Barenaked Ladies working on new chapter, playing Oklahoma City Tuesday
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Barenaked Ladies turn the Page to new chapter with latest release ‘All in Good Time’
Canadian pop-rockers Barenaked Ladies are turning to a new chapter of their two-decade career.
“It’s a new chapter for the band, but we’re bringing the whole book with us. We still are really proud of everything we’ve done,” said co-founder and primary singer-songwriter Ed Robertson in a phone interview from his home in Toronto, Canada. where the band was getting ready to tape an outdoor TV performance and interview on a downtown rooftop.
“We love playing all that music, and I’d say the new show is maybe a quarter the new record and three-quarters the last 20 years of Barenaked Ladies. We gotta lot of hits … and a lot of great obscure tracks that we love to play, so we feel like nothing is taboo.”
The alternative rock band, best known for quirky hits like “One Week,” “Pinch Me” and “If I Had $1000000,” is kicking off today its second North American tour this year to promote the album “All in Good Time,” released in March. BNL, as the group is often known, will play Tuesday at the Diamond Ballroom.
“It’s been great. We’re touring like we haven’t toured in 10 years. The pace has just really ratcheted up. There’s a new enthusiasm about what we’re doing and about the band. We’re enjoying it and really just want to be out there working and playing,” Robertson said.
The enthusiasm and album aren’t all that’s new: BNL became a quartet with the departure of co-founder Steven Page, who left the band in February 2009 after his arrest the previous summer for cocaine possession.
But fans have readily accepted the four-man version of BNL, which includes Robertson (guitar/vocals), Jim Creeggan (bass/vocals), Kevin Hearn (keyboard/guitar/vocals) and Tyler Stewart (drums/vocals). Even in Canada — “the identity of the band up here is much more woven into the consciousness of the general public” — Robertson said the new album and show have earned some of the best reviews of the band’s 20-year tenure.
“Honestly, we were incredibly nervous about how people would respond. “We really fretted over, ‘Well, how are people going to react when we do this? And what about when I sing this song that they’re used to hearing Steve sing? Or when Jim sings one?’” he said.
“And then we got out and played the first time and people went nuts. And we realized, they don’t give a s- – - about all of our drama,” he said with a laugh. “They just want to see a good rock show, and if we do that, that’s what they came for. It was very liberating and also a bit humbling.”
Robertson and Page co-founded BNL as an acoustic duo in 1988 and started out playing college shows and warming up audiences for comedy troupes. Once they expanded to a full band, the former schoolmates guided the group from Canadian indie stardom to American breakout triumph with 1998’s “Stunt” to the start of their own independent label. After 10 studio albums, multi-platinum success and two Grammy nominations, beginning a new chapter without Page was daunting.
“It was a necessary transition, and I think because of that, it was an easier transition than any of us anticipated. I dreaded it, and I didn’t know it was going to work and we did an awful lot of dancing around architecture before we started working again,” Robertson said.
“But as soon as we started working again, the dynamic had shifted — necessarily — and we were all committed to it and into it. And we just moved forward and things felt different and felt great.”
His emotions about the split informed his first single, the wistful “You Run Away,” which includes the lyrics “I tried to be your brother / You cried and ran for cover/ I made a mess, who doesn’t? / I did my best but it wasn’t enough.” But he doesn’t blame Page for the band’s “previous negativity.”
“We were a band in crisis, and there was a lot of dysfunction all over the place. And when we parted ways with Steve, it forced us to examine everything and sort of rebuild the way we deal with each other and the way we approach what we do,” he said, adding he also survived a plane crash and his mother sudden death in the same year’s time.
“I think we became a way healthier organism because of the split, but not because of Steve leaving.”
When the quartet went into the studio in spring 2009 to work on “All in Good Time,” it was with a sense of pride in the Barenaked Ladies’ legacy of good music and good times and a desire to continue it. The album’s tracks range from the bouncy jaunt “Four Seconds,” with tongue-twisting rhymes reminiscent of “One Week,” to the thoughtful “I Saw It,” about the hot-button topic of bullying.
Along with songs from “All in Good Time,” the band’s new live show features the extended version of the speedy, eccentric theme to the hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.” Show creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady asked Robertson to pen the theme after attending a BNL concert and liked his history-spanning ditty enough to request a long version.
“We played it one night just kind of on a lark, and people went nuts. It’s one of the hits in the set now,” he said with a laugh.
In concert
Barenaked Ladies
With: Jukebox the Ghost.
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Where: Diamond Ballroom, 8001 S Eastern.
Information: 677-9169 or www.diamondballroom.net.
-BAM
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