Bruce McCulloch returns to Calgary Sunday to perform a new solo show based on his upcoming book, Tales of Bravery and Stupidity.

McCulloch, who is on tour with This Hour has 22 Minutes star Cathy Jones, will be performing Saturday at the Banff Centre and Sunday at Mount Royal University's Bella Concert Hall. Friday, he spoke to Doug Dirks on The Homestretch.

A: Well I can't do one without the other, because it's about me, right? And it's got to be true.

So I do find myself in situations that I didn't need to be in, even if I'm being brave inside them — and that makes, therefore, stupidity.

A: My wife says sometimes I get into situations just to create the material — like being on a flight, on WestJet. And I text my wife 'God is great' — like the terrorists did, just as a joke? And then someone oversees me.

And after that, it's like, "Why did I do that? Now I'm in trouble." So it's just to be silly and funny in the world, and that sometimes gets me in trouble.

A: They sort of hate me for it, but, hey, what are you going to do? I'm respectful of my family. But when you're an artist, which is what I tell them I am, the thing is that, sometimes, you just have to process your life. Mostly we make fun of me in my stories. So it's probably fine.

A: A lot of it is. But as I'm getting older, less and less so. I did a lot of that with [the television series] Young Drunk Punk. In this show, I talk about my decision to move back to Canada after I've been in L.A. for 20 years. It feels like the audiences are really responding to that journey.

A: I sort of made a promise to myself that my kids had to be Canadian at a certain point, and that when my daughter went to high school, that was the cutoff.

So we've been back in Toronto for a few months now, and you know, it's great to be.

A: It's tough. I'm actually driving now to Saskatoon, and it is –28 C right now. But I I kind of like all this.

A: It's what I started doing like a thousand years ago at Loose Moose Theatre and is my preferred way to communicate my weird ideas and stories with an audience. It's still the most connective thing I can do.

And besides, it's fun to be out there [on stage].

A: It's actually probably the most personal I've gotten in this show. I talk about a kind of a unique friendship of mine. And there's actually parts that are quite touching — or at least that's what I'm told. A lot of it is like stand up, and a lot of fun, but there's a couple moments there that are much more serious.

A: I wouldn't be here without Loose Moose Theatre. I wrote a piece actually last year about that, which is that I wouldn't be anywhere. I might still be loading trucks if I hadn't wandered into Loose Moose when I was doing journalism at Mount Royal College in the early '80's, and that experience formed the basis of that. In every show I create, I'm just trying to be interesting and going, what idea do I have? And how do I follow it? That has been what I've done for all these 10,000 years now.