Bad Company lead singer Paul Rodgers [ tickets ] is sitting in his home overlooking Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Canada. He has just wrapped up a three-month European tour with his other band, Queen, and is looking forward to waterskiing this summer.

"It's beautiful, beautiful," Rodgers said via telephone with LiveDaily. "We've had mixed weather, but we've been having some beautiful sunshine, though. So I'm sitting here overlooking the Okanagan Lake, which is 75 miles long, and it's a beautiful day."

Rodgers, along with Bad Company cohorts drummer Simon Kirke and guitarist Mick Ralphs, is preparing for a 10-date East Coast summer tour in support of his band's forthcoming DVD "Bad Company - Hard Rock Live." It will be available at shows (see itinerary below) and, starting Aug. 8, in stores.

Rodgers, who also fronted Free, spoke to LiveDaily about the tour, the DVD and what it would be like if Free's guitarist, Paul Kossoff, was still alive.

LiveDaily: Are you looking forward to your tour?

Paul Rodgers: Yes, I am. I've just come off a big Queen tour. We were out for three or four months. We went through Russia and Eastern Europe, so it was very interesting. This is a 10-day tour. They wanted a longer tour but I said, "No, let's just keep it intimate and exclusive and small and just do 10 shows."

How come you wanted to keep it intimate?

I didn't want to do another massive tour. One of the things I've discovered over the years is I don't really like to be out on the road for that length of time. I have a nice home life, like I mentioned, overlooking the lake. I want to be able to come back and work on my music and do the things I like to do other than touring, all music-related, generally. Having been away for a long time, I didn't want to be out on the road for a massive length of time. I love the music. I love being on stage. That part of it's fine. But traveling, being away from home, can get to you a bit.

On this tour, are you only going to be performing Bad Company material? Or are you going to delve into solo material, Queen songs?

No, I tried that and I don't really think that's what we need to do. It's very good, really, to focus on the identity of Bad Company and do those songs that Mick and myself wrote all those years ago when we first formed the band.

Have you started thinking about writing new material with Bad Company?

Not exactly. But I'm always writing songs. They're not really band specific. I wrote a lot of songs for the new Queen album. We wrote songs separately and together and I have a lot of material. I'm working on new ideas all the time. It's one of the things I want to do. They're not really specifically for Bad Company. So we'll see how it goes. What happens generally is we will soundcheck. The way songs tend to generate is, you don't want to play all the songs you're going to play that night during soundcheck. So you'll do other things. That's when you can kick ideas around that may well take off.

Who do you have playing bass on this tour?

I have Lynn Sorenson from my solo band. Also, Howard Leese is second guitar player. He's from Heart, actually, but he works with me in my solo band, too. We've done many, many miles together. They both are fantastic at the Hard Rock show we recorded last year. It was absolutely seamless. They love the music and really get into the groove of it.

Tell me about the DVD you have coming out. It wasn't ready for press viewing yet.

Oh, that's a shame. It's very close. It turned out really, really well. The idea was to do a show, not necessarily a DVD. I'm glad we did. It really captured one of those nights that was exceptionally exciting and intimate and warm. The fans were terrific and the band was really, really hot.

Do you still wonder what it would be like if Paul Kossoff [guitarist with Free] was still with us and whether you would be performing with him today?

Yes, I get asked that, actually. I certainly would still. He was my soulmate. He was my soul brother, really. We came from street level and we experienced success together. When he and I formed Free, we were both playing blues in London and he came up for a jam session and I just said, "Wow. Man we have to form a band." And we formed Free. It was a shame. I lost a great friend, really. No one really has been able to replace him, not really and truly, although we've done some great things with other people. One carries on, really.

What are you listening to these days?

Well, I listen to a lot of things that I've always been influenced by. People like Elmore James, B.B. King--and, recently, I picked up the Beatles music from Cirque du Soleil. I was a little hesitant. We went to go see it, actually, down in Vegas. I was a little nervous about what they might have done to the masters because they broke them open. George Martin and his son just did a fantastic job on it. Those songs in those days were recorded, they multi-tracked things but they bounced everything down because you lost sound over the generations. What George said in his interview, they were able to ProTool everything, so they weren't bouncing down. The sound was incredible. You hear it like they just recorded it yesterday. It's lovely. You got Lennon with an amazing echo in his voice, [cops a Lennon imitation] "Can you turn the piano up a little bit?" Then they go "Let me take you down." Then they go into the song. That's the song, that's the very one. "Love" is the name of the show. It's great. If you're a Beatle fan, you gotta love it.

What else do you have planned for 2009?

Um, 2009, I plan to do a lot of water skiing and some shows. That's my plan. Continue with the writing, which is something I do all the time.