ShareThisJosh Groban is living it up on the road. The day we caught up with the multiplatinum-selling operatic crooner, he was recovering from a full costume screening of "The Big Lebowski" on his tour bus. Earlier in the week, he had rescued a wounded baby bird from the rain. Groban, 30, is playing arenas in support of his most recent album, "Illuminations," an experimental set produced by Rick Rubin and partly inspired by his breakup with actress January Jones.
How the discussion went:
Q: You put a bowling alley in your bus. Have you been reading Motley Crue's "The Dirt"?
A: Things got pretty heavy, I must say. We were watching "The Big Lebowski." My band can turn that bus into many things. The bowling alley is just one of them.
Q: I want to know how you got a pink robe.
A: My band sent the memo out. When I walked on the bus, I had a white Russian in one hand and pink robe in the other.
Q: You're also out rescuing baby birds. What don't you do?
A: Never a dull moment on tour. When I think to myself what does burning a candle on both ends mean, I think, you do not party harder than those two things -- having a "Big Lebowski" night and taking care of a baby bird.
Q: When you released "Illuminations," you didn't know if it would win new fans or scare away old ones. So are there huge curtained-off areas of the arena?
A: If there's any curtaining, it's because we designed it that way. It's an intimate show. We specifically designed this tour to create a theatrical environment in arenas. The reaction I'm getting every night is probably some of the most enthusiastic and heartfelt I've ever had.
Q: This sounds like a pretty interactive show. You play two pianos and a drum solo, and wander into the audience. You even serve milk and wine.
A: It's a full-service show. These are things we tried out at the smaller shows earlier in the year. That's where a lot of that stuff came from.
Q: Have you got into any trouble with the live Q&A segment?
A: Well, you never know what you're going to get. My assistants pick three questions, and sometimes they really throw me out there. Sometimes people will ask to sing. That's the fun part. You have to stay on your toes.
Q: How are you coping without "The Oprah Winfrey Show"?
A: To have that support from her early on was a huge part of my career. But any time you get splashed onto a media platform that has so many viewers, it's easy to be pigeonholed. That's why I jump at opportunities to do things like Jimmy Kimmel or David Letterman. That's the other half of who I am.
Q: Singing Kanye West's tweets on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" was genius. Did you come up with that idea?
A: As a musician, you often don't get to do things other than sing your 3-1/2 minutes at the end of the talk show. But I always welcomed anything I can shake things up a little bit.
(Email Aidin Vaziri at avaziri(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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