[chris]

Also, touching on KKF's post, I'm sure that it is profitable for the boys to tour the states. They may not rake in tons of cash, but there has to be some sort of profit in it, one would think.

There must be, otherwise they wouldn't spend so much time down there. Sure they're playing smaller venues and such, but they sell out everywhere they go, they travel around in a nice fancy tour bus, and they get paid in American dollars. They also travel with a much smaller road crew in the States, so they don't need to pay as many employees as they do for the big Canadian arena tours. I remember reading an article that mentioned something about the Hip being in the top 10% of bands that tour the U.S. on a regular basis. I'm not sure exactly what that translates to money-wise, but they must be doing ok.

I'll try to find that webpage on the wayback machine. It was a PollStar chart, if I recall correctly.

[edit]Pollstar reported their 2002 US tour grossed $5.8Million US earning them position 79 on the Top 100 Tours of the year list.