The latest album by the Barenaked Ladies, “Barenaked Ladies Are Me,” sounds more mature and more grown up than any of their previous releases.

Hopefully that’s the case, says the band, since it’s been almost 15 years since the release of their smash debut album, “Gordon.”

“We have grown up,” says the band’s singer and guitarist Ed Robertson, sitting on a bed in a Toronto hotel room beside keyboardist Kevin Hearn and bassist Jim Creeggan. “It’s still us though. I mean, it’s the same guys. I think the beauty of it is it sounds like us, but it doesn’t sound like anything we’ve done before.”

The guys agree that the biggest difference with this record was that they didn’t have to cut as many songs as they usually do. Most artists tend to write too much and then find themselves cutting songs in order to fit as much as they can on a CD. But with this album, the band has released several variations: a 13-track CD, a deluxe edition with all 29 songs, a USB stick with all the tunes and a special edition CD with the remaining tunes that will be available next year (the CD is to be called “Barenaked Ladies Are Men”); and all of the songs are available for download via the BNL official web site or iTunes.

“In the past, we have written a lot of songs, and then released the record, and those songs fell by the wayside. I think it was Jim that put together a group of songs that never made it on to any of our records and we listened to it in a hotel room in Boston. It was Jim that said ‘I think this is my favourite record of ours.’ And it was all the songs that we hadn’t released,” says Robertson.

“So we realized this time, let’s just get the songs to a place where we really like them. Let’s serve the song.”

The way their newest album can be picked up – in CD form, online, or even on a handy USB stick – shows that the guys know that people aren’t necessarily just buying CDs anymore; technology has changed the way people buy music.

“Certainly people are downloading more than they’re buying, but people who are downloading are buying more than people who aren’t downloading. So as confusing as that sounds, it means downloading is good,” Robertson says.

Hearn agrees, which is why the band has decided to release the album in a multitude of ways in order to please every fan out there.

“These are ways to try and offer different sources of music,” Hearn says.

Robertson says he doesn’t think people are downloading in order to “steal” music, but that they do it because it is much more convenient than going out to buy a CD or a single.

“I think they want to know that the artists they love are being compensated for the music they’ve made,” says Robertson. “I think people just feel like there is this lack of relationship between artist and fan, that I think this gap has been widened by record companies and I think that people generally have the perception that record companies have been ripping off artists and records companies have been ripping off bands. So they think that by stealing music, they’re not hurting the artist. And I think we’re in a place now where, as a band, we can take advantage of the technology and deal with our fans directly.”

The Barenaked Ladies are obviously not afraid of the technology available to their fans, as can be noted by their recent contest on YouTube, looking for a fan to guest star in a BNL video. Robertson says the internet has opened up possibilities for relationships between fans and artists and fans and other fans that weren’t possible before.

“There’s a lot of crap online, but it can be a really effective tool for connecting people if you can read through all the crap and garbage. The internet is an amazing way of connecting people and creating communities that didn’t exist before so it’s a pretty exciting time to be a band, but also to be a fan,” Robertson says, noting that the guys are musicians, but that they are also fans of music and are online themselves interacting with the artists that matter to them.

“It’s an interesting time because of the technology available to the fans, they can interact with us in a creative way, instead of just receiving (the music). It’s interesting to see what they do and how they work with our music,” Creeggan says. “That’s another situation where we will be releasing separate instruments of five songs and the fan gets to mix it to their own beat and mash it up however they want. It’s an amazing thing. And there’s a chance that we’ll hear it.”

And it truly is the fans that the Barenaked Ladies credit for their success, and that is why they work so hard for their fans in their recordings and when they are performing a show.

“I think maybe one reason is we’ve come to our state of success through live shows, and so we get to see the people often enough that we realize these are the people that have really given this music legs,” Hearn says. “And when we meet people after the shows and seeing them face to face, you just realize I’ll forget things that they remember that happened to me or the band.”

“The fans know way more about us than we do,” Robertson pipes in.

“There’s really so much value that they have for or music,” Creeggan adds.

Hearn reminisces about when the band was trying really hard to break into the American market, U.S. radio stations wouldn’t play their music. It wasn’t until the band started playing live, and radio stations witnessed that not only did people come out to the shows, but they packed the house, that their music was finally played on the radio.

“I don’t think we forget that,” Hearn says.

The fans are also why the Ladies make it a priority to connect to every audience they play for. Recently at the 2006 World AIDS Conference, the Ladies were the closing act at the AIDS Benefit Concert, which was part of the conference’s opening ceremonies. They didn’t take the stage until close to 1 a.m., but they got the crowd moving, singing and energized. How do they do it?

“I think we’ve always made it the priority to be very present when we perform. And people know that we know that we’re in the ACC, or in that case SkyDome, or whatever they’re calling it now, we know where we are, we know what city we’re in. We appreciate who we’re playing for, we know what it’s about, we get it,” Robertson says.

He says that point became very important to him when the band was touring in the U.S., and they were playing at a club in Phoenix. Steppenwolf had played there the night before, and taped on a monitor on the stage was a sign that said, “You are in Phoenix, Arizona. The name of this club is The Roxy.”

“It really struck me and I thought I never want to be in that position, where I have to look down on the stage to see where I am, what city I’m in and what the name of the venue is. Touring can be a real grind, but it’s very important to me to engage with the community I’m in and directly with the people I am performing for,” Robertson says.

“I think a band that is already above par they go out there to entertain people and engage people. Right there, the music, you know to me, that’s a big factor of whether I like a show or not. If they are out there to connect,” Creeggan adds.

One of the highlights for Roberston was working with Kim Mitchell who did a guitar solo on the track, “Wind it Up.” He says he’s a huge fan of Mitchell’s and all it took was an e-mail to the legend to get him to do the solo.

“It was so obviously me wearing my influences on my sleeve. I emailed him and said, ‘hey would you consider doing a guitar solo on this?’ And he was kind enough to email right back and said ‘I’d be crazy not to, yeah let’s do it.’ Total dream come true for me. Within the span of a year I got to play ‘Closer to the Heart’ with Rush, and then Kim Mitchell played on our record, so all my high school fantasies have come true.”






Related Stories: