The Barenaked Ladies (The Band)

Jim Creeggan - double bass, bass guitar, singing
Tyler Stewart - drums, singing
Steven Page - singing, acoustic and electric guitars
Ed Robertson - acoustic and electric guitars, singing
Kevin Hearn - keyboards, accordion, singing, electric guitar

Canada's Barenaked Ladies (BNL) have made a career out of such contradictions. Since the release of Gordon, the band's now-classic 1992 debut, BNL has been on a steady creative and commercial rise that culminated in early 1998 when the quintet earned its first-ever U.S. gold record.

Now comes the band's latest achievement : a musical slice-of-life called Stunt. After a short break at the end of 1997, the five members of the group anxiously approached the beginning of the most important project of their collective lives. "There was certainly anticipation," remembers Ed. "Rock Spectacle had done far better than any of us expected it to do. But we were getting such great support all around from fans, from each other, from management, from the label. There was this feeling of, 'You guys know what you're doing, so keep doing it and everything will be OK.' We felt like we were in a really good position, where we weren't necessarily in a bind to deliver/perform something we didn't have in us. It was more like this expectation to do what we already do well."
The first single and video from Stunt is a renegade little number called "One Week," which adds yet another vibrant color to the band's already-substantial musical fabric, despite 'a wee bit of writer's block,' according to Ed.
Of course, after these many years of collaborating, Ed and Steven have developed a special working relationship, one that allowed the pair to fully realize their creative potential on Stunt, without fear of trying new or different things.
Three of the news songs were co-written by Steven and long-time friend and collaborator Stephen Duffy, who has also contributed to each of BNL's studio releases, except for the first one.
Barenaked Ladies began modestly in 1988, when the band formed as part of Toronto's burgeoning alternative music scene. Blending alt-pop-rock with hints of folk and country, the group toured extensively throughout Canada and England.
The 1991 release of their independent EP signaled BNL's popular potential, as the hit single "Be My Yoko Ono" helped the collection become the first independent release in Canadian music industry history to go gold.
Barenaked Ladies signed a major label deal with Sire/Reprise Records a year later and released Gordon, which was No. 1 in Canada for eight weeks and earned them Group of the Year honors at the Juno Awards. But American success was still just a dream.
The 1994 album Maybe You Should Drive (containing "Jane" and "Alternative Girlfriend") and the enhanced 1996 Shoe Box Ep (featuring the title track and the other unavailable "Trust Me" and marking BNL's first release sans Sire) followed Gordon. They met with similar success and accolades at home, but were noticed in the U.S. only by their growing, but still modest, underground core of fans.
That disparity finally began to disappear with the release of Born On A Pirate Ship, later in 1996, which contained what would become BNL's first legit Yankee hit, "The Old Apartment." Though it took nine different radio campaigns by the ever-believing record company, the song ultimately cracked the Top 40 one full year after it was first released.
1997 was the year the band finally broke. Distinguished appearances on CNN"s Showbiz Today, NPR's All Things Considered, Beverly Hills 90210 (whose Jason Priestly directed the video for "The Old Apartment"). VH1's Hard Rock Live and Conan O'Brien's New Year's Eve show, put the band in front of a huge new audience that obviously like what it saw and heard.
Sales of Rock Spectacle recorded live-in-concert at theaters in Montreal and Chicago during BNL's sold-out Spring '96 tour began to explode, and multi-format radio play for the newest version of "Brian Wilson" exceeded all expectations, giving the band their first certified-gold U.S. album and first crossover pop smash.
What's more, Rock Spectacle taken form the French-Canadian phrase for "good music" spent more than a year on Billboard Magazine's Heatseekers chart for up-and-coming artists, peaking for two weeks at No. 1 before graduating to the magazine's prestigious Top 100 list, another first for the band. The Ladies' well-received debut appearance on Late Show With David Letterman in early 1998 as well as a subsequent booking in the summer – only confirmed the band's mainstream charm.
Barenaked Ladies began work on Stunt their fourth studio album in January 1998, first in Austin with co-producer Susan Rogers, and later with co-producer David Leonard in Toronto. David also mixed the album, along with the band, in Nashville.
One of the more exciting revelations to come out of the studio this time was the valuable work of keyboard, guitar and accordion player Kevin Hearn, a veteran of a number of BNL tours but who album-wise had previously only been heard on the live record.
Barenaked Ladies have enjoyed many highs and many lows both in the U.S. and at home north of the border, which according to Ed leaves the band members prepared for whatever lies ahead.

BARENAKED LADIES QUOTES:
"I certainly hear a confidence in our writing and playing on this album," says Ed. "But I think that stems from natural growth. I think we're all growing naturally, as writers and musicians." "It took me a while to get used to it, but I love it," says Steven. "It's our most consistently good record. It has the least amount of what I like to call 'fast-forward songs.' In fact, I don't think this album has any."

"I think my mood was terror as we went into the studio," says Steven. "I was so scared writing these songs. The first couple that I wrote came out fairly easily and quickly, songs like 'In The Car,' and 'It's All Been Done.' Then Ed and I started to get together at my house, everyday for a couple weeks. For the first couple of days we'd just sit and stare at each other for hours. But once the songs started coming out, I was really happy with them."

"I never thought I'd finish that song," he recalls. "As soon as I started I was afraid to write it. Hip-hip and rapping and freestyling have been a part of what we do as a live band since the beginning, and we're big fans of that kind of music. But it's never really reared its head on any of our recordings, although it's a huge part of what we do live We're always freestyling."
-Talking about the bands newest song "One Week"

"I love 'One Week' because it's so different form stuff that we've done before," adds Steven. "But at the same time, it has a lot of similarities with our live show."

"Steven and I write so well together," says Ed. "When I get a song started, I always know that, no matter what happens, together we can finish it and we'll have a great song. A lot of the time because we've been working together so long and we've known each other for twice as long as that we know right away where the other person is going."

"The songs we did together this time are 'Alcohol,' 'Call And Answer' and 'I'll Be That Girl,' which was deceptively difficult to write. I had written it and thought I was finished, but when we went to record it I realized, 'This doesn't make any sense!'"

"I think everybody wants success," Ed says. "But in a lot of ways, we've been there. It's not something we need for validation, because we know what it's like to be that appreciated. We made a great record, and that in itself is validation. top."

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