In Conversation with Steven Page

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This article was published 16/04/2016 (3761 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Steven Page is in his happy place.

The former lead singer of the Barenaked Ladies is about a decade past the tumultuous period in his life during which he was arrested for drug possession (and subsequently acquitted), got divorced, left his band and got remarried. You know, the usual.

Today, he’s touring with friends Andy Maize (the Skydiggers), Craig Northey (the Odds) and Glen Phillips (Toad the Wet Sprocket), playing songs from the Beatles iconic album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band backed by symphonies, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He has also just released his second solo album, Heal Thyself, Part 1 Instinct.

He stopped by the Winnipeg Free Press News Café prior to his Winnipeg shows last week.

Free Press: Is it weird for a guy who grew up in the rock ’n’ roll scene seeing guys behind you wearing tuxedos playing violins and cellos?

Steven Page: I’ve done some symphonic shows in the past where some symphonies roll their eyes and say, “Here’s another pop show where we play a bunch of long, boring whole notes.” These arrangements are really interesting. They take advantage of the strength of the orchestra. It’s a real ensemble piece as opposed to just background for a rock band that looks fancy. To play these arrangements with these musicians, I can see their excitement.

FP: How much are you enjoying playing with Maize, Northey and Phillips?

SP: I recommended Craig (for the show). I was a huge fan of his and the Odds for years. He was a perfect fit. Andy Maize I’ve known since 1989 when Barenaked Ladies used to open for the Skydiggers. We toured all over Canada as their opening act. He was one of my greatest mentors. Watching Andy, I learned a lot about how to be a lead singer in a band. For me, it’s really exciting to get to sing with my friends and heroes.

FP: You’ve just released your second solo album. When will you be touring across the country with your own music?

SP: Touring for me is a different thing than it used to be. It used to be the tour bus would roll up, you’d get in it and you wouldn’t get off it for eight weeks.

FP: You’re an adult now.

SP: Yes, as Moe Berg once said. What I’m doing now is a lot of three and four shows at a time. You book a great gig and you book a bunch of shows around it if you can.

FP: You also do some speaking engagements. What do you talk about?

SP: I have a couple of different talks. I do one on arts and culture and the importance of arts education and also about Canadian identity wrapped into that. The other one, which I do more often, is about mental health and my own story dealing with and struggling with mental health. That’s sometimes for university students. I’ll talk about the kinds of services available for them and what to do for friends and co-workers or colleagues that are suffering.

FP: What were some of your mental-health struggles?

SP: I’ve had a longtime relationship with depression and anxiety. Some of your readers and viewers will probably recognize my face from my mug shot from several years ago. There was a point several years ago where I got divorced, I got arrested for drug possessions, I was acquitted, which means I didn’t do it, I left my band and I got remarried. There were a lot of major changes.

As lousy as a lot of that time was, I learned a lot about what’s important and how to not only live with depression, but how to identify it and take myself out of it. It doesn’t mean I’m fixed now, but I have better coping mechanisms. Music is a big part of my happy place.

FP: Barenaked Ladies were one of the first bands to play at the Walker Theatre, now the Burton Cummings Theatre, after it was turned back into a musical venue in the early 1990s. Do you have good memories of Winnipeg?

SP: I remember that show really well. Before that we would play places like B-52s at the U of M. We played a lot of places around town. We played the folk festival in 1992 right after our first album (Gordon) came out and I got to come back and play the festival in 2009, the year I left Barenaked Ladies. I’ve never had a negative experience here. I’ve always loved playing here.

FP: You must take some satisfaction that your music is part of the soundtrack of many people’s lives.

SP: That’s absolutely the greatest part. We never took If I Had a Million Dollars all that seriously. (We thought) it’s a novelty song, it’s not our deepest, greatest thing, but we realized over the years, in a certain way, it is. It has the most resonance with the most people. People will connect with some of your incredibly personal songs, but as a culture, it’s like we wrote a campfire song. Who really gets to say that they wrote a song that most Canadians know or learned to speak English by singing to, or that your grandma can sing along to? That’s pretty awesome.

FP: Do people still throw boxes of Kraft Dinner at you?

SP: No, thank God. At one point, it got so big, security used to frisk people for it and we’d donate it to the local food bank. But as we got bigger and bigger and the venues got bigger and bigger, people would still throw it. They’d throw it from the third balcony and nail some kid on the floor in the head. We thought, “Maybe we should put an end to that.”