It’s Halloween and the members of Okkervil River are traveling in a van over the Wyoming plains to Denver, their host city for the night. The stop is just one of the many the band has made in the past month and will be making in the months to come.

The band is preparing for the release of a complementary disc, “Black Sheep Boy Appendix,” which contains both new and unused, reworked tracks from its most recent album, “Black Sheep Boy.”

As the touring lineup rides through the Wyoming plains, vocalist and guitarist Will Sheff passes the time by explaining the concept behind the band’s most recent disc, what he misses most about home and how his divine introduction to the stage set the mood for the future.

Katie Piepel: I heard you are just getting over an illness. How are you feeling?

Will Sheff: I got strep throat and lost my voice and was sort of relying on vocal steroids to pull me through for a while. They gave me antibiotics and they gave me this vocal steroid called Prednisone. I could barely talk at all and it was really painful to talk and it sort of took the shredded pieces of what little voice I had and shaped them into a cruel parody of what my voice might sound like. It was really painful, but you know.

KP: The band just got back from a European tour. How do the live shows and the fans in Europe differ from those of the United States?

WS: People are sort of simultaneously more respectful in the sense of not really talking and stuff while you’re playing. They’re simultaneously more respectful and more, sort of, uptight. They’ll sort of stand there and stare at you and wait until the very last note has died out before they clap, and then respectfully applaud from their distance at the back of the room. So it’s nice but it’s also weirdly dispiriting because they stand there and stare at you. I feel like you’re a zoo animal.

KP: What do you miss the most from home when on a tour?

WS: I miss having my friends and getting to see all my friends who live in town. I love my bandmates but I just see them all the time. I miss being able to have relationships – like romantic relationships. It’s almost impossible – well, it’s not almost impossible – but it’s very, very difficult, for me anyway, on tour to do that. And I miss getting to do what I want. When I’m on tour it’s like I might as well be on a chain gang – I’m shackled to the same seven people and we’re never further than 15 paces from each other at all times.

KP: Why did the band decide to put out “Black Sheep Boy Appendix?”

WS: We didn’t want to do something totally stupid and self-indulgent, like put out two records at the same time or like put out a double record or something like that. That just seemed silly. But then we ended up being really into some of these songs that were left off there. So we thought, well, we’ll put it out as a companion volume after the fact, like a little EP. But then I started listening to the stuff and I saw this way that I could rework the whole thing into its own separate self-contained, sort of miniature record. So that’s what we did – we recorded two new songs, the first song and the last song are brand new recordings and we sort of book-ended the whole thing.

KP: What was it like the first time you got on stage?

WS: That’s an interesting question and hard for me to answer. I mean, the first time I was on stage I was a baby because I come from this little town and there’s this tradition of Christmas pageants – you know people from the town act in – and I was baby Jesus, like, a month after I was born or something like that. So I don’t remember what that was like. And then when I got a little older I would still be in those Christmas plays and stuff, so I had my little experiences of theater from a sort of early age in a very small-town, unthreatening kind of way. But I think that stuff left a really strong impression on me in terms of leaving me with this idea that art should be fun.

KP: Did you feel like a natural performer?

WS: No, I never did feel like a natural performer. I mean, I think I’m a decent performer but I don’t think I was, like, born to do it. I think it’s something I’ve learned how to do passively. I guess my big problem is I get on stage and I start thinking too much. I start thinking too much about all the things that I want to come across and how I’d like to do it and then I start thinking about the people in the audience. That gives me the heebie jeebies sometimes. I’ve found that the best thing for me to do is just to have a few drinks and loosen up and take my glasses off because without my glasses on I can’t see very well. And then I just sort of live in this bubble of the musicians on stage and just focus on us and on our having a good time.

KP: What’s the most terrifying moment you’ve had on stage?

WS: Well, I mean, I’ve fallen off stage several times. I can’t see very well, so with my glasses off, I fall. Let’s say the stage is painted black and the floor is also painted black. I might, like, actually just fall off the stage.

KP: What do you do in that case?

WS: I just get back up.

KP: Have you ever been drunk on stage?

WS: Drunk? I don’t know if I’ve ever not been drunk on stage. Maybe when I was baby Jesus in the Christmas Pageant.