The SOCAN 2000 Awards

The GATE, November 20th, 2000.

On November 20th The GATE was in attendence at the SOCAN Awards at the Westin Harbor Castle in Toronto. It was a gala affair with many of Canada's better song writers making an appearance, including members of Blue Rodeo, Glass Tiger (!?) and Tal Bachman (and his dad, Randy too).

While we were at the awards we got a chance to speak to Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies.

How’s it going since you guys got the key to the city [of Toronto]?
SP: There hasn’t been any noticeable difference to my living here. I keep trying it on different buildings and edifices and it’s not working but it’s nice to have it.

You haven’t done anything on the mayor’s desk or anything?
SP: Uh, no I just left a vote against him but otherwise that was it.

What are you doing in the next year or so?
SP: We’re gearing up to go back to the U.S. February and March see kind of a tour of smaller markets in the U.S. as well as our first Canadian tour in about 4-and-a-half years. That’s gonna be great and then we’ll go to Europe in the late Spring and back to North America in the summer and who knows after that.

And how did you get involved in the Grinch soundtrack?
SP: They actually asked. It appears Ron Howard is a fan. He came to see us in New York a couple of years ago when they were putting together the music for the movie. He told his music supervisor, who’s actually put some of our songs in films before, they had used a song of ours, “Call and Answer” in the movie Ed TV. He said, I want Barenaked Ladies. They sent someone to the studio, we were making Maroon at the time, with a copy of the movie and sat there while we watched it, sort of an in-progress thing, and we wrote a song for a scene which they actually put in a totally different scene, but Ron Howard came by the studio and kind of gave us pointers on what he was looking for.

So is there anything new coming up?
SP: Ahh, nothings confirmed. Just several things we’re working on and some more movie stuff.

As well, Steven Page was on hand for the Pop Music Awards which handed the Barenaked Ladies an award for "It’s All Been Done".