Green Day are gearing up to hit the road in support of their forthcoming three-album platter ’¡Uno!’, ‘¡Dos!’ and ‘¡Tre!’ — and if bassist Mike Dirnt is to believed, the calendar could be well into the aughts before they step off. 

“‘The full tour, we’ll probably do about 3,000 shows,” Dirnt tells MTV News, tongue planted firmly in cheek. ”We’re just warming up and getting ready to go out there, start swinging. The sky is the limit right now.”

Apparently, the sky is the limit, as a 3,000-concert itinerary — assuming they only played one gig a day, a pretty reasonable expectation — would keep the band busy for something in the neighborhood of maybe six or seven years. ”We’re just going to keep going,” adds Dirnt. “We want to play a lot of small clubs, a lot of theaters, a lot of arenas and then who knows what else.”

What else is there, really? Well, one thing that Green Day hope to continue to do is evolve their sound. ”For us, it was always a slow evolution through time. After our first records on [the label] Lookout!, and ‘Dookie’ and all the way though ’21st Century Breakdown,’ it was always about taking the right kind of risks.”

“But, not trying to do something where you’re pushing too hard to try to evolve into something that you’re not. It takes time, and we always listen to younger bands; we really like a band called the Biters, and Best Coast … It’s just a matter of letting yourself evolve.”

As for those 3,000 gigs, Green Day are getting a start on them with a series of festival appearances and one-offs kicking off tomorrow (Aug. 18) in Tokyo, Japan, and including the MTV Video Music Awards (Sept. 6) and the Voodoo Music in New Orleans, La. (Oct. 27). They also kick off a tour dubbed ‘American Idiot’ sometime between Oct. 9-13 in Southampton, England. Check out their complete current itinerary here.

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