Barenaked Ladies Enjoying Indie-pendence
After officially leaving Reprise following its 2003 release “Everything to Everyone,” the members of the Barenaked Ladies are finding the indie world to be filled with new opportunities for releasing music. The group is now aligned with Nettwerk Music Group via its own imprint, Desperation Records.
Singer/guitarist Ed Robertson tells Billboard.com the band is currently working on 30 new songs and fans should expect to hear them all sooner rather than later, or never.
“We’re not whittling it down to what we think are the 12 or 14 songs that are going to be the next record,” Robertson says. “We’re recording everything and we’re going to put out everything. And not a big double or triple album, but [we’ll] put out an album and go out on tour. And the next tour leg, put out an EP, another five or six songs, and just keep putting stuff out because I think that keeps us fresh and it keeps the fans interested and aware of what we’re doing. It’s just a new era.”
Robertson is most excited about new tracks “Down to Earth” and “Everything Had Changed,” He says these could be among the many unreleased songs that receive stage time on the band’s upcoming holiday run, which begins Nov. 21 in Montreal.
Speaking of which, the quintet known for its quirky live shows is giving fans full access to concert recordings via its Web site as well as Apple’s iTunes Music Store, which is selling more than 30 concerts.
“Another function of what we do these days is we record all of our shows on a full Pro Tools rig and mix them the next day,” Robertson says. “We bring an engineer on the road with us, then those shows are uploaded and available for fans to get.”
Robertson says the band may do some touring in the late spring or summer of 2006, with a full outing to coincide with the release of BNL’s next, still untitled, album, due in about a year. As for where the group is headed sonically, he says, “I think we’re going rawer, less slick sounding and more rock. We really want the record to sound like the band and not like this magical moment that happened in the studio and can never happen anywhere else. We want people to hear the five of us playing a rock song.”
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