Ladies First

By DAVE DIMARTINO, Launch.com, Febuary 1st 1999.

With nary a nude female in sight, Canada's Barenaked Ladies have traded on infectious melodies, quirky humor, and catchy hooks to carve a multi-platinum pop niche in their native homeland. With the band's latest outing, Stunt, the fully-clothed male quintet is now capturing that same success in the U.S. "It's been a ground-up thing," one of the band's main songwriters, Ed Robertson, tells LAUNCH executive editor Dave DiMartino. "We haven't had the kind of press explosion in the U.S. that we had in Canada. Here, it's much more of a word-of-mouth kind of thing." But the Ladies concede that slow and steady wins the race, and they're content to tour the U.S. and work the word-of-mouth angle as much as possible. In addition to the ever-present humor in much of the band's output (past song titles include "Be My Yoko Ono" and "If I Had A Million Dollars"), the live gigs showcase the band's darker, wry side, says Robertson, a fan of artists ranging from George Jones and Lyle Lovett to Rush and Taj Mahal. And Stunt is the first album to really showcase all of the band members' multiple styles, adds Robertson's songwriting partner, co-frontman and longtime friend, Steven Page. "It's the most band-oriented record we've done next to the live record," he notes. To hear more about the making and breaking of Stunt, read on...

Launch:

Talk to me about Stunt. How is it different from your previous releases?

Steve:

I think Stunt is the most band-oriented record we've done next to the live record. We knew that the live thing was our greatest strength — the five of us making a song come to life — so we tried to achieve that energy in the studio and come away with the best performances we could. As a result, everyone felt a stake in the songs, and that made it more unified than our previous efforts.

Ed:

Yeah, I think Stunt is our most comprehensive record yet. It's a balance of the lighter side and the darker, cutting, wry edge of Barenaked Ladies. In the past, people needed to see the live show to make sense of the band, to see that all these sides exist. I think that it all makes sense on this album.

Launch:

You both point out that you feel live performance is your strong suit. Does this mean you prefer the live gig to the studio experience?

Ed:

We like to approach the live show and the recording experience as two different animals. You can do things in a live situation that you can't do on record. There's incredible subtleties and depth of placement of organic elements in a song that you can't pull off live, but there are things you do live that you could never recreate in a studio — emotional and visual aspects that can happen in a roomful of people that you'll never produce in a studio. You just have to approach them as two different things and try to do both very well.

Steve:

Onstage, you can only do so much. There are five guys, and the excitement comes from the pure physicality of the moment — you can jump around, make comments that are very time- and place-oriented. It's very much about the exchange of energy between audience and band. In the studio, there's no live audience, but you have a lot of other luxuries; if I want to play one guitar part, or another, and another, I can do it. It allows us as musicians to really expand and figure out how to best serve the song. Sometimes it's served best with just a guitar or just a voice, but those choices are best made in the studio, as opposed to live.

Launch:

You've had an interesting career: you get a lot of attention in Canada, but it seems that with the success of some of your recent singles, people are just getting to know you here in the U.S. Is that kind of weird for you? It's like you're at two different levels of your career at the same time.

Steve:

We had a fair bit, actually a huge amount, of popularity with our first album, Gordon, in Canada. It sold almost 10 times platinum in Canada and it hasn't even gone gold here. But because it's sold so much and Canada is such a small country, we were everywhere, on every magazine cover, every TV show. People saw us a lot, but as a result, they got burnt out.

Ed:

There's a small pie in Canada. And we had a giant helping of Canadian pie in '92 and '93.

Steve:

And we were very in-your-face wacky — even though we had a real breadth of musical styles. And as we continued to make records later with less in-your-face humor, people either missed the wackiness, or they just thought we were over.

Ed:

The main difference is that the U.S. is so much bigger and we haven't had that explosion of press here. It's been a ground-up thing, and we've never experienced that explosion of publicity that put us over the top in Canada.

Steve:

Yeah, here in the U.S. nobody noticed us until recently, so we didn't have the curse of growing up in front of them. In general, people know us as a word-of-mouth kind of band: somebody's friend has seen us, dragged them to a show, and they drag another friend next time we come through. That's a great way to have success: not on hype but on word-of-mouth.

Launch:

What differences can you cite between the American and Canadian markets? Do you experience any problems as Canadians trying to get exposure here?

Steve:

The only problem with being Canadian and coming down here is the fact that you have a market in Canada that's strong and supportive, but everything is such a long drive; a tour requires long travels. You can't just criss-cross the country's borders back and forth. That takes three months of your time, and that's three months that you're not down here working your album in the U.S. Another problem is that some people on the industry side think there's so much government support for music that Canadians have an unfair home advantage at home. Sometimes people think it's a false star system in Canada. We've gotten over that. But I think otherwise, the biggest problem with being Canadian down here is that Canadians aren't down here as much as they should be.

Launch:

Do you two share the leadership role in your band? I mean, you're both songwriters, you both front the songs. How does that work?

Steve:

Ed and I aren't necessarily the leaders of the group — we try to work it as a democracy — but we are the songwriters, the frontmen. Ed's more of a musical leader than I am, but if you were to break it down by percentages I probably write more songs. Ed is more of the leader in terms of the arranging. Plus, he has more of a leader personality. But when we're onstage, it's really a team mentality. We've become more and more of a team as songwriters, and on this album we wrote more of the songs together. Onstage, it's the five people interacting, but largely it has to do with the two of us.

Ed:

Steve and I have a cool relationship. We've known each other since fourth grade and always had a similar group of friends. But we didn't hang out until high school. We've been playing and writing music together for 10 years now. We're relatively young people still, but the band's been going on for a long time. Steve and I have a relationship that is 20 years old or so.

Launch:

A lot of your songs have a comedic thread running through them, and your live performances can be really funny. How do you strike the balance between humor and "serious" songwriting?

Ed:

I think there's a place for all kinds of emotions in music. Too many people shy away from being witty for the sake of not being taken seriously. But it's always been important to me to express what I feel. I think some funny things and some serious things, as well. The beauty is getting that into a cohesive song that is honest.

Steve:

The cheap laughs are in the live situation; we'll go for whatever we can. Sometimes the jokes are absolutely sublime. But I mean, I'll go for a cheap laugh even if it means I have to drop my pants! People who like the funny stuff may be disappointed in the more serious stuff we do, but the comedy aspect doesn't last like the straight stuff. A funny song that lasts is the most difficult task. I'm not a snob about comedy; I don't think it's below my skills — the best comedy is above most people's skills. I'm not trying to write songs for generations to come, I'm just writing them for me — songs that I'll still like in 20 years — in two years, for that matter! If there's going to be humor or jokes in the songs, it has to be stuff that will make me laugh. We'll go back and say, "Hey, that's a clever line... I remember when we wrote that and we laughed our heads off."

Launch:

Do you find that people sometimes misinterpret your band — think of you as a novelty act because you have had some really funny songs? I mean, your name is even funny.

Ed:

It's always a drag when people write off the band as a wacky thing, but we're really at fault for that. A lot of what we do is mugging in front of the camera and goofing around. People only perceive the "If I Had A Million Dollars" and "Be My Yoko Ono" side of us, and we projected that. We live in a soundbite society, so I can't blame people for writing us off. But there are so many sides to us and they're so evident on the albums, so I get pissed when people write us off.

Steve:

Yeah, I've seen and heard reviews where people don't get it. I don't care if people don't like us. Trouser Press hates it and I can understand why they don't like it. It's not for everybody. But when people refuse to even pay attention, or they dismiss us as just a comedy group, that really bothers me. A, we're not a comedy group, and B, if we were, I'd be really mad because people are such snobs about these things. I mean, Rivers Cuomo from Weezer or Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello — these are people with wicked senses of humor. Ours is more mirthful, less nasty — or less nasty on the surface. Sometimes people refuse to look beyond the surface... to the real nastiness.

Launch:

Explain this phenomenon to me where people throw boxes of macaroni & cheese onstage during one of your songs.

Steve:

When Ed and I started singing together, we were in the habit of making a big pot of Kraft macaroni & cheese and eating it. We have a song, "If I Had A Million Dollars," and the lyric is like "If I had a million dollars, I wouldn't have to eat Kraft dinners, but I still would." After singing about this for a long time, people in the audience felt a need to present us with these sacrificial offerings: people would lob boxes of macaroni & cheese on the stage.

Ed:

It started in 1991 when we were doing a show in Toronto, and we thought it was funny that someone in the audience got involved like that. The next night six boxes appeared on stage, then 40. It got to the point that by the middle of 1993, there were 400 boxes flying at the stage at that point of the song.

Steve:

And this was before the Internet; it was a secret game the audience played with us. Eventually, people started pelting us with the cheese powder. It used to be little offerings of boxes, now it's target practice with the Barenaked Ladies. Cheese powder was getting in our hair and in the equipment. It became a nightmare.

Ed:

Yeah, the fun can dissipate very quickly when you get hit in the nuts with a two-pound box of macaroni & cheese from the third balcony. We've been trying to put a lid on that a bit.

Launch:

Okay, let's talk about a few of the other songs that pique my interest. One that I'm particularly intrigued by is "I'll Be That Girl." From some of the lyrics, I take it the song has something to do with auto-erotic asphyxiation. Am I on the right track? Ever tried it?

Steve:

I haven't tried auto-erotic asphyxiation myself, but I love the fact that people will go to any extreme to make themselves feel... good?... strongly? — even for a brief period of time, and risk either death or humiliation to do it. I think the worst thing would be hanging and to still be alive. Can you imagine someone walking in, and you're naked, genitals in hand? I wanted to write a song about desperation and how a man would do anything to get the gratification that he thought he wanted, deserved, needed. And if that meant hurting himself or inducing others to hurt themselves, that's what he would do. It's kind of a French movie in three minutes.

Launch:

Tell me about that song " Brian Wilson." Have you ever gotten any feedback regarding that song from him?

Steve:

We do the song "Brian Wilson" simply because I love the music and I love the story. It's the story of a breakdown on a huge grand scale, but I think people can relate to it on a small scale. Everybody's had awful times; some of us have had little breakdowns. Sometimes it fuels the creative process — music redeems you. I think people think it's a parody, poking fun and it certainly isn't. I've never talked to Brian Wilson; he was going to do a show with us once in Chicago, but it didn't happen. I assume that he must look on us favorably if he was considering doing a show with us.

Ed:

The Beach Boys are awesome and Brian Wilson is the guy.

Launch:

How about the song "One Week"?

Ed:

"One Week" is pretty indicative of what we do live all the time. We will always just make up songs, improvise music, and most of the time it's freestyle rap stuff. That's a really fun music to improvise. The band lays down a groove and we just lay down a rap on top of it. It's never reared its ugly head on a record before, though. When we were working on this, I had this idea. I was going for horribly complex, well-crafted sh!t about a relationship. Steven said, just go home and freestyle, and keep the good stuff. I tried to write it for three months, and then I wrote it in five minutes.

Launch:

Who are some of your favorite acts? Who influenced you early on?

Ed:

I've been playing in bands since sixth grade; all the rehearsals were in my parents' basement. My parents were listening to that racket for years. Playing squealingly loud through the basement three nights a week. Ridiculous bands playing Black Sabbath, Rush, Peter Gabriel. As far as bands in the past, I wanted to be in a band and I learned to play guitar because of Rush. That's not where I'm at now, but it was a huge influence in early teens. Couple that with the fact that I grew up on country & western and bluegrass. My dad played guitar and my mom and dad sang harmony. I started playing guitar so I could play George Jones songs.

Steve:

I started off as a giant Beatles fan, as so many kids did. I grew up with Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper's. I loved the fact that this was a band that could play in so many different styles, grow so much, and still have a sense of where they came from, and put out so much amazing music. We played the Phoenix Festival in England a few years ago and I went to watch Neil Young play from the side of the stage. Some security guy made us move to the other side, and he ropes off this area where we are. It's me and three guys and Paul and Linda McCartney watching Neil Young in front of 50,000 people. I totally freaked out. Do I say something to this guy? I mean this is a guy, if I could say something to him, it would be "You are the reason I do what I do." But I just had a little small talk with him. If anything, when I was nine and 10 years old, it was the music of Paul McCartney that made me want to do this.

Ed:

More recently, I really admire Lyle Lovett. He just floors me. Every record has songs that just blow me away. The depth and painterly quality. "Joshua Judges Ruth" sounds like an oil painting. So simple, so lush. I also love Neil Finn, Crowded House. I like songwriters, anyone who's real honest about music. I listen to Taj Mahal quite a bit.

Steve:

Harry Nilsson was a big hero, Leonard Cohen. These are writers with a great breadth of subject matter. Humor and darkness. Wordplay. A lot of what they do is about language. A lot of that has had a huge impact on me. As a fan of pop music: Nick Lowe, Squeeze. Those are some of my greatest influences. As a singer, I love Marvin Gaye, Taj Mahal, Elvis Costello.

Launch:

Are there any things you'd like to do musically that you haven't tried yet?

Steve:

I have a strange desire, perversion, fetish to do Broadway musicals. I love the idea of bigger pieces; I love some of these great orchestral arrangements. There's tons of cheese out there — I wouldn't want to do Beauty And The Beast, but there are some musicals with really challenging music, challenging subject matter and other exciting things. I think you can do exciting things with staging. On every album I have a song that I think will be in my musical, and it's always the song that nobody else likes, so that doesn't bode well. Dancehall, Caribbean, we haven't done anything that has a real reggae thing to it. Growing up in Toronto, there's a large West Indian culture, but we just haven't fit it in yet. Maybe we'll just do some full-on metal someday.

Launch:

What is it that you really like about your band as it exists today?

Ed:

I think what I love about this band is that it is a tapestry, a patchwork of influences. I come from a country/ bluegrass background. Steve is more pure pop. Jim is jazzing classical. It's all over the map. What's cool is that everybody is bringing their influences, their passions, and their desires into what makes Barenaked Ladies. It doesn't exclude us from going anywhere. We've taken "One Week" into a more dancehall area. It's a laid-back acoustic track behind "One Week." There are no boundaries with the band. We can go anywhere.

Launch:

Can you cite a period in your career when you felt as though you'd "arrived"?

Ed:

There's not a single point for us that turned everything around. I think where we are right now is very definitely a result of the touring we've been doing the last three years. That touring has brought about certain things: Jason Priestley becoming a fan, putting us on 90210. We've had several Conan O'Brien appearances and a Letterman appearance. I think we've played to every human being in the U.S. and that is what has brought about these other breaks.

Steve:

The turning point for me was to do this Burt Bacharach & Friends concert; we got this message to call Burt at home, and I didn't think it was for real. I called him and he let us do "Close To You." So we show up in New York, and there's Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Wynonna Judd, Dionne Warwick, and we're all there for the same thing. I admire so many of these people, and here we are doing the exact same thing!!! It was cool to be on the same level, even if it was for just one night.

Launch:

Since we're doing this interview for the LAUNCH CD-ROM and website, I have to ask you guys about your past efforts regarding multimedia. You are one band that has actually produced a few interactive titles. What's your take on all this interactive stuff?

Steve:

I'm very interested in it. I like the whole idea of music and computers and I think that some of the new technologies coming out in the next few years with DVD audio will make audio CDs a really exciting format again. It will make CDs sound like what I thought CDs were supposed to sound like when they first came out and never did. We did three multimedia CDs with varied results. So now we make the CD as an album and the multimedia portion is a bonus with something fun on there that people can explore--live footage or just archival footage. I don't want that to be expected of musicians, though. I certainly don't want to sacrifice the music for multimedia. In the next few years it will be easier to intertwine the various media seamlessly.

Ed:

The multimedia thing for us is a great way to get out a bunch of information. Fans are hungry. They don't just want the press kit. They want to see the band doing what it does when they're not doing interviews and press. The multimedia portion on a disc is a great way to do that. But the technology right now isn't quite right. We didn't do a multimedia portion on this last CD because we wanted it to be about the music; maybe we'll do a separate multimedia disc.

Launch:

If you were on a plane and some old lady sat down next to you and asked what you did for a living, how would you describe your band?

Ed:

Whenever people ask me about the music I always just say it's devil music. But it's hard to describe, especially when you're inside it. I don't know what we're like. We're like us. It's tough to link it to anything. "Pop music" is the closest. They're short songs with choruses and verses.

Steve:

I've never felt comfortable with descriptions of what we do. I can't figure how it fits with other music. I just say it's pop music, too. Just shortish songs based around verses and choruses. We've always struggled for a label.
How about this: "Ernie & Bert meet Simon & Garfunkel."