Barenaked Ladies

Barenaked Ladies began as the duo of Ed Robertson and Steven Page.[4] The two went to school together since Robertson was in grade four (Page was a grade ahead)[7] at Churchill Heights Public School, but were not friends until they met each other at a Harvey's restaurant following a Peter Gabriel concert.[7] Each was pleased to find that the other liked Gabriel; they began talking and found they had many of the same tastes. The two became friends and bonded further when they were both counsellors at Scarborough Music Camp located in McKellar, Ontario. They would play songs together, and Steve was impressed by Ed's ability to harmonize.[8]

When Page had an extra ticket to a Bob Dylan concert at Exhibition Stadium, he asked Robertson to join him.[9] Bored by the show, the two turned to amuse each other, pretending they were rock critics, inventing histories and comments about the Dylan band. They also made up various fictional band names, one of which was "Barenaked Ladies".[9][10]

Co-founder Ed Robertson in 2005

On another front, Robertson had agreed to perform with his cover band in a battle of the bands at Nathan Phillips Square for the Second Harvest food bank. The band broke up, and he forgot about the gig. When Robertson received a phone call a week before the show, asking him to confirm the gig, he improvised that the name of the band had changed to "Barenaked Ladies", recalling the name from the Dylan concert. He then called Page and asked if he wanted to do the gig; Page reportedly could not believe Robertson had given that name. They arranged three rehearsals and missed them all.[8][9][10] The two played the show on 1 October 1988,[11] but instead of competing, they played while the other bands set up, playing every song they could think of that they both knew. The show went well, and they were invited to open a show for another established local band, The Razorbacks, at the Horseshoe Tavern the coming weekend. They set up three more rehearsals and again missed them all; they proceeded to improvise their set once again. These acts set a precedent for an element of Barenaked Ladies concerts, which still almost always contain some improvised raps or songs as well as general improvised banter.[5][9][10]

Co-founder Steven Page in 2005

Page and Robertson continued performing and also began writing songs together. The band's first tape, Buck Naked (1989), was made using a four-track recorder[8] in basements and bedrooms. The pair became followers of comedy group Corky and the Juice Pigs, to whom they give credit for exposing them to the idea of comedic stage presence. Page and Robertson presented the group with their tape and were invited to open for the Juice Pigs on their cross-Canada tour.[10] One night, in Toronto, Page and Robertson invited their friends, brothers Andy Creeggan (percussion) and Jim Creeggan (bass), whom they knew from music camp,[7] to play with them at a Christmas time club show. Barenaked Lunch (a.k.a. The Pink Tape) was released in 1990 and featured the two new band members. The tape had problems, however, as it was mastered incorrectly and played too fast.[7]

Jim Creeggan in 2008

After six months, Andy Creeggan went on a student exchange trip to South America, leaving the band without a percussionist. While playing at a buskers' festival in Waterloo, Ontario, in the summer of 1990, they met drummer Tyler Stewart, who took over the position.[5] While Creeggan was gone, the band gained some attention when they were winners at the 1990 YTV Achievement Awards.[8] They gained further attention when they squeezed into a small "Speaker's Corner" video booth in Toronto and performed "Be My Yoko Ono".[8] The clip quickly became popular with viewers and noticeably increased the band's fanbase. Andy Creeggan returned in early 1991 to find that Stewart had taken over the percussion role. This change caused some concern for him, and he then moved more toward keyboards, though he still played percussion (usually congas) on some songs. Soon after, the band embarked upon their first full tour of Canada.[5]

The full band's first commercial release was 1991's The Yellow Tape. It was a demo tape originally created for the band's performance at South by Southwest and was the first recording to feature all five members.[7] They spent between $2,000–$3,000 on it and sent copies to all the labels in Canada; all of them refused.[10] The band turned to sell them off the stage and wound up selling a lot of them. Word of mouth spread and people began asking for the tape in local stores. The stores began asking the band for copies of the tape, and the demo tape became a commercial release.[10] Sales began to snowball based merely on word of mouth and their live shows.[5] Page's father, Victor, created the independent label Page Publications to handle the cassette's manufacturing and distribution.[12] (After the band signed to a major label, Page Publications remained in operation, later releasing albums by artists such as The Lowest of the Low, Leslie Spit Treeo, Annette Ducharme, David Gogo and Bodega.)

During this era, the band also garnered radio airplay with a live cover of Dean Friedman's "I'm in Love with a McDonald's Girl", which included a rap break featuring lyrics from Beastie Boys' "Hey Ladies".[13] Another major break for the band in 1991 came in November of that year when Barenaked Ladies contributed a cover of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" to the Cockburn tribute album Kick at the Darkness. That song became the band's first Top 40 hit in Canada.[14]

Tyler Stewart in 2005

Sales of The Yellow Tape were jump-started when the band was taken off the bill for the 1991 New Year's Eve concert in Nathan Phillips Square outside Toronto City Hall because a staffer for then-mayor June Rowlands saw the band's name and felt it objectified women;[15] the decision was further affirmed by city councillor Chris Korwin-Kuczynski.[16] The group shrugged it off and booked another show at McMaster University.[7] However, the media picked up the story and decided to write about it as an example of political correctness gone too far. The first article earned the paper a large quantity of mail against City Hall's decision. The story became more and more prominent until about a week after New Years when the band was asked to take a photo in front of City Hall for the front page of the Toronto Star. The stories targeted Rowlands even though she had not been directly involved in the decision to remove the band from the concert, but in fact had been out of town at the time. The following week, sales of the Yellow Tape exploded — by February 1992, it was outselling even Michael Jackson's Dangerous, Genesis' We Can't Dance and U2's Achtung Baby in some downtown Toronto record stores.[17] They received enough publicity from the incident that MuchMusic offered them its second-ever Intimate and Interactive special on 17 January.[18] The tape eventually became the first-ever indie release to achieve platinum status (100,000 copies) in Canada.[5]

By the end of February, Toronto City Council revised its rules for event bookings at Nathan Phillips Square in the hopes of avoiding another similar controversy.[16] The City Hall story has followed the band ever since; Robertson credits the scale of the story to it being a slow news week.[5][8][10]

Andy Creeggan performing with The Brothers Creeggan in London, Ontario, Canada, in 2002

The band was signed to Sire Records in April 1992[19] after a long period of being rejected by every label they approached.

The band's first full album, Gordon, was released in July 1992 and was a big success in Canada;[4] by the end of August, it had already been certified platinum.[20] It included some of the band's most well-known songs, including "Enid", the first single; "Be My Yoko Ono", the single which helped fund the album; "If I Had $1000000", which spawned a tradition of throwing Kraft Dinner during live shows, which the band later discouraged;[9][10] and "Brian Wilson", named after Beach Boy Brian Wilson (who later covered the song on a live album). It benefited from the fact that a number of songs on the album (including the latter three) had been live favourites for a while and had been recorded on past releases like The Yellow Tape. While the band was doing remarkably well in Canada, they found that it translated into little success in the United States.[5]

The band's second album, Maybe You Should Drive, released in 1994,[4] fared considerably less well with the Canadian public.[5] They tried touring the United States, but it was deemed a failure and lost money despite an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Before the next release, Andy Creeggan decided to leave the band. He had become disillusioned with the direction of the band,[8] and was not comfortable with the fame the group had attained.[4] According to Page, he had considered leaving as early as the rehearsals for the Drive album; The rest of the band convinced him to stay to record that album and for the subsequent touring. Also, Creeggan wanted to attend McGill University to study music further.[21] Tyler Stewart has also suggested that Creeggan had never fully accepted his replacement by Stewart as a percussionist.[5] Andy Creeggan's departure came during a time in which members of the band were starting to become sick of one other, with Page and Robertson rarely communicating. Stewart cites the departure as worsening the situation. Page also began struggling with both alcohol abuse and depression.[5][8] In an attempt to correct the band's downward slide, they signed with Terry McBride and Nettwerk as their management.[8]

The band released Born on a Pirate Ship as a quartet in 1996.[22] The album received two large boosts from the inclusion of the song "Shoe Box" on the Friends soundtrack[22] and from the Jason Priestley-directed video for "The Old Apartment", which got notable U.S. airplay[22] and while the album had stronger sales than Maybe You Should Drive, it still did not match the success of "Gordon".[4] The group appeared as the guest band on an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 ("Spring Breakdown" original airdate: 2 April 1997), immediately preceding their 1997 tour; they performed "The Old Apartment", "Life, In A Nutshell", and "Brian Wilson" at the Peach Pit After Dark night club. Tyler Stewart invited his friend Kevin Hearn to replace Andy Creeggan as a keyboardist for the tour, ultimately joining the band full-time. The group also had a cameo in the Canadian film The Wrong Guy with Dave Foley in 1997. They performed the song "Gangster Girl" as police officers in an alley on their break.[5][8]

From two dates on the Born on a Pirate Ship tour during 1996, Barenaked Ladies recorded and released a live album called Rock Spectacle, which had a modest radio hit in the U.S. with "Brian Wilson". The album became the band's first gold record in the U.S., and the success of "Brian Wilson", coupled with the success of "The Old Apartment", led to a new situation for the band. They knew their next album would be their chance to make it big in the states.[5][8]

The 1998 release Stunt was their greatest mainstream success, buoyed by the single "One Week", which spent—ironically—one week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Stunt reached No. 3 in the U.S. Billboard 200 and No. 9 in Canada. Kevin Hearn was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after the album was released, eventually receiving bone marrow transplants from his brother. Hearn's illness resulted in him missing the most of the Stunt tour.

Kevin Hearn in 2005

The band toured, with friends Chris Brown and Greg Kurstin both filling in on keyboards until Hearn recovered enough to rejoin them on tour. The singles "It's All Been Done" (used as the opening theme song on the short-lived animated television series Baby Blues) and "Call and Answer" (which later appeared in the film EdTV) were also modest hits. The band was also asked to contribute a song ("Get in Line") to the soundtrack of the Fox cartoon King of the Hill.[22] Barenaked Ladies also had a guest appearance in a 1999 episode of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.

Maroon, released in 2000,[4] did fairly well led by the single "Pinch Me", though not as well as Stunt had in the U.S., reaching only the number five spot on the Billboard Top 100, however, reached number one in Canadian charts.[23] In 2001, they released a compilation album, entitled Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits (1991–2001),[4] referencing a line from their song "Box Set". It contained 15 singles from previous albums, two singles from other compilations, and two new tracks (dubbed "our new greatest hits" by Robertson during the subsequent tour.

After finishing a tour on 31 December 2001 in Rosemont, Illinois, to promote the compilation album, the band decided to take a year off, only playing occasional shows such as the Medals Plaza at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City before returning to the studio in April 2003.

Everything to Everyone was released on 21 October 2003,[4] coincided by the first show of the unique Peepshow tour. The first single off the album was "Another Postcard (Chimps)", which received modest radio play. "Testing 1,2,3" was the second single from the album and received a video, but no CD single, while "Celebrity" was released later in the UK with a CD single, but no video. "Maybe Katie" (and an edited version of "For You" from a concert in Glasgow, Scotland) were also released as singles to radio. The album was their weakest seller in years, with a short chart life. With the release, the band fulfilled their contract with Reprise Records, with whom they did not re-sign. This made the group independent for the first time since 1992 (though they retained a distribution relationship with Warner Bros. Records). On the subsequent Everywhere For Everyone tour, in early 2004, the band began offering their full live shows for purchase as a download or CD-R via their website, as well as subsequent studio releases.[24]

The band recorded the theme song for the 2000 children's program Seven Little Monsters. They also appeared in "The Honeymoon's Over", the season 3 premiere of Charmed, performing "Pinch Me" onstage at the fictional night club P3. In 2003 they recorded the theme song for Odd Job Jack.

Steven Page, Kevin Hearn and Ed Robertson live in 2005

The band's next album was Barenaked for the Holidays, which was released on 5 October 2004. It was their first independent record since The Yellow Tape, as well the first album recorded at Steven Page's then-recently completed studio at his farmhouse called Fresh Baked Woods. The band created the record label Desperation Records for this album.[25]

In January 2005, the band taped a television pilot for a variety show, tentatively titled Barenaked Ladies Variety Show, which was ultimately rejected by the Fox network.[26] Later that year, the band was asked to write music for the Stratford Festival of Canada's musical production of Shakespeare's As You Like It.[27] Steven Page wrote most of the music (Shakespeare had provided lyrics in the play), and the band recorded it for the actors to sing over.[28] The recording (with Page's vocals) was available on CD from the festival, as well as on the band's website. On 2 July the band participated in the Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario.[29] Following several writing sessions throughout 2005, the band went into the studio at Fresh Baked Woods that fall to begin recording 29 songs. They broke from the studio in November and December of that year to play a 22-show holiday tour, each night of which they played one of their new songs. An iTunes Originals – a collection of interviews and live songs (coupled with some old album tracks) was recorded while the band was in the studio and was released in February.

In February 2006, the band went back into the studio to finish up the recordings they started the previous fall. Initially unsure of how to release so many songs, the band decided to release a single-disc album in early September entitled Barenaked Ladies Are Me. Several alternate versions are available, including downloadable versions and a USB flash drive version. The B.L.A.M. tour in support of the album, and its follow-up Barenaked Ladies Are Men (both of which hail from the same sessions), ran in Fall 2006 and briefly in June 2007 for the U.S., February 2007 for Canada, and later in 2007 for the UK. That same year, the band wrote and recorded the theme song for the television series The Big Bang Theory.

The band performing on-board its Ships and Dip III cruise in 2008

On 6 May 2008, the band released an album of original material aimed at children entitled Snacktime!. The album features artwork by Hearn in its liner notes, which is also available in the form of a hardcover book with CD included. The album was promoted with a series of television appearances and in-store appearances at bookstores in the U.S. northeast and west coasts, as well as Toronto.

Complications began in July 2008 when the band cancelled several appearances at several Disney Music Block Party concerts following Page's arrest on allegations of cocaine possession.[30] In August, Robertson crashed his single-engine plane (without casualty) and his mother passed away that December.[31] Band members lamented how the events of the year marred their 20th anniversary festivities (1 October 2008).

On 24 February 2009, Barenaked Ladies and Steven Page separately announced that Page had left the band by "mutual agreement". The remaining members continued as a quartet while Page pursued solo projects, including theatrical opportunities.[32][33] In July, it was announced the band had left Nettwerk management and had hired the newly merged management firm CAM 8.[34][35]

Robertson commented on the departure of one of the band's founding members:

Our relationship with Steve Page was great and very fruitful. It lasted almost 20 years, but it was time to move on. Now we're doing something that feels really fresh and exciting to me. His departure left four singers and three multi-instrumentalists in the band, so we're not lacking for musical ideas, and now there's more room for the other writers in the band to bring songs to the table.[36]

Barenaked Ladies entered the studio as a quartet in May 2009 to record a new album with producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda. "You Run Away", the lead single from the new album, was released to Canadian radio on 8 January. All in Good Time was released 23 March 2010, in Canada and 30 March in the U.S.[37][38][39] On 6 January 2010, the band announced that it had signed an exclusive worldwide distribution deal with EMI Label Services.[38] The same announcement implied that following the departure of Page, the band has created a new label called Raisin' Records.[38]

All in Good Time was generally well-received by critics.[40] The band toured the U.S. and Canada during the summer of 2010, with an autumn leg in the United Kingdom. When asked about Page's departure, Tyler Stewart said, "We don't keep in touch, but we certainly we [sic] wish him the best, and there's good will there."[41] In October 2010, Page stated that he has no plans to rejoin the band soon, other than a possible one-off performance. He added that it felt strange the group continued to use the same name and perform the songs that he wrote and performed.[42]

Page later commented in August 2011 that around the subsequent time of his arrest for possession of cocaine, "the band was no longer the joyous place that it once was, but it hadn't been joyous for a long time before that. It wasn't that we didn't put on good shows, we still had a great time onstage every night," he added. "But it became a place where work was just about the stress and not the end product."[43]

The band released a second greatest-hits album, Hits from Yesterday & the Day Before, through Rhino Entertainment (a division of their former parent label, Warner Music Group) on 27 September 2011.[44] Another Rhino album, Stop Us If You've Heard This One Before, containing previously-recorded but unreleased rarities, was planned for release later in 2011[45] but was delayed until 8 May 2012.[46]

Barenaked Ladies was commissioned to compose the original score for a musical based on National Lampoon's Animal House.[47] The project was announced in early 2012. However, by mid-2013, the band had been dropped from the production.

The band returned to the studio in May 2012 to record a single, "Boomerang". The session was produced by Gavin Brown.[48] The band indicated plans for "Boomerang" to be released as a single during the summer of 2012 in conjunction with their Last Summer On Earth tour on which the song was performed nightly.[49] The single was also performed on the late 2012 Symphony Barenaked Tour but remained unreleased. The band had mentioned the possibility of abandoning the album concept and releasing only singles and EPs. However, the band went into the studio in February and March 2013 to work on a full album,[50] which was released as Grinning Streak on 4 June 2013. The band then signed with Vanguard Records for the release, their first label album of originals since going independent following 2003's Everything to Everyone.[51] "Boomerang" was added to the new album tracks and was released as a single on 26 March 2013. Two further singles were released: "Odds Are" in late 2013 and "Did I Say That Out Loud?" in mid-2014. Each of the latter singles had a music video produced by Rooster Teeth Productions.[52][53]

Looking to maintain a high profile, the band began work on a new album in December 2014.[54] The band's 11th studio album, Silverball, was released on 2 June 2015,[55] three days before the band kicked off its Last Summer on Earth 2015 tour with Violent Femmes and Colin Hay.[56] The lead single, "Say What You Want", was released on 28 April 2015.[57][58] The music video for the next single, "Duct Tape Heart", contained live footage of the band's performance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on the Last Summer On Earth 2015 tour, was released on 19 October 19 to coincide with the start of the Canadian leg of the Silverball tour.[59]

Barenaked Ladies released their second live album, BNL Rocks Red Rocks, on 20 May 2016.[60] It was recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on the Last Summer on Earth 2015 tour. The band also held a Last Summer on Earth 2016 tour with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Howard Jones in conjunction with the new live album.[61] BNL Rocks Red Rocks is the band's first commercial live release since the departure of Steven Page in 2009.

On 23–24 October 2016, the band recorded an album with New York City a cappella group, The Persuasions and producer Gavin Brown. The album, Ladies and Gentlemen: Barenaked Ladies and The Persuasions, consisted of new versions of existing Barenaked Ladies songs (along with one Kevin Hearn song and one Persuasions song).[62] It was released on 14 April 2017.[63]

The band returned to the studio in the winter of 2017 to record their 12th studio album, Fake Nudes.[64] The lead single, "Lookin' Up", along with "Bringing It Home", were made available for download to those who pre-ordered the album.[65] The album itself was released on 17 November 2017.[66]

On 25 March 2018, the band was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the Juno Awards in Vancouver. The band performed alongside former members Steven Page (who was included in the induction) and Andy Creeggan. This was Page's first performance with the band since his departure in 2009.[67] Despite his presence at the ceremony, Andy Creeggan was not inducted into the Hall with the other five members. Though there are reportedly no plans for another reunion, neither side has ruled it out.[68]

In the summer of 2019, Barenaked Ladies took a break from their own Last Summer On Earth tours and opened for Hootie and the Blowfish on that band's 44-date Group Therapy Tour.[69][70] It was the band's first tour as an opening act since the early 1990s.

On 4 October 2019, Rhino Records released a new greatest hits collection titled Original Hits, Original Stars exclusively on vinyl.[71]

On 14 January 2020, Robertson stated he was working on songs for a new album,[72] with a tour to follow supported by Gin Blossoms and Toad the Wet Sprocket.[73] The tour was slated to begin on 3 June in St. Augustine, Florida and end on 23 July in Toronto, Ontario, but was delayed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In conjuncture with the original tour announcement, the band also launched the "Barenaked Bytes" mobile app, allowing fans to gain access to ticket pre-sales, VIP packages, news, and discounts on merchandise.[74]

Starting 29 March 2020, the band began releasing a series of webcam-based performances that they have dubbed #SelfieCamJam on their YouTube channel in response to need for isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Barenaked Ladies have an authorized biography, which was released in 2001, titled Public Stunts Private Stories, written by a friend of the band and fellow Scarborough native Paul Myers with input from the band.[4] It is published in Canada by Madrigal Press. An updated version of the biography was released in 2003 in the United States with a different cover, several corrections, and additional information about Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits and Everything to Everyone, which were released after the initial printing.

In May 2006, Barenaked Ladies, along with other prominent Canadian musicians, formed the Canadian Music Creators Coalition in response to plans by the Canadian government to revisit and update copyright laws. Steven Page has acted as a conduit between the CMCC and the press, urging the government to focus on the Canadian cultural scene. Page has said the formation of the CMCC was in response to what he believes is the wrong direction taken by the RIAA and the major labels, by suing fans for filesharing.[87]

The band has also become a proponent of environmentalism, following from Page's passion for greening (he is himself a board member of WWF Canada). The group began bringing an "eco-village" organized by the Reverb organization on their 2004 Au Naturale tour. The band has since partnered with Reverb to form the "Barenaked Planet" project, which is the group's label for their project to progressively "green" their touring. Efforts the band have made include ensuring backstage materials are recycled, using biodiesel in their tour vehicles (B20 as of December 2006), and offsetting carbon emissions with wind power. This includes both band-sponsored offsets for their own emissions, as well as having volunteers sell "Barenaked Planet" stickers to concertgoers with the money going to offset their drives to the venues.[88]

In May 2009, Barenaked Ladies partnered with American ice cream company Ben & Jerry's to create the flavour If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours. Named after the song "If I Had $1000000", the confection consists of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, peanut butter cups, chocolate-coated toffee chunks, white chocolate chunks and chocolate-coated almonds. In the United States, this ice cream flavour is sold under the name Everything But The....

Barenaked Ladies is the first Canadian band to receive their own ice cream flavour, following in the footsteps of other band-themed Ben & Jerry's flavours such as Cherry Garcia (Jerry Garcia), One Sweet Whirled and Magic Brownies (Dave Matthews Band) and Phish Food (Phish). All royalties from the sale of If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours are donated to the ABC Canada Literacy Foundation, a Toronto-based organization that promotes reading to children at home.[89][90]

Barenaked Ladies are a member of Canadian charity Artists Against Racism and has worked with them in the past on awareness campaigns.[91]

WE Charity

Barenaked Ladies have made several appearances during WE Day events, performing in front of thousands of teenagers, empowering the young students to get involved in their communities and to promote social activity through WE charity's work.[92][93][94]

Rock CAN Rol

Barenaked Ladies have supported hunger relief organization Rock Can Rol and together with their fans have helped feed men, women and children in need.[95]