By: Rob Williams

Though the band specializes in straightforward pop rock, frontman, and main songwriter John Rzeznik writes most songs using a variety of different guitar tunings.

There are so many alternate tunings in the band's catalogue that Rzeznik tours with 30 different guitars of all makes and models.

"I have a pretty big footprint when I travel; you just can't get the right sound out of the guitar in my head. Sometimes I hear harmonic overtones and droning strings and they create this crazy kind of wash of sound," he says during a recent phone interview. "That's one of the things I admired about Bob Mould and Hüsker Dü: it was almost a sonic hallucination with the guitar and so many tunings.

"You always experiment and keep going. I rarely go back to the same turning twice, although I've been doing a lot of work in standard tuning now."

The "now" he's talking about is on the band's latest release, Something for the Rest of Us, the Goo Goo Dolls' ninth album. The record is a collection of the mid-tempo arena-rock anthems and ballads the band has become known for, but instead of just touching on his own experiences, Rzeznik tells stories through the eyes of other people.

The most glaring, and some would say heartbreaking, example is the song Notbroken, the story of a wife of a paralyzed American soldier who's afraid to return home. The track was inspired by a letter Rzeznik received from the wife, who wanted her husband to know she still loved him, no matter what.

"I didn't talk to her again, and have no idea who she is. I don't know her name or if she heard the song," Rzeznik says.

"I just think it was time for me to say something other than just talk about my life, myself, my small circle of my existence. I was really struck by the encounters I was having with people and the news I was reading. I don't want to make big political statements.

"I could stand up and scream out loud: 'George Bush is an idiot,' or 'Get out of Iraq,' but that's not me. I find myself more concerned with people's well-being rather than the state of the government. Anyone can get up there and throw verbal bombs."

Rzeznik has been concerned with the well-being of people since forming the Goo Goo Dolls in 1986 in Buffalo, N.Y., with bassist-vocalist Robby Takac (drummer Mike Malinin rounds out the trio). The group started out as a ragged, punk-influenced power-pop band before honing its sound and breaking through to the mainstream on the strength of acoustic ballads Name and Iris in the mid-1990s and releasing a string of multi-platinum albums, most notably 1995's A Boy Named Goo and 1998's Dizzy Up the Girl.

Lately the band has been releasing albums about once every four years, and visiting Winnipeg every time its does. The group will play the Pantages Playhouse Theatre Wednesday in support of Something for the Rest of Us (tickets are $39.50 and $55.50 at Ticketmaster).