Steven Page

0:00uh... where are you right now i'm in uh... you're accused new york right now serie i thought uh... are you not uh... on the road right now or is like the edminton date we have a couple days in between we uh... we part ways with the doodle uh... for some of the he's not doing thunder bay win a pegging regatta uh... and we're just gonna fly at the end of the meeting there and finish off the western part with them nice so who's in this band who are you playing with nowadays uh... right now it's myself and uh... three brothers the bear brothers bryden jesse and jay who i've actually known bryden for a long time to travel player and he were player and uh... he and his brothers were quite spent a lot of years and uh... i stole them from her and we're having a great time yet which which make me think it would be a little more indy sounding in the record well compared to the bernick ladies is very indy sounding if you know what i mean

0:48yeah in a certain way but also kind of pop record to and it's you know it's a funny thing to be the nice thing about these songs i realized that they're really malleable i've been able to use them from you know solo acoustic r i did a bunch of shows or is myself and uh... and tell us what it is the uh... folk festival couple years ago and right and then we had this this core group of myself and the bear brothers with a couple of spring players as well for some some of the shows we did on our own and uh... yet the four pieces are you know rock indie pop i guess you think yeah well and there's different sense i mean even a new shores because mariachi like clacker things in there and the flu so that the exactly and all this stuff that we know it's got whistling in it yet uh... you know the the uh... captain at some sucker for a cast in that that's the word that's right

1:34you must be writing more the instrumentation i would think on a record like this on your own day and i am not a nice thing about about making the record is i can't you know kind of go at hog while i want to or not want to in these situations uh... work you know get some help from somebody who is a maybe a more adept orchestrator than i am quite often i can use your i could go uh... i just start you know singing out the part that i wanted that wanted to hear or i start programming into the computer and then you know higher people to play important was pretty often that way how different did you approach songwriting for this i know you did the vanny project record a few years ago so i would assume maybe to be similar to that well you know and a lot of ways it's not that different from the way i would written when i was in in bernie kitty ladies and the biggest differences that you know i didn't have the other guy's to go down to the years off the blader or or you know get their approval

2:21but uh... as far as the the way i would sit down and write you know very similar i still come up with ideas uh... independently and try to uh... you know try to work my work as hard as i can or to get them to say what i want to say uh... the way i do uh... but it is a different thing when you don't have to worry about where but it all things and it's really just to make sure that you're satisfied with your own work so something a certain way it uh... i had to work harder you know they really was i didn't have to rely on anybody else because i didn't have the deadline kind of uh... goals to to meet uh... i had to push myself but then at the same time i i like the fact that i'm sort of allows me to feel like i'm not uh... i'm not being overly self-indulgent either

3:08what made you do it what was the impetus for for the solo disc was it did you start thinking about it before you left the band or would it have been after uh... well i don't you know i think that the band project in in o five and i always had assumed there'd be another so record but at that point you know you look at those i look at those things as being kind of side projects and when i realized that this was no longer a side project and was my my full-time job it made it pretty exciting for me uh... but some of the songs due date back from from before the time when i was uh... when i was still with their nicholas and they just didn't fit in or what well yes i'm a one that let's say if i wrote someone that was even duffy uh... they didn't fit in with the with kind of the band's ethic of that point and i didn't want to do songs that were done with outside writers so i was kind of holding on some of those for

3:53next solo record and then other ones that were ones i would have presented to the group if i'd stayed in the group uh... for their answer and then after after the split we had another the rush of creativity which will have been a to sit down right a whole bunch new songs it was a different kind of creativity would have been like a um... not a sad and creativity but i mean you're coming from a different place after splitting with friends for a long time right oh sure it's certainly a sense of thoughts i guess but you're writing is always an opportunity to process what you're going through in your life and to reimagine yourself too uh... and i knew that after i split but i had to be busy and had to work and start playing shows and i had to keep writing songs because i think otherwise you can start to spiral into a kind of self-pity and stuff and i didn't want that up i wanted

4:40use this opportunity to uh... to do the things that you know dreamed about late at night and couldn't help people out now that my opportunity to kind of to see those things are fruition how are you playing the songs off live story it's a to get back to the topic of the concert here but i'm one because there's a lot of production on these songs there's a lot of stuff that i don't know how you're gonna do live well it depends on some of them you know some of them and getting a lot more stripped out but uh... you know songs like like a new shore it's funny like britain who plays he plays keyboard and trumpet and glock and spiel and you know according to all kinds of stuff and he's it always reminds me of the scene in in waiting for government they keep showing that the guy in the orchestra pick up a trumpet and uh... and the uh... the companies and stuff it's not like that he's got like five different instruments on the go which is

5:26sometimes very entertaining are you are there any bernie kalini songs that come up to you play the old songs to oh yeah i play a lot of the one that uh... that people would remember that uh... that i think are right in the band um... stuff like uh... and all the part and brian buson do you think they're still playing your songs how are they gonna have a house the bernie kiddley is going to pull off doing your songs that your voice because it's kind of it's funny i i i i haven't really seen i know what that they're on you too but not that from the echo and no i wouldn't think you would be like torching myself a little bit but uh... you know there's lots of songs that they've had their hit that that everything so i think that would wouldn't make a huge difference uh... but i mean you see you go to bernie kiddley is concert you still want to hear brian wilson i think exactly so i think that they do do that stuff

6:11you know that's gotta be uh... it's probably more different more what's strange and certainly for those guys and it is for the audience i think you know once you're there inside the context of the show when you're just hearing a little song is the package i would suspect it it's probably uh... not that big a deal and i you know i've heard lots of other lots of bands cover our songs in the past and you know these guys are even i think they're the guys on the record except for the voice so yeah i guess you a brian wilson even cover that song didn't he on that one tour that's right he did that must have been something else for you hey that must have been just like the pinnacle of i've succeeded that was totally mind-blowing i mean the first time we we heard his version of he came into the studio where we were working in l.a. i had no no idea that this was coming

6:57and it was uh totally mind-blowing and then a few months later he came to toronto the play show and uh he started the show with that song i didn't even know how to react it in the way that i stand up and wave at the audience or what but yeah really like surreal and you know you could never dream of something like that is that what you grew up on beach boy what did you grow up on what were the records you remember as a kid i grew up with a huge Beatles man as a kid still am but i mean i was obsessed and uh you know also i guess i grew up in the in the early 80s so a lot of stuff i like was kind of uh the post-punk new wave stuff um but you know always based on that craft is always the most important thing it wasn't really until i was in university that had a friend introduced me to the beach place because i always saw them have been

7:43kind of overly simple you know kind of fluffy and then i then he introduced me more to the kind of the the depth of the story and and of brian wilson's orchestral genius i guess that really got me into the into the the depths of their music and let me explore that do you mind if i ask what happened with the barnacle ladies you know what at the end of the day it was 20 years over 20 years being together and we had grown apart we just weren't in a lot of ways didn't feel like we were in the same band as each other anymore and i think when crisis starts to happen like you know when i was arrested and so on i got to throw a bunch of other things like divorce you know major life changes i think it forces everybody to figure out how they're going to survive the next turn of events and i think that what

8:28happened was the other four guys i think strength them their bond with each other and uh was forging my own my own path and we we've lost quite a long quite a long time in order to keep the band happening we all believed in it really really strongly but they came a point where it just wasn't working you know we were about to go into the studio to make another record and i didn't have enough songs and i wasn't ready for it and i really wanted to go out on the road and you know kind of try to reestablish our bonds that way and they felt they needed to make a record and at that point it was like this is when we have to make the break that's like the Beatles almost wanted to go on the road we're just making a record yeah i think you know in a lot of ways i mean in those guys grew apart a lot faster than we did we uh you know we we worked really hard together when we were 13 but it was like i said it was over 20 years

9:17when you started band when you're 18 and then you're nearly 40 and realizing you know you had the same person you were when you were a teenager and you don't always have the same goals as each other anymore just the way it's kind of the way it goes and it's wasn't easy it's just a lot of adjustments and all of us but emotional but it was uh i don't think there's too much hard feelings there it must be interesting for you as well to almost start anew i mean your opening shows for the google dolls now you know you're doing the opening slots again is that a fun thing well it certainly encourages a degree of humility which is actually oh gi appreciate i mean you have no idea what your own value is as a as a solo artist when you break that in your own there's no like no one out there doing market research or anything like

10:02you know on a tv show or something you'd have that kind of stuff happening but uh i love it i like the fact that you can go out there one of the great things that i think vnl always did was when we open for an you have your your built-in audience which is great but one of the great challenges is winning over the rest of the crowd and whether there are people who just don't know who you are or and you spend the time on stage winning them over i love that challenge and that's kind of what this feels like as well and the google doll is a great tutorial really uh accommodating and and uh easy to look with i was wondering if i get a couple of clips like songwriting clips storytellers kind of things on a few of the songs that we play yeah sure uh we'll start with the new single indecision all right well indecision um actually

10:49predates my split from b from bnl and um it's been sitting around for a little while but it's in a certain way it was kind of the theme song for a lot of a a lot of my earlier part of my life a lot of my songs if you look at them earlier on or about that uh well like what a good boy says so afraid of change afraid of saying the same and uh you know i've certainly made a lot of changes in my life and i'm a musical for the last few years and indecision was a nice way to kind of introduce the fact that i actually made the jump uh the single that's about to be released overjoy um overjoy in a certain way has a has a lot in common with uh my song brian wilson they're both about um well it's about dealing with depression and uh what brian wilson is about the

11:35power of music to help you come out of that and we sometimes uh like to wallow in our own and uh and you know what's the cause of it um when it came to actually making the record of it started playing and i'd imagine it has been kind of a beetle the 60s kind of feeling song but as we started recording it realized we were almost heading in this kind of jefflin uh uh but traveling mover is kind of way which i like i probably love that stuff so we kind of tried to imagine that perhaps this was a song out of uh some petty full moon fever or something there's a there's a keyboard note in that tune that i really do it goes like a blues chord just before the the uh the instrumental bit yep who's it was that your idea who came up with that uh

12:23you know what i'm talking about yeah i do negotiate you know sometimes it's those moments in the studio where uh that was me and and then my co-producer john field just kind of jamming through a bunch of stuff and then working on backup vocals and sometimes those notes just kind of happening yes keep it keep it um or do you play keys at all yep i play uh i'm not a great player but i have i know how to get the sounds i want to get and i think making a record that way is uh you have either you have the opportunity to kind of do things over and over and right or you can keep your mistakes in there nobody else is gonna say that it's bad if you like it do you ever write on piano or is it always guitar uh usually right now in guitar but i'll use quite often when i'm sitting at uh i do a lot of writing

13:10in front of the computer the pro tools and that kind of thing oh okay it's just a handy way you know handy way to work like in the old days i used to sit in with a uh you know a four track cassette recorder and right part because there were a lot of a lot of how i like to write is based around vocal harmonies and stuff and it's really easy to do with a computer now you can stack things like crazy and and uh you know try all kinds of different layers of things and see what works and what doesn't work so quite often i'll sit there and you know bangs on the other guitar and then i'll jump over to a keyboard right away and move things around instruments you can often change the sounds and you know sketch out what will eventually become horn parts or string parts or backup vocals right yeah or even drums nowadays with the keyboard that's right yeah indeed i know we kind of talked about

13:55brian wilson but if you could talk about writing it that'd be really cool yeah brian wilson i wrote um i think when i was about 19 or 20 that's always one of those things when you're older you think god you know one of my best songs uh you know our best love songs is something i wrote when i was so much younger um can't let it get you down but i could just look at it as a gift when anything else but you know it's a song that i wrote um initially the kind of the form of the song i was thinking about john man from sphere to the west would construct a song so i'm like we'll think the poem for a rest you know it starts with that first that first verse uh slow and then he repeats it at the very end of the song but it's you know twice the tempo and that's kind of like what brian wilson starts with that that slow first verse and then you know

14:43evolves and by the end the last verse is the same as the first but it's at double tempo would you something i'll show call five questions five quick questions one more answers yeah road or studio studio lennener mccartney uh mccartney most important thing in a song lyrics melody or rhythm song you've written you're most proud of huh a new shore and is that why it opens the disc? i think so i think when i when i started when that song was finished i realized it was kind of the the cradle for for this new record and i asked i also opened the live show with it i think it's got a great mix of what kind of classic steven page mixed with uh looking forward to the future yeah well and the title alone just you know it's a new day right

15:29yep and uh in one word steven page awesome amazing i've actually i know you're a big nd peer i used to be i've kind of switched to green more recently but i've got jack latin on the show next week i'm wondering if you have any questions for him um does he i i want to notice does he see an actual change in the way this uh this country's attitudes or can can change positively i'm i myself i i get i get very in general north america this needs to be this kind of in the name of libertarianism this in this sense of intolerance and lack of wanting to help other people how do we change that so that we can remember the Canadian values are about

16:16are often based on how how we help each other that's uh there's um it's a band called jets overhead out of victoria i think that just wrote a song called bystander that's that's all about that about just being a bystander to all the problems that are around us right and uh i mean you know see in the united states is not this whole debate about uh but health care like i don't want to be responsible for somebody else's health problems i mean that's you know it's part of what uh what makes Canada the great country is is that we've we've accepted that we uh that part of what we do takes care of each other but you've left us now well no i'm speaking on i'm i'm a half an hour have an hour um do you still vote in can or can you vote in the states now no i vote in can