette,” but feels uncomfortable when the audience is sitting (especially since half of the set for this tour is punk rock) and prefers when fans are well sauced, or “weebly,” as he put it.

Even heckling is OK since VanGaalen started out as a busker and loved the interaction with audiences that busking allowed. Though he misses busking “every single day,” he would probably not return to busking as he recognizes that people who busk are doing it for a reason.

“It’s the code, man! The busking code” that if you have a nice “nest egg,” you don’t busk.

VanGaalen is trained in lithography and printmaking, and is as artistically creative as he is musically creative. Sounds emanating from VanGaalen’s records often come from instruments he engineered or invented, sounds he calls “pretty hobo,” although fans tend to think of them as works of genius.

His most challenging musical invention to date is the acoustic drum sound featured on “City of Electric Light” from the album Soft Airplane, creating a “weird, herky-jerky drumbeat.”

VanGaalen loves making music videos, which he animates himself. Oftentimes, the video takes on a life of its own with its own meaning and purpose apart from the song. This is what happened with the video for “Peace On the Rise” from Diaper Island. VanGaalen explained the video in detail.

“The story of the video is based on a longer story about these space tourists that have an empathy machine. They just travel around to different planets sucking up creatures and then absorbing their life force entirely. So they become these organisms, and then they get addicted to this weird sort of tourism and they start losing their own minds in the process. So really they’re just hunting for this Jehbed Trusser, which feeds off these little sort of crustacean things and once you find the bird you can find these little insects.”

The video is psychedelic and strange, looking like a cross between a child’s pastel drawing and an Internet flash animation.

The song’s story is quite different from the video’s, explained VanGaalen: “Sonically I was just trying to make something that maybe you could listen to if you had a migraine. But that was still guitar based. Thematically I was just thinking about stuff that made me feel awesome in my life.”

VanGaalen’s videos are a treat unto themselves, though you might trip balls if watching them while stoned.

Another activity that’s better when stoned, in VanGaalen’s opinion, would be a zombie apocalypse. For that, VanGaalen would just drop a “shitload of acid” and get friends to come to his studio “because it’s already zombie-proofed.”

He even has a crossbow.

VanGaalen was strangely adamant about his zombie apocalypse talk. His garage is fully zombie-proofed and he has plenty of food and water in the basement. He rebuked my plan to hole up in Costco since everyone would go there, and someone is sure to have already been bitten by the time others arrive. Instead, he told me to get a samurai sword, a machete, a crossbow and a pistol — for a last-ditch effort to stave off death. The trick, explained VanGaalen, is to have quiet weapons; you have to be silent and take the zombies out.

With no foreseeable need to turn to Chad VanGaalen for his zombie-proof house, I recommend going to see him perform at the Roxy Theatre on Nov. 17. Come a little bit “weebly,” stand up and rock out. He would actually prefer it if you get sauced and provide feedback that he’s putting on a good show.

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Photo: Encosion/Flickr