TORONTO -- "Kids in the Hall" alum Bruce McCulloch has been returning to his hometown of Calgary every year since he moved away over 30 years ago.

But it wasn't until he started filming his new TV comedy series, "Young Drunk Punk," that he went back to the community where his childhood home still stands.

"It was kind of interesting to be standing where I listened to Machine Head and gobbled acid and walked down the lonely streets. And the DQ, the Dairy Queen is still there," McCulloch said in a phone interview.

"Of course I had battled it in a way (as a kid) but it's actually quite beautiful."

Debuting Wednesday on City, "Young Drunk Punk" is inspired by McCulloch's riotous teenage years and was shot in the same suburb where he grew up.

Tim Carlson stars as Ian McKay and Atticus Mitchell plays his best friend Shinky.

The year is 1980 and the rebellious, music-obsessed teens have just graduated high school and are desperate to avoid "selling out." But they're unsure of exactly what they want to do with their lives.

McCulloch plays Ian's father alongside Tracy Ryan (his real-life wife) as the mother, and Allie MacDonald is Ian's sister. McCulloch also created, wrote and executive produced the half-hour series, which is based on his one-man stage show of the same name.

The theatrical version was directly lifted from his life, while the TV series is more "emotionally autobiographical," he said.

"The character isn't ... a young me, I'm not really playing my dad," said McCulloch. "It's just a setting that I literally did live in."

And, like Ian, music was huge part of McCulloch's childhood. It was also his solace as his slightly older friends moved to Toronto (some forming the band Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet) before he did, leaving him feeling "kind of lost," he said.

McCulloch said he frequented two record stores in the city back then, amassing a big vinyl collection. On "Young Drunk Punk," he mostly features the Canadian music that was "heroic" to him at the time, from the Pointed Sticks to the Diodes and the Viletones.

Unfortunately, McCulloch doesn't have those records anymore ("I've gone through many generations of leaving my stuff in the middle of the night," he said with a laugh), but the show has inspired him to start buying them again.

"Literally from the age 13 on, it was my job that I didn't get paid for to know every record in every record store and everything from England to Toronto, Vancouver," said McCulloch. "I would walk into a record store and if I didn't know every record, it would be a problem for me.

"So it really is how I defined myself up until I found comedy, actually, in my early 20s."

Also like Ian, McCulloch said he didn't know what he wanted to be as a teen, but he did know what he didn't want to be.

"I didn't want to be a businessman or a sellout or a cowboy that wasn't free-thinking," he said.

"So it felt like I didn't have my people, I didn't really have my tribe."

He finally found that "tribe" when he went into comedy and met actor Mark McKinney. McCulloch was studying journalism at Mount Royal College when he saw McKinney doing an improv show at the Loose Moose Theatre Company.

Soon after, they moved to Toronto and met the rest of the "Kids in the Hall" group.

"I didn't even know it, that this was my -- as I say in my book -- my second family," said McCulloch, author of the recently released "Let's Start a Riot."

"You don't know it at the time. You don't know how important your family are to you. You're not telling them you love them every day and that they're important to you. Only later do you realize that."