It seems that Alberta gets the short end of the stick when it comes to music festivals. Sure we had Edgefest in the 1990's, the one-off Summersault festival and two Virgin Festivals, but when compared to the US and Europe, the major rock festivals seemed to be sporadic at best and left fans hungering for more. Edmonton's Sonic Boom Festival has been steadily growing the last few years, and last year X-Fest debuted in Calgary. The September long weekend brings what may be the biggest co-headliners to Alberta in a long time – the first ever shows from Linkin Park and the return after 4 years of Incubus.

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington and Incubus' Brandon Boyd recently participated in a conference call with reporters about their co-headlining Honda Civic tour. To have two major bands on the bill is a highlight, Bennington said.

"The most special thing about this tour is the fact that you have two headlining bands singing together on one bill, which typically can be hard to do because usually when you’re in a position to headline a tour of this kind, there’s only room for one headlining band. So the fact that Incubus gets to come out and perform a full headlining set and Linkin Park gets to come out and perform our full headlining set with personal production and everything is special. But also, we don’t really look at what the other artists have done on these tours and go, ok what do we think we should do. You know, we’re just going to go out and do what our fans want from us which is, you know, play songs that they’re familiar with and catch up on some on the new music and become familiar with that. So really I think from Linkin Park’s standpoint, we’re just going to come out and put on the highest-energy show we can, and incorporate as much of the new music as possible. And I’m expecting that Incubus will probably do the same."

"...I just think it’s a good moment and a great opportunity to have two big giant rock & roll bands sharing a stage, I just think that’s going to be better than either of us would do in our own show; it’s two headlining sets, including Mute Math which is going to be a good time as well. So it’s almost like a minifestival, which is amazing," added Boyd. "Our bands have a lot of mutual listeners and I think that it’s one of those things that, once the idea was floated, we really caught onto it. Linkin Park has a considerably larger reach than Incubus has had, and I think it’s going to be wonderful for us as a band to play in front of more people. [laughs] So we definitely appreciate the opportunity there. But I personally think that it’s just going to be great...because of the carryover between the listeners, you know there are a lot of Linkin Park listeners who are also Incubus listeners and vice versa. But we’ve never done something like this before. So as far as the feedback is concerned from people around the world - Incubus has been on tour for the past year - once this tour was announced it’s been overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic. So I’m really excited for it to get started. This will be the end of our touring cycle for our newest record, and so we’re looking forward to just making some music and I’m very much looking forward to seeing Linkin Park with my own eyes for the first time since over 10 years ago as well. So I think it’s going to be fun to be able to see them every night."

Bennington agrees.

"I’ve been involved in figuring out who we tour with for a long time. I swear it feels like I’ve probably tried to figure out a way to get Linkin Park and Incubus on the road together at least once per cycle since probably Meteora. It just goes to show how difficult it can be to actually get two headlining groups together. It was surprising to me that we haven’t actually done more touring with Incubus than we have in the last...fourteen years. So for the fact that we do share such a big  group of fans that listen to both bands, I still feel like there’s a large number of people that are Incubus fans that never really got into Linkin Park, or vice versa. But I think that there’s a common interest there. And so I feel like that’s one of the things that’s been so...overwhelmingly positive, everyone’s response to our bands going on tour together.  I think it gives both of our fans something that they’ve wanted for a long time...because I think they’ve had to choose a lot of times on which band they’re going to go see because we’ve both been on tour. Or when we’re on tour in the U.S., Incubus is off in the Pacific Rim, hopping all over Asia or somewhere in Europe and we’re down in Asia. It just never works out. So...they’re ending their cycle and we’re beginning ours, this is a very specific time in our career that things have lined up for us to be able to do a tour like this together. We get to go out and just fully express ourselves as artists and really do whatever we want to do, this energy we feel our fans are going to want. I think that that’s something that’s really special. And so I’m very appreciative to the people on the Civic tour. You know, having the vision to understand, that this is something that is rare and is something that people are going to be excited to go see. You know, you never get to go see Bon Jovi and Kiss at the same time."

Being part of a festival also appeals to Bennington.

"This to me feels as exciting as a lot of the concerts that I would be excited to go to when I was a kid. That was I think one of the reasons why Lollapalooza when I was young became so important so quickly. It was because it was the only place that you could go see the Chili Peppers and Ministry and Pearl Jam and Ice Cube - all these bands play together. There’s no way you were going to see all these bands together, you know? And that’s been the inspiration for modern festivals. It does have that feeling of something that’s going to be a show that you wanna go see, because it’s got something special. I’m excited. Honestly I...hope that our bands can walk away inspired from each other. You know? I’ve always appreciated Incubus for their music. And they’re also very good live. I’ve had the chance to pop over and watch them play a couple songs onstage here and there at some festivals throughout our career and they’re a great live band. So I think the energy is going to be really amazing out in the crowd. So I would actually like to be down there to watch the show but I don’t know if that’s going to be possible."

With multiple albums under their belts, Bennington says playing has changed from when they first started touring with 2000's Hybrid Theory

"You get to that point where you have a bunch of songs that people have heard on the radio, and it becomes...less about playing everything you have and more about playing the songs that people are familiar with. We’re at that point now where it’s like, we’ve been around for over a decade, that makes it sound more important, I think. [laughter] We’ve been around for over 10 years and this is our fifth record, we’ve been fortunate to have a lot of songs that do really well, off of our records, and so a lot of people come there to hear the songs that they know. And adding in new material becomes something that is a little bit more difficult for us over the last few records because most of the songs that are really great are like, midtempo songs. And Linkin Park isn’t the band that you go to see, you know, chairs on the floor in the arena - no one wants to come to a Linkin Park show and stand there and look at the band and listen to beautiful music. People want that but they also want to be kicked in the face and they want to run into each other and they want to jump up and down and sing and have a really great, high-energy time. And so being able to incorporate a lot of new material into our set just felt like it was bringing too much of the energy down. So I think what we’re doing on this tour, the new record has so much energy that we feel like we could add a bunch of new music to the set and people will be stoked about it. Casual fans are there to hear the three songs that they love, and go "Oh yeah, I didn’t know they did this song too!" Those fans will actually enjoy hearing the new music at these shows. Right now at this point we’re focused on making sure the new material is up to speed and that we’re familiar with it enough to go and play it live."

There isn't likely to be a cross-over in the sets, Brandon said.

"At the moment there’s nothing planned in the traditional sense but it really only takes a couple of days of making music and being on tour with new friends to become inspired by each other and each other’s mutual distinctions and idiosyncrasies and stuff, and then for that desire to share a little moments to arise so I have a sneaking suspicion that some of us will be sneaking onstage in each other’s sets and I hope that Linkin Park is cool with that. We have a tendency to sneak onstage with our friends’ events once in awhile. We took this band out with us years ago - Sparta, I don’t know if you guys remember Sparta. Amazing band; kind of from the ashes of At the Drive-in. We became friends with them very quickly and started playing. We went and saw the movie Dodgeball when it came out in the movie theatres. Both bands together went and saw this film. We were laughing so hard at the movie that we started playing dodge ball in the empty arenas after the shows were over, and became so like enthusiastic about it that we started going band against band. And the drummer, Tony, of Sparta, ended up breaking his thumb from one heroic move, and rendered himself incapable of playing. And so then Kenny and Jose...from our band learned all of the songs in Sparta’s set and played for like 10 days. They took turns being the drummer of Sparta and then Tony got well enough to play by the very last show in LA and played again. It ended up being kind of a fortuitous occasion. I’m sure it was really hard for Tony, having to sit out, but it brought us closer to the band. I’m not suggesting that someone in Linkin Park should go get injured and one of us has to sit in, I’m just saying music is a communal experience and it’s one to share; as well as to sit back and revere when your friends and their bands are in a moment. There are moments to not disturb but there are definitely moments when it’s fun to disturb your friends."

Linkin Park's Living Things debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard charts, making them the band with the most #1's this century.

"It’s cool, you know. It’s something that I never would have thought of, that statistic being one that’s attached to Linkin Park. I’ve always felt that we just made the best record that we could make at the time. So...it’s really more of a testament to our fans than to us. It really is a testament to how enthusiastic our fan base is about what we do in the studio. And I think that the true test of what we’ve done is good or not is obviously how well the songs hold up over time. But to hit number 1 is really...is really something you just kind of hope for when you’re making a record. You know, that people respond to it well. It’s not really a goal that we set out for as a band. I think that we kind of look at a lot of other things, being forced into a different style as a business. I think we pay attention to so much stuff that’s going on, we kind of forget about goals like reaching number 1 on the charts. You’re focused more on putting the live show together and where you’re going to be in six months, which videos to make and which ones not to make and all that good stuff. It was kind of a cool little moment for us to take a break and go 'Oh, hey, this is what all our hard work is doing.'"

So what can you expect at X-Fest and Sonic Boom? With two bands renowned for their live shows, undoubtedly something special.

"Every tour is kind of different. Even throughout our world tour, the whole touring cycle for the entire album, the tour kind of changes, production-wise it depends on where it’s at. The productions in the U.S. are typically our biggest because we can afford to have them. It’s hard to shift really big productions all over the world so the show in Australia is probably going to be pretty stripped-down. But at the same time, I think that what we try to do is incorporate what we’re doing at the most present moment into our live set," said Bennington. "So...I haven’t even seen it personally yet, but I’m interested in seeing what our team at Ghost Town has put together for our show this summer. I think it’s going to be really beautiful. So I’m excited about that. But I actually have no idea what it looks like yet."

"I’m excited to see what Linkin Park does as well. I’ve seen the videos of their full-scale production and it looks pretty amazing so I think it’s going to be exciting. I know our production is very much in the same capacity. In the States we are able to have a full-scale production because we can just afford to it, and when we travel overseas, depending on how far it is, logistically, you’ll see different variants of the production," added Boyd. "But we always try and bring as exciting and big of a show as we can, given the circumstances. But on the Honda Civic tour...I know from the Incubus point of view it’s going to be an amalgamation of three or four different productions and ideas that we’ve been utilizing throughout this touring cycle. It’s going to be like, the best of all worlds that people have seen thus far."