News

It has been an annus horribilis for Canadian pop band Barenaked Ladies, but things look like they might be starting to turn around.

In July, co-founder and lead singer Steven Page was arrested in New York State and charged with a felony, possession of a controlled substance (cocaine). The charges were later reduced to misdemeanours, and adjourned until April, at which time it's expected they will be dropped.

A month after Page's arrest, BNL co-founder Ed Robertson's Cessna 206 float plane crashed near Baptiste Lake, north of Bancroft, Ont. Miraculously, he and his wife and two friends walked away without a scratch.

Now, interpreting these events as a kind of wake-up call, the 20-year-old band that has sold 12 million records and become a household name is starting to put itself back on its professional legs.

The events of the past several months “have brought us closer together,” drummer Tyler Stewart said on Friday, as the band took a break from their latest project: recording a cover of the former Hockey Night in Canada theme song. “Any time one member of the group has a problem, we tend to rally. And I think that person becomes a better person because of it.

“I watched [keyboardist] Kevin Hearn, after he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1998, become an ambassador. He handled that incredibly gracefully. And Steven has also handled this quite gracefully and is working hard to improve himself, and get to some of the underlying issues that lead to things like that. I've seen him really improve as a human being over the last six months. He's working hard on himself. It's the whole rock-bottom thing or not even rock-bottom – just something that slaps you awake.”

Later this month, they'll have four concerts at Toronto's Massey Hall, including two matinees based on their best-selling children's album Snacktime, two more at Ottawa's National Arts Centre, and a New Year's Eve show at Detroit's Fox Theatre. In February, they'll embark on their third annual four-day Ships and Dip Caribbean cruise cum musical festival, with Sloan, The Weakerthans and Great Big Sea (among several other bands) and some members of the Kids in the Hall comedy troupe.

And next April, after writing and recording some new songs, the band will begin a 20th anniversary North American tour.

After Page's arrest and Robertson's plane crash, Stewart says he had friends calling to say, “ ‘Don't leave your back yard.' But I think there's an opportunity to rise out of it. We've been through 20 years together, a miracle to begin with, and we've had a lot of trials and tribulations. A lot of things you wished had never happened. But it's the old adage, ‘What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.' I kind of believe that these days.”

Despite their two decades together, says Stewart, “in some ways, it sort of feels like it's back to square one. We feel our best work is still ahead of us. … This whole thing has made us realize that when we're out doing what we were put on the Earth to do, make music and make people happy, we're doing the right thing. So we need to do our thing. Sometimes you don't know what that is until somebody almost takes it away from you.”

The 45-second BNL cover of the iconic hockey anthem has a banjo-driven bluegrass sound and will include a brief vocal. Sports channel TSN is inviting other famous Canadian bands to rerecord the song for later use on TSN and RDS hockey broadcasts. The band Simple Plan was the first to participate.

“The song is so memorable,” says Stewart, a major hockey fan. “Too bad for the CBC, but finally the artist [composer Dolores Claman] got [her] due and wasn't screwed out of the money [she] should be getting. It's iconic because of the repetition, yes, but also because the music is incredibly good. … And she wrote an incredible percussion part.”

The Barenaked Ladies' version of the tune will debut this month.