Barenaked Ladies Say Ex-Singer Steven Page Playing ‘Victim,’ Band Sailing On
Barenaked Ladies drummer Tyler Stewart doesn’t sugarcoat it when discussing his band’s feud with former frontman Steven Page. “Back and forth pissing match” are his exact words when his ex-bandmate’s name is brought up — as it usually is during interviews. While Page’s departure (and a rather scandalous one at that) is an obvious topic of interest, the beloved Canadian outfit are ready to put this messy saga to rest.
“Quite frankly, we don’t have time anymore to deal with [this],” Stewart tells Spinner. “We’ve got a job to do, and he’s got a job to do — let’s us both do it, and away we go.”
Easier said than done, though. With Page promoting his solo debut, ‘Page One,’ there’s plenty of opportunity to moan about his former comrades in the press — which is exactly what the musician did recently in the Toronto Sun when he took issue with ‘You Run Away,’ the lead single from BNL’s latest album, ‘All in Good Time,’ calling it “a little finger-pointy.”
“Steve Page thinks that anything that he can relate to is finger-pointing — that’s the problem with Steve Page,” groans Stewart. “He likes to be the victim, and he kind of thrives on that.”
“The song isn’t finger-pointing at all,” Stewart continues. “Definitely it’s kind of a reflection of some of the emotional issues that [singer-guitarist] Ed [Robertson], and conversely the band, went through — the whole album is kind of a reflection of a pretty intense and emotional couple of years for the band.”
Indeed, the late 2000s have seen the lovable guys behind BNL pushed to the brink. There was a near-fatal plane crash for Robertson and the death of his mother — his “closest ally in his family,” according to Stewart; Page’s highly-publicized 2008 drug arrest and subsequent departure from the band; and a parting with long-time management among other setbacks to chip away at morale.
“Just a lot of change,” says Stewart when he thinks back to that dark period. “The songs on the record reflect that, but they also reflect where we’re at right now, which is a real period of hopefulness and satisfaction. We really feel like we’ve come through an incredibly intense time — and we’ve come through with flying colours. Not only is the band getting along better than we’ve ever gotten along, but I think we’re making the best music of our career. But we’re also better friends and better communicators.
“There’s emotional stuff, and there’s songs directly related to events, but there’s also songs of hope and redemption and moving on.”
That ‘moving on’ gets into full swing in February when BNL celebrates the fourth installment of ‘Ships and Dip,’ a tropical cruise vacation for music lovers that will feature the likes of Elliot Brood, Great Big Sea, Ben Kweller and, of course, hosts BNL. Now back on board after taking 2010, ‘Ships and Dip’ is a drama-free zone for Stewart and his longtime bandmates.
“Because we invited so many interesting and eclectic and fun performers, essentially it was less of a cruise, and more of a floating music festival,” says Stewart of the event’s inaugural year in 2007, which has become the template for each voyage since. “There’s some tournaments and sporting events; Ed did a ‘Guitar Hero’ tournament, I hosted some karaoke, and Keven did bingo.”
“For the fans, it’s access — it’s up close and personal,” he continues. “But it’s also a chance for them to see some of our colleagues, who we admire and who we like playing with — so we feel like curators of a really great music festival that happens to be floating around the Caribbean.”
Stewart insists that it’s no big deal to set sail into the sunset with a boat-load of BNL’s biggest fans. Sure, the concept originally seemed like privacy suicide, with an onslaught of round-the-clock autograph sessions and exhausting photo-opts, but the drummer explains in the easy-going manner we’re accustomed to from the guys (at least we were before things got nasty with the Page debacle), that over-zealous fans have never been an issue.
“When we first proposed the idea about five years ago, we were terrified. ‘What are we nuts? Why would we want to go on a boat [with all our fans]?’ [But] we had no idea that these things were the size of small cities, it’s ridiculous how big these boats are. And we’re really excited to be getting back to it this February.”
But BNL fans won’t have to wait until 2011 to see the outfit live. The band will perform Friday (Nov. 26) at Toronto’s Massey Hall, before heading to New York the following day to play Verona’s Turning Stone Casino. Audiences will most likely be treated to a heart-felt rendition of the contentious ‘You Run Away’ and can judge for themselves if it really is as “finger-pointy” as Page claims. Page, meanwhile, recently cancelled his first solo tour in order to open for the Goo Goo Dolls in February.
-Published Nov. 25 on Spinner
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