  The Barenaked Ladies |
It's one thing to sit back and playfully imagine what you'd do if you had a million dollars, like Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page and Ed Robertson did almost 20 years ago.
But apparently, the reality of having a million dollars plays out in much more practical ways, like green-lining your rock 'n' roll lifestyle.
"We saw really big success early on in our career and we all went out and got modest houses and reasonable cars and put furniture in our houses. Nobody in the band did anything really excessive. Nobody bought a gold-plated Porsche. It's all been pretty reasonable. I bought some exotic dogs, but they're still just dogs," Robertson says, of his Rhodesian Ridgebacks, shortly after the band rolled into Kelowna on their biodiesel-fuelled tour bus.
The Barenaked Ladies last rocked Rexall Place during the 2004 Juno Awards and are returning tonight, armed with disposable, biodegradable corn-based cups and organic merchandising options.
"It's just about making simple changes that have a wide-reaching effect and help us leave less of a footprint as we travel around," Robertson says of their Barenaked Planet partnership with the environmental group Reverb.
The current BLAM tour is named after the group's latest pair of albums Barenaked Ladies Are Me and Barenaked Ladies Are Men, officially released to retail outlets in September.
"For the first time, it was about not having a concept for the release. It was about serving the songs," says Robertson, of the 29 new tracks on the two separate discs.
The Barenaked Ladies broke out with the 1991 release of the Yellow Tape, which contained the hits If I Had $1,000,0000 and Be My Yoko Ono and was the first indie cassette to ever go platinum in Canada. It also earned them a deal with Reprise Records where they maintained a rare, healthy business relationship until the contract expired in 2003.
Instead of re-signing, the Ladies founded their own label, Desperation Records, and continued recording material at Page's home-based studio Fresh Baked Woods, which is one reason for the separate CD releases.
"It's just really expensive to put out a double disc and because we're independent now, we have to make those kinds of considerations. So the two discs are really just two halves of one whole," says Robertson, offering an explanation for their independent status. "We feel like we're in a better position to reach out directly to our fans without the middleman, and record companies have taken up a position as of late that we don't really agree with. We don't think fans should be sued for downloading music and it's just the wrong tack to take, so we just felt we were better off on our own."
And so far, the Ladies seem to be doing great.
The tidal wave of new, more mature, songwriting is helping the band gear up to celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.
Before heading out across our great white country, the Ladies were sailing the turquoise waters of the Caribbean on their debut Ships and Dips cruise, where they travelled with fans from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to the Turks and Caicos and back.
And, while everyone in the band but Robertson has their own music side projects, Robertson made the leap to television last year.
"All of my musical desires get fulfilled in Barenaked Ladies," says Robertson, who agreed to his own program on the Outdoor Life Network called Ed's Up, where he's led to bizarre Canadian destinations using only GPS co-ordinates.
Although the last episode aired a few weeks ago, Robertson assures us reruns have already begun.
