(angel chorus)
Canada's coolest rockers …
No. Not Nickelback. Ugh. Please.
(angel chorus again)
Barenaked Ladies at Summerfest.
I know, I know. I told friends early and often I didn’t think it would be worth the trip to see BNL. They haven’t had a hit on the radio in years. Steven Page’s distinct singing voice and personality left the group earlier this year. The Barenaked Ladies have fallen off the Top 40 radar.
But as the date approached, and the lineup for this year’s Summerfest got bleaker, I warmed up to the idea of seeing BNL doing some good, old-fashioned rock music again. Besides, I also was looking for some redemption from the poor experience Kates and I had seeing Barenaked Ladies in Kansas City during their “Maroon” heyday.
Of that performance, I wrote this in a 2007 post ...
... we got VIP tickets for a Barenaked Ladies concert. The sponsor advertised all the goodies -- great seating, no waiting for beer or bathrooms, yada yada, yada … But it ended up being one of the worst concert experiences of my life. The VIP seating was located behind a chain link fence to the right of the stage and half of the band's instruments and equipment obstructed our view. Sure, there were no lines for beer and bathrooms, but you still had to pay $6 for the beer and we’re still talking port-a-potties ...After a long, drawn-out goodbye at the graduation party and finally getting Phoebe situated to go home for the night with Grandma and Grandpa, we got to the Summerfest grounds at around 9 Saturday night, about an hour later than I had hoped … We passed through the turnstiles as The Briggs Bluesbusters were pumping out their classic show-finisher, “Like A Rolling Stone;” I had been hoping to arrive early enough to catch a few songs from their set, but it wasn’t to be.
Already, the benches were packed and there wasn’t an open patch anywhere. Orrin and Kelli joined up with us and we settled for a standing spot on one of the front rows of picnic tables. Not ideal, but it would have to do.
(For the uninitiated, the benches are the ideal viewing level for Summerfest shows. The picnic tables set up behind the benches are the next best spot. And if you can’t find room on either of those, you might as well give up trying to see anything and head to the bar post where all you can do is listen to the music.)
The hour between the time we arrived and the time the Barenaked Ladies took the stage seemed like an entire night. A light rain fell as we watched some lightning flash in the distance behind the stage. And, inevitably, we were sharing the picnic table with a couple of inebriated 19-year-old guys who thought it was cool to dress and act like gangstas at a Barenaked Ladies concert.
At exactly 10, the band – now a quartet – arrived on stage. Even after seeing the band once before and following them pretty closely over the years, I had absolutely no idea of what to expect from their show …
Then, they burst into “Get In Line” and I knew immediately we had made the right decision to come …
Sure, the gangstas in front of us never stopped moving and annoyed us throughout the show. Sure, the weather and our viewing spot weren’t ideal. Sure, we could barely make out a lot of the group’s onstage banter over the crowd's talking. Sure, Steven Page was glaringly absent at times …
But the music sounded just as tight and youthful as it always has. Guitarist/keyboardist Kevin Hearn did such a fantastic job filling Page’s void that – unless you’re a follower of them – you’d never notice the difference.
After “Get In Line,” they doled out “Old Apartment” (one of my BNL faves), along with “Maybe Katie” and “Testing 1, 2, 3.”
A little boredom set in about a third of the way through the show as the group introduced some new songs – “How Long,” “Summertime” and “Another Heartbreak,” according to the group’s blog post about the show. And, like I said, it was becoming increasing harder, and frustrating, to decipher their banter in between songs. … Nevertheless, their good-humored improv abilities seemed on par. At one point, lead singer Ed Robertson mused about his urban planning abilities and took credit for building the overpass that infamously runs over the Briggs & Stratton stage to protect us from the rain. Of course, the group went on to play a song about it, too.
Thankfully, they got back to playing the hits.
They country-fied my other favorite BNL song, “One Week” – complete with a “Dueling Banjos” riff in the middle and a fun play on the “Chinese chicken” lyric that made it sound like a broken record …
The band was noticeably ditching the Steven Page-led songs until Ed Robertson mused to the crowd, “You know how you get a new car and people say, ‘Hey, you got a new car!’ but it’s not really new. Or when you get a new bike, but it’s not really a new bike. Well, we’re going to play a new song for you that’s not really new, but it’s new to me!” He said the last part with this wide-eyed exuberance and I immediately started thinking “Oooh, a cover song!?” … Instead, the band broke into “Too Little Too Late” – a song that had been sung by Page, and I quickly understood Robertson’s logic. Again, the song sounded too good to care about the difference; it was just as fun to sing along as it’s always been.
They followed with Kates’s favorite “Falling for the First Time” and the popular “Pinch Me.” … Here’s some good video from the performances via YouTube, including Robertson’s how-to-invade-Canada lead-in to “Falling” …
The guys ended the first part of their set with the crowd favorite and a great sing-along, “If I Had $1,000,000.” For the song, Hearn once again stepped up to the mic to fill Page’s shoes and do the song’s signature banter with Robertson. They also pleasured the Milwaukee crowd by inserting the lyric “I would buy you a Harley.”
For the encore, the band topped off the show with a couple more songs and ended the night with a refreshing rendition of “What a Good Boy,” another song Robertson noted was “new,” but not really new.
I hadn’t realized “Brian Wilson,” arguably BNL’s most popular song, hadn’t made an appearance in the show until a couple of the kids standing near us shouted out the title during the encore …
But it didn’t matter to me. It was a good show.
Here's a good pre-show story from the Journal-Sentinel: Barenaked Ladies snack on kids' music
And here's a good post-show interview with local radio DJ Van McNeil ...
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