Here is some great news about two great Canadian artists

BNL helps out Waltons rocker
Barenaked Ladies’ frontman Ed Robertson has little time for anything besides working on his band’s new album and spending time with his family, but he did produce the solo debut from Jason Plumb, formerly of Saskachewan’s The Waltons.
“I could only really do it for someone that I really know and love and respect,” Robertson says of a possible sideline as a producer. “It requires so much of your time. I have three kids now and the band keeps me really busy, so to do that in my free time was hard for me.”
He describes the album, for which he co-wrote a couple of songs with Plumb and produced it at Jeremy Darby’s Canterbury Studios in Toronto, as “more rockin’ maybe” than The Waltons.
Robertson has been a fan of Plumb’s songwriting for years. The Waltons formed in 1987 and moved to Toronto in ’91. The band’s independent debut, Lik My Trakter, was released in ’92.
“They were around before us, but we ended up being really fortunate,” says Robertson. “We actually had them open for us on our first Canadian tour.”
Robertson is now concentrating on finishing up the demos for Barenaked Ladies’s follow-up to 2000’s Maroon with bandmates Steven Page (vocals/guitar), Jim Creeggan (bass), Tyler Stewart (drums) and Kevin Hearn (keyboards).
“We’re just at Kev’s house (in Toronto), demoing on a Pro-Tools rig,” says Robertson. “We’re recording really hard right now, but we’re not recording a record yet.
“For the first time, we’ve actually done some writing as a five-piece, which is new for us,” he adds. “We just rented a rehearsal space in Toronto and showed up a couple of days a week and hammered stuff out. We’ve got some great stuff.
“We’ve written the most we’ve ever written for a record. It’s really exciting. We start recording probably the last week of March. We’ve already got like 26 songs done. We want to make a 12 song record.”
The band will decide on a producer in the next week. The album is due by year’s end. No word on when Plumb’s album will be released, but here’s hoping that it hits the racks soon!