Mumiy Troll is big in Siberia, but this is the first North American tour for the Russian "poparocks" band, which hopes to garner a following for its new album "Comrade Ambassador," which will be released in late March.

Known as Russia's most popular rock band, the band and its frontman, Ilya Lagutenko, were once listed as "dangerous" when the Soviet Union was under Communist rule.

Lagutenko, who left the band for a time to serve in the Russian army, answered questions via e-mail:

Why become rock 'n' roll musicians?

We simply believe that with our straightforward approach to rock 'n' roll (which indeed is not really a Russian thing originally), we can show the people across the ocean that it just takes an effort to practice electric guitar instead of balalika [Russian stringed instrument] and here you are, it becomes your second nature.

Describe the experience of touring in Siberia, early on in your career.

Our first tour happened in Russia in late 1990s and it was all different than nowadays. Look at the map. All that area between Moscow and our hometown Vladivostok we simply call Siberia: a vast space of land where you have almost 1,000 kilometers between cities. We tried it all. Buses, which froze their engines in a middle of a steppe and you had to walk to the nearest village for help. Trains, which smelled like they still remembered Gulag passengers transported to distant areas. Planes, like in a situation when we were told "This is the only plane to Moscow in two weeks because of the snowstorm," and people got in there carrying caviar in buckets and salted salmon, and you'd squeeze your guitars in between. I remember the day we came to one of those small (now famous) oil cities where it is -40 degrees Celsius and people don't switch the cars' engines off for the night. Our question was, "What if someone stole it?" And answer was, "To go where?"

Why did you record the new album in California?

We were thinking about recording studios, and we had an [opportunity] to do it in London, Moscow, Germany, and even exotic places like South Africa and Dominican Republic. We thought "Oh, we've never been to L.A. yet!" So we simply Googled "best recording studio in Los Angeles." The Village Studio came first.

Describe the band's origins, especially when communism still ruled your area.

You can hardly believe that people at that time were prosecuted for being musicians. Now it's all funny and sounds like another world. However, there was a special list of bands which were considered "dangerous" to listen to by Party Cultural Committees and they simply included anyone who was not an officially professional musician. So one day our band name was in that list. They hardly knew the songs. I guess they simply did not get the name. Anyway, in those times, if you're banned, it means you're super-cool, and you'll get the following simply for that.

Did your serving in the Russian Army affect the band?

Being in the army definitely gave me better communication skills with people around me. We were lucky not to go to Afghanistan. However, I did my military service on a little island. It was rather like "Lost." We had to do everything ourselves, like getting water from the wells and carrying it to our house, and going fishing if we needed something more than canned potatoes. We had guys from different parts of the Soviet Union, and some of them never knew that ocean water is salty.

Do you know anything about Utah?

People said you've got lots of snow in Utah, just like Siberia?