He chats to WHO about their infamous gig where the roof collapsed, a fan who got nude on stage - and gets a lesson in groupies.

In January you'd played 666 gigs and had played before 4,265,000 people. Who did all the sums?
Will our drummer has always kept an Excel spreadsheet going, how many gigs we have done, and is always counting down saying, "Hey guys, 500 is coming up next week on Thursday" and stuff like that. As to the estimate of how many people, that's a pretty new thing, a manager sent that through to us. I was pretty surprised.

So does he consult the Excel spread sheet to work that out?
Of the amount of people? I don't know how it's calculated. There are some gigs like Montreal Jazz Festival 2006 where people told us there were 100,000 people watching. I didn't really have time to count them in the 60 minutes we were up there playing!

Do you get nervous the bigger the audience?
Not really. I just get nervous when we do something we really haven't done before. The first show where we charged people more than $5 to get in I was pretty nervous. I didn't think anyone would turn up. Last year the Myer Music Bowl, which is easily the biggest venue we have played in Melbourne for our own show, that was pretty nerve wracking but it was a great night.

Right now, how would you describe the band?
A lot hairier than usual! Harry has been spending the last four months growing a beard. It's getting pretty scary, but I think he has increased our hairiness factor across the band by a lot.

How did you, Oliver McGill and Felix Riebl start the band in 1999?
We'd all been playing around. We'd known each other through another band we played in when we were all still in high school. We all went to different schools but met each other through music, but then Felix wanted to get this band together, and he got me and Ollie and that's where it started off. We met Harry a bit further down the track and he came and started playing trumpet, singing a bit as well, and then it sort of built from there. The line-up we have now we have had has been going since May 2001.

With six of you plus the three boys on horns, The Empire Horns, are there alliances or splinter groups?
Oh no, we are all pretty easy going. I don't think any of us want to be dictated to. A lot of ideas fly around and it's usually pretty clear when we come up with something that works.

How many air miles have you racked up? Do you have a spreadsheet for that too?
It's funny, we have all done almost the same amount of flying over the last six years, but somehow only half the band got Qantas Gold frequent flyer status. Gold is a good one because you can get into Qantas club for free, just go in and get something to eat and have a few drinks before you get on the plane and stuff, and that's really cool. Silver's good too because you can queue up in the superiority queue to check in and take an extra piece of luggage on. But strangely only few of us are Gold.

What was your worst show?
Worst show first show we did in London at a place called The Spotted Dog in Willesden Green. This guy got up on stage, faced the audience, and dropped his daks.

Was he a rough Aussie living in London embarrassing us all?
I'm not sure. We asked around but it turns out he just likes to get naked at gigs. It's just what he does. He just sort of stood there for half a minute. We didn't really know what to do. We kept playing. He got off stage, pulled his pants up and just went back to normal.

How did you react?
It was so unexpected, we just sort of watched in horror, everyone in the audience watched in horror, and then went back to what we were doing.

What about your best show?
A lot of the ones we did on the last Australian tour which was about a year ago. The crowds we played to were really exciting. Myer Melbourne Music bowl was huge.

Tell us about your new album, Live On Earth, and new DVD, Live At The Bowl.
The CD is a double live album. We found the best, most memorable bits of all the gigs we have done in Australia and around the world, and made a live album. It's a good thing to have out there.

What's the most rock'n'roll thing you guys do?
We had the roof cave-in in Switzerland once. That was pretty nasty. We were just playing and then we got to the middle of [our song] The Chariot - crash - and then the roof of this 400-year-old building just landed and everyone had to get out. It was in Lucerne at a blues festival which we had done three times before. The building where our gig was, was a real piece of history, and it caved in.

So you literally raised the roof?
Brought the house down!

Was anyone hurt?
Yeah, I think somebody got hit in the head with a bit of rubble. And it knocked a fridge over onto someone behind the bar. Could have been a hell of a lot worse, but that bit of roof was just over the bar.

Do you all have partners?
Yeah, we all do.

Is it hard having to travel all the time?
It can be. I mean you know have to figure out how to work around it I guess. It's been a different story the last year as we haven't really toured that much. But yeah, it can be challenging for everyone involved.

Do you have groupies?
Not really sure what that is!

You've never heard of a groupie?
Like in that movie Almost Famous?

How about Myspace fans who post raunchy messages on your page?
We haven't really checked our inbox for a while. It's hard to keep up with, but who knows, there could be anything in there!

What's with your coffee blog ryancoffee.blogspot.com?
For some reason at the start of last year, I had a terrible coffee at this place in Elwood in Melbourne and I thought I have to tell someone about this so I started the blog and I wrote a paragraph about how it. And then every coffee I've had since then, I've tried to write something about. But there's only so much you can write so I end up writing about other stuff instead.

* The Cat Empire's latest albums, Live On Earth, and DVD, Live At The Bowl, plus the Live On Earth Collectors Box Set are out now.

More info on The Cat Empire
thecatempire.com
ryancoffee.blogspot.com