Paul O'Neill asks his interviewer for permission to indulge in milk and Oreo cookies from room service in his Omaha, Neb., hotel room.

"I am so looking forward to the sugar rush, like you don't understand," the founder of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra says over the telephone.

He's been on the phone for more than 12 hours this recent day, promoting TSO's tour - which stops Friday at the i wireless Center in Moline for the seventh straight holiday season - and its new album, "Night Castle," which was released last week.

For the second year, Omaha has been the home of TSO's first concert after weeks of rehearsals. Its previous home in a Lakeland, Fla., arena, couldn't handle the weight of the show's rigging on its roof.

In a one-hour interview - which touched on architecture, art, history, literature and theater as much as music - TSO's 55-year-old founder talked about:

ITS ORIGINS, 14 YEARS AGO: "Trans-Siberian Orchestra is a combination of all the bands I worshiped - a marriage of classical and rock; bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Queen and The Who's rock opera 'Tommy'; a budget-be-damned, over-the-top light show (from) Pink Floyd."

HIS VISION: "When I started Trans-Siberian, I said I wanted to start my own band. I said I wanted to do something different and people said, 'What does that mean?' I said I want a prog-rock band, full band, a whole symphony and 24 lead singers. They asked why and I said, 'This way the band could have no limits. They could go anywhere.' Most bands have one or two lead singers if they're lucky."

ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS: "There are so many firsts: We were the first band to have more than 80 members, the first band to never play a club and go straight to coliseums. The first band to never have an opening act, never be an opening act."

"NIGHT CASTLE," WHICH HAS BEEN IN THE WORKS SINCE THE SUMMER OF 2005: "We turned the album in to Warner Brothers six weeks ago and they almost had a heart attack. It was like the Loch Ness Monster - everybody's seen it, but nobody has proof.

ITS CONTENTS: "Originally it was going to be a regular album, but we decided to make it a double-album.

"The first half is 'Night Castle,' a brand-new rock opera, our second non-holiday one since "Beethoven's Last Night" (in 2000). The second half of the album is our first 'regular' album, which we use for multiple reasons. ... We used it to pay tribute to the people who have influenced us and also to show what we're going to do in the future."

ITS PACKAGING: "It's a double-CD with a 16-page book with all of the lyrics and the story of the rock opera and totally illustrated by Greg Hildebrandt (who has illustrated "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings" posters) all over the place, my favorite artist in the whole wide world."

ITS PRICE: "All our tickets are affordable - between $25 and $60, no higher, no premium seats, no golden circles, nothing like that. ... When the album came out ... I said, 'It's gotta be $12.99, digital download, $7.99.' "

THE DELAY: "The later it got, the more pressure we felt to get better to justify the delay. We just wanted to give people (something like inserts in LPs) that was huge, where people would have so much to explore. But I wanted it to be affordable."

THE STRUCTURE: "I try to build every concert, every album like an old medieval castle. If you're in Europe and you see a castle at a distance, it's cool. You see the drawbridge, it's cooler. The ramparts, the rooms. The more you look, the more there is to find."

THE CONCERT: "The band has been chomping at the bit to do a lot of these songs for years. Now that the album is out, the second half of the show is a bunch of 'Night Castle' songs."

THE FIRST HALF (ITS TRADITIONAL "CHRISTMAS EVE AND OTHER STORIES"): "We feel the pressure to tour it every year. We don't let our fans down, so we do it. At some point, we may switch it to another part of the trilogy (the two other holiday albums, "The Christmas Attic" and "The Lost Christmas Eve"), but the main thing is don't let the fans down, don't let the fans down, don't let the fans down.

THE PROGRESSION: "Every year we make the albums harder to play, harder to perform. But I said they have to make it look effortless. When people leave the arena, I don't want them to say, 'That was a great show.' I want them to say, 'Man, we ripped that band off blind.' That's why it's important to keep the ticket prices low."

THE STATUS: "Trans-Siberian is right where I want it to be. The Christmas trilogy is done, which is the part that's intimidated me the most. We're getting to dig into the other stuff. We're going to start recording the next album after the spring-summer tour, and we're headed for Broadway.

BROADWAY?: "I could see us having two, three, four musicals opening up. There's a bunch written. ... But the hard part is getting the right voices with the right parts."

BUCKING THE TREND: "People ask me if I'm worried about the economy. They say, 'Are you going to cut the show down?' I said no, I'm gonna double it. 'How much are you going to raise ticket prices?' Cut 'em. Even merchandise prices are down."

THE AUDIENCE: "The first year that we became one of the top five biggest-selling bands in the world, about five years ago, I got a call from (concert producer) Live Nation, who said 'You're never gonna believe the demographics.' Forty-nine percent male, 51 percent female, which is the breakdown of America. Every background, from the ultra-poor to the ultra-rich. And he said, 'Guess the average age.' I said, I dunno. He said 21. I said that was impossible. But the 7-, 8- and 9-year-olds cancel out the 60-year-olds. The 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds cancel out the 50-year-olds. It all meets up at 21. ... All these stupid walls people put between them are so silly, but when you break the generational one, it's the best."

DREAMS COME TRUE: "You always want to get big, you always hope to get big. In the next two months, we'll do between 1.2 million and 1.4 million tickets and that's insane, especially in this economy. ... It got bigger than I ever could have imagined. ... There's been curses and blessings. ...

"There's unbelievable pressure to not let the fans down. But I always tell the band, don't get complacent. We're here to serve other people, and when you take other people for granted, that's when corporations fail, governments fail, banks fail. The people who own the band are the fans, not us."