Canadian indie rocker Rich Aucoin’s shows are madcap, kinetic, participatory parties involving props like giant parachutes and confetti. We caught up with Aucoin, who’s at Great Scott on Sept. 24, while he backtracked to the previous night’s venue for a forgotten laptop. Call it collateral damage of a very good time.

I’ve been to one of your shows—it was like being on drugs without taking any.
I think that’s a good, apt description. When I try to describe it to someone in elevator-length conversation, I say it’s like crowd karaoke to a bunch of songs you don’t know, covered in the sweat and confetti of your friends.

Do you ever have a night where you just don’t feel on?
Oh yeah. You’ve just got to somehow channel the motivation to perform. The thing I tend to think of the most is that each time there’s someone who’s only going to see you that one time, and that’s your only time in this life with them. So, you might as well perform as hard as you can, so that their one impression of your existence isn’t “Well, that was shitty.”

That’s a good way to look at most moments in life, I think.
I look at every show like it’s my last, as well. That’s another personal goal in each performance, to try to add to previous shows. I like to figure out new things during the show, see how they work.

What’s new to this tour?
The parachutes are going to be larger than the last time you saw me—they’re going be able to cover like a thousand people now!

Where did you get the idea for the parachute? I love it because it reminds me of gym class as a kid.
It showed up on one of those eBay “You might also like this” [sidebars], and I was like, “I would also like that!” I tried it out with a song and then realized I had to write a song specifically for it. So it got performed once with “Undead,” and ever since it’s been with “Are You Experiencing?”

Any really memorable moments from past shows?
When I started crowd surfing, I’d bring out a surfboard and people would pass me over the audience. When I was in Brazil, instead of passing me off, some guys just ran around the crowd at high speeds with me, so that was pretty crazy.