The Bobby Bones Show - Steven Page - Founder of Barenaked Ladies

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Bonus Friday 4/28 - Steven Page-Founder of Barenaked LadiesConnect With Steven PageFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/stevenpage/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpage/Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenpageiHeart: https://www.iheart.com/artist/steven-page-389206/?autoplay=trueApple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/steven-page/206660018Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/station/play/152846412059509908Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/160fRY4TZO7VQmKFQWNBV4?autoplay=trueYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN6SAdvsp4OBgSwFW_16Mew About the Show *****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN’ A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight!  Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, get motivated, and gain insights from honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family.Website: https://takinawalk.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebuzzknightLinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/buzzknightLinkfire: https://lnk.to/takinawalk Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family!Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. It would not be...

Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones.

It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast, Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future. This month, hear from top streamers. Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. There's an economic component to community striving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities,

they fail. Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Buzz Night, the host of Taking a Walk, music history on foot. Today, our guest is the Grammy, winning founder of bare naked ladies. He's bringing his wit and wisdom to city winery in Boston

on May 2nd. You know his classic songs like Brian Wilson. If I had a million dollars, what a good boy. It's all been done and so many more. With the band, he sold over 15 million albums. His voice is one of the most enduring voices of our generation. We'll talk. with Stephen Page next on Taking a Walk. Well, Stephen, thanks for being on Taking a Walk. Do you recall how you got hooked on music? Well, you know, there was always music in my house growing up. My parents listened to a lot of music.

My dad was actually a drummer, kind of a jazz drummer. He grew up being, but played in a wedding band and that kind of thing, you know, occasionally New Year's Eve, those kinds of shows when I was a kid. And so I would always, you know, I'd hear him practicing. His drums would be set up. But I think the thing that really made me want to, like, make music was, I mean, I was obsessed with the Beatles as a kid, who wasn't in a lot of ways. But I remember once listening to, I think it was paperback writer.

And I had one of those, you know, those little tape recorders, portable tape recorders before the Walkman with the single earphone that would go into the headphone jack. and the earphone came slightly unplugged and the signal, I guess, went out of phase. And all of a sudden, I could hear like the bass guitar by itself. And I realized that that kind of mass of music that I was hearing, it just sounded like this kind of like, I didn't know what it was. I knew I loved the sound of it, but I didn't realize I could identify individual people playing individual parts. And all of a sudden, I could do that. And I went, oh, oh, that's what I want to do. do. I want to make one of those parts that goes into this kind of mysterious mass of music.

And do you remember the first time you performed in front of an audience? Well, I was in the school musical of Wizard of Oz when I was seven, and I have no recollection of it. My dad says that he remembers watching me, you know, it was just whatever one of the, whatever, the lollipop league or something like that. But I remember my dad saying that when I walked on stage. I was very shy and really quiet kid and all of a sudden going on stage and watching my face kind of light up and kind of become this different person. I think he felt like then that was the thing that that showed him. I was a, I was a, was meant for the stage. Well, besides your dad and the Beatles who you mentioned, who were some of those other early inspirations? Well, you know,

choral singing. I sang and a choir all the way through high school. this kind of all city choir of 100 students from Scarborough, Ontario, where I grew up. And it was, you know, certainly not the coolest thing to be part of. You know, not the kind of thing I'd go to school the next day and tell my friends about. But for those three hours of rehearsal every Wednesday afternoon, it was the most amazing sensation to be singing with these other people and making this noise. that is you can't make by yourself. You know, you can't just do this thing by yourself.

All of a sudden, your voices are combining and you're striving for something that is beautiful. And maybe you can't, as a teenager, express that desire to make something beautiful. So then you just do it. And because I wasn't a sports kid, right? Like I didn't play sports. I didn't really follow sports.

So I didn't have any idea what it was like to be on a team trying to make something great and be excellent. And singing and a choir did that for me. So that was a big thing. But also, I became kind of addicted to collecting music by the time I was maybe 15, where I had started to understand that like buying a new album could provide me with a whole set of new feelings, or a place to go if I wanted to feel a certain way. If I wanted to either be comforted or if I wanted to enhance a feeling that I had

or if I wanted to obliterate a feeling that I had, I could put on a different album. And so I would just spend time buying albums. I remember my mom yelling at me for spending all my money on records. So I started buying cassettes because they'd fit in my coat pocket and then she wouldn't know I'd be coming home with records. So that time when I was, you know, 15, 16 and I was buying

whether it was just anything I could find in the cutout bins like where the deleted end of run records were that were $2.99 and it could be the talking heads or it could be Dexie's Midnight Runners or it could be Japan.

I would just become completely obsessed with that stuff. And what was your first concert that you went to? Because my parents were musical and I actually ran a folk festival Lomariposa Folk Festival in Toronto when I was really young, I would go to that. But I guess the first concert that I went to without my parents would have been Queen at Maple Leaf Gardens, 1981, I think. I have goosebumps.

How amazing was it? It was great. It was amazing. Yeah, it was, it was kind of mind-blowing, just knowing that I was, that I was, that I was, in the same room as those guys and those are records that I really had gotten to know so well. But, you know, the shows that really kind of

like really changed the way I looked. I remember being a little bit younger, my parents taking my brother and I to go see Harry Chapin. And the way he talked to that audience and connected with them, to me, had such a huge influence and impact. And then later,

when I was a teenager, going to see artists like, well, Billy Bragg would be a great example. another person who's like socially conscious, great sense of humor, at a real sense of connection to that evening's audience. He would always, he'd be in Toronto

and he'd be talking about Toronto politics or something. How does this guy from England know about what's going on here? But that really affected me, and I think it really influenced how I relate to audiences even to this day. So besides musicians who taught you and influenced you on storytelling. Who else shaped you in terms of your storytelling?

You know, I think there are certainly people in comedy that I admire, comedians who can make you feel more than just kind of like just more than just cheap laughs. I mean, I love a good cheap laugh. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I love slapstick and I like a good, bit of cheap comedy, but I think people who really make you think, connect, so whether that's Richard Pryor or

somebody like another songwriter, but would be Randy Newman, where there's a sense of kind of comedy and storytelling that is has multiple layers, I guess. That's always been a big thing for me. So Boston is a very,

special place for you. Can you talk about what Boston means to you as you'll be coming to City Winery? Yeah, sure. I mean, we used to, when I was in the Bare Naked Ladies, I mean, we played Boston so many times and the Boston area. I remember, you know, playing at the Berkeley School of Music and the Somerville Theater and, like, you know, smaller places, even before, like, Paradise Rock Club and stuff in the early days. And then just slowly but surely through the mid to late 90s. It just kept kind of growing and growing in a way that was outsized to the rest of the United States, where every time we'd come back to the Boston area, we'd play a bigger and bigger place.

I remember playing at what, I don't know, is it still called Harbor Lights? It's not still called Harbor Lights, is it? Yeah, it's got to have some dot com, whatever it is now, crypto, crypto lights. But, you know, I remember playing down there

and kind of like feeling that it was just on the verge of something huge. Like you could just feel this excitement in the audience. There was always this great connection, just a sense of something really special every time we played there. And we did have,

we had a record company guy, Andrew Gavatsos, who worked for Repreys, our record company, who worked harder and better than just about any, anybody else I knew. And I mean, we just loved him so much and he loved us and we kind of do anything for each other. So we had this kind of like sense, anytime we came through town that we

were going to do something amazing. So then when stunt came out in 1998, our album stunt, I remember we were in New York City playing, I think it was the Today Show that morning. And we had a record release in Boston that day. It was the day of the album. came out and we were going to come up. It was originally supposed to be at Newbury Comics. And then they said, well, let's do it somewhere bigger because it's going to be a bigger, a bigger audience. So we'll do

it at City Hall Plaza. And so we decided, okay, that's fine. We'll do this at City Hall Plaza. We get in the bus in New York City in the morning and drive up. And as we're pulling into Boston, the traffic is ridiculous.

Like, it's at a standstill. And we're like, what's going on? Why is this so insane? And Andrew Gravazzo's turned to us and said, you're what's going on? Everybody was heading into City Hall Plaza. And we go and set up there. And we were set up essentially for what would have been like an in-store performance.

What we would normally be the collection of instruments we would bring into a record store to play, we set up in front of what ended up being like 35,000 people, people in the parking garages all around us on the rooftops in every window. And we stayed, we played, and it was, you know, the biggest audience we'd ever played for. And we stayed and signed autographs until late that night, probably nine or ten that night. We signed autographs until the last person was signed for. That kind of sealed the deal for the special relationship with Boston. Yeah, and you were like practically almost like the house band for a while.

with WBMX. That's right. Yeah. But, you know, there were multiple radio stations that were, I mean, that was one thing was quite often there'd be an artist that like only one station would play. And there are multiple stations, the river, et cetera, that played us in Boston. All at the same time, we had this great, great relationship.

We were lucky to have that, we're kind of across the board. And it's still a great relationship to this, to this day. I know it still means a lot. So can you describe the joy of performing after, you know, COVID and just coming back to life? How special is it for an artist? It's, I mean, in the summer of 2021, when things started to open up the first time, it was like it was the most kind of moving and weird thing. I remember my first show back was in New Jersey and it was in a park. It was a free show in a park.

and, you know, thousands of people showed up for this thing, and it poured rain so bad that they had to turn the PA off because I think we're going to start, you know, blowing up. So I did this show completely acoustic in the pouring rain for this audience who just stuck around and we were so hungry for live music. I think now what happened in the year and a half since then is that everybody in the world went out to try to make. make up all the dates that they missed during COVID, that became the competition out there is so strong that it's really hard to tell whether a show is going to either be wildly sold out or completely empty. It's really unpredictable out there right now. And I don't know the full explanation.

I think people have a lot of choice right now, and they're trying to figure out how to spend their concert dollars. So if they decide they're coming to spend, on me. Seems like everybody else is coming to spend it on me. If they're coming to see something else through their town, then, you know, that I might be the one who suffers. So talk about your current bandmates. Who are they? And talk about the art of collaborating. Sure. I, I travel with the Stephen Page Trio, which is myself, Craig Northe on guitar. Some people may know him from his own band, the odds, who are one of the great Canadian rock and roll bands. And he's

just a fantastic songwriter on his own, but he also does some writing with me. And then I have Kevin Fox playing cello. I've done both these guys for over 20 years, both Canadian guys who I've just always really admired. And we've played together as a trio now for, I guess, about eight years. And I can't imagine it any other way. We've become really close friends and just, you know, we have that kind of sixth sense that really good collaborators end up developing,

where you don't have to say what you want or need most of the time. You can really predict the other person's movements and not in a way that feels like that they are hackneyed, but just in a sense that we're just really tuned into each other's, I guess I'm going to say vibrations. Yep, I just said it, vibrations. It's okay to say it. So what's your writing process?

Do you write every day? I don't. Every day, I think I should write every day, but then I don't. Then I have a C, I'm actually surrounded by about four different notebooks right now with bits of little songs, and then I'm writing things into my notes app in my phone, and then I'm writing stuff into my pages app on my computer. So I have like scraps of stuff everywhere and voice memos, and then it's the matter of getting back to them and kind of finishing songs.

That's the part I'm not good at. Starting songs, I'm very good at. Finishing them, it takes a little bit more concentration and dedication. For instance, I'm working on a new record right now, a follow-up to the Vanity Project, which is a record I did with the English singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy. I did that about 20 years ago, and we're doing a follow-up now. And I know I have some lyrics to finish. And every day I get to the studio and think, let's finish those lyrics. And then I find something else to do.

So it'll get done. It'll all get done. But that's, you know, sometimes you really have to force yourself. So in closing, can you just describe how special music is and why it's so important to us? Well, music, even if it doesn't have lyrics. I mean, music is a way for all of us to express the things we can't express on our own. You know, I think when I'm writing a song, it's a gift. I try and make it a gift to somebody out there, somebody that I don't know and may never know,

who doesn't even know they need that song to help them process how they're feeling about something. Because the greatest pieces of music for me have taken me by surprise when I think, I didn't think anybody else had thought about that. Or even just instrumentally, it takes you to another place. Like I was saying earlier, it's a matter of like, does it comfort you? Or does it enhance a good feeling? Or does it help you concentrate on why you're feeling a certain way? Or does it help you cover up the bad feelings?

Like, those are all valuable things. And music more than, I think, just about any other art form has that power. Well, I can't wait for everyone to see you May 2nd. at City Winery. Boston is a special place for you, Stephen Page. And thank you for the joy and the music that you continue to give us. My pleasure. Great to talk to you. Taking a walk with Buzz Night is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.

I vowed. I will be his last target. is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wode. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.

If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian. Michael Mancini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the I-Heartrepped podcast on the Eye Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of

plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.