Livedaily.com recently caught up with TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA co-founder Paul O'Neill to discuss

the upoming North American tour. The following is a brief excerpt:

LiveDaily:How does this year's show differ from last year's?

O'Neill: "This year, we've added another four tractor-trailers of light and special effects. We just keep trying to take it to higher and higher levels. We have all kinds of surprises. We're working them out right now with the engineers. When we go on tour now, 219 people go to work. The band's gotten so big, we have to literally rehearse in a coliseum, which we rent out for two weeks. A lot of times, these bands rehearse small or in a rehearsal studio or a sound stage, and then you book cities in the middle of nowhere and call them warm-up shows. In Trans-Siberian Orchestra, we don't believe in warm-up shows. We believe in being great out of the box. We basically just rent a coliseum because that's the only thing that can fit our production. We rehearse for two weeks, shake out all the bugs so that no one has a bad experience going to see a TSO show. We don't sell tickets behind the stage. Once the front of the show is sold out, it's sold out. TSO is the first rock band that actually does matinees. The reason we do this--I learned this from Pink Floyd--is we don't want anyone to ever go to a TSO show and say, 'Oh my boyfriend took me to see TSO but we were behind the stage' or 'My dad took us to see Trans-Siberian and we had bad seats.' We become the first rock band to ever do two shows in one day. In a lot of the cities, if we sell out too quickly on the night shows, rather than open up the sides and behind the stage, everyone gets up a little earlier and we do a 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. show. Most rock musicians would rather have a boiler implanted in their forehead than get up in the afternoon. [Laughs] But with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, we'd rather get up in the afternoon than have someone experience less than the full show. "

LiveDaily: How many members do you have in your band?

O'Neill: "Thirty core members and 30 kind of revolving members. I think it keeps it healthy. There's literally teenagers in the band, people in their 20s, people in their 30s, people in their 40s. It's the older people have experience, and they're the keel of the organization. The younger musicians, those who are 19, 20, don't allow anyone to become jaded. I remember last year, the bass player's like 'Can you believe we sold out Madison Square Garden in four hours?!' He's so excited. The young kids, they don't allow the older ones to become jaded or be taken for granted. That's one thing we never want to do--take our audience for granted. We never want to become complacent. We want every show to be new, to be fresh. We just always want to stay on top of our game. That's what's really important with Trans-Siberian. Despite the size of the band and the complexity of the music, there's no tapes, no lip syncing there's no nothing.

Last year, believe it or not, a couple actually came and tried to get their money back after they saw [a vocalist] do 'Queen Of The Winter Night'. She's running all over the stage doing this unbelievably hard operatic song written by Mozart. She was so perfect, everyone thought she was lip-syncing--and she wasn't. [A lot of artists] say they have to lip sync because they have to dance or move. With TSO, you get the movement--forget the movement, you get the running. Nobody's lip-syncing. The string parts are all live. If we make a mistake, you're going to hear it. Watching someone walk a tightwire with a net is exciting. Watching someone walk a tightwire without a net is even more exciting."

To read the entire interview go to this location.