The UK Q&A Session - Part Two
2nd April 2001

Questions answered by Kevin Hearn and Ed Robertson.

Once again, thank you to everyone who submitted questions for the band. Without further ado, here's the second and final part of the interview.

Q6 Kind of carrying on from that, with the songwriting stuff, can you tell us about you and Steve's songwriting process? Is there a pattern to the way you create songs?
Ed: Not really. I haven't found any writing experience to be similar to any other. We've been writing together for over 10 years now, almost 12 years and it's different every time. I wish there was a pattern to it, it would be easier to do, but I like the challenge of it. You just never know where a song is going to come from and I find sometimes we write a song in an afternoon and it's great and then other times we labour over a song for a week and it's shite. (laughter) You just never know.
Nic: So one person doesn’t come up with the melody and the other does the lyrics?
Ed: No, actually we're kind of rare in that aspect I think. We really write stuff together music and lyrics.
Nic: So what input does the rest of the band have into the songs?
Ed: Everybody kind of arranges it together in terms of harmonic and structural arrangement of the song
Kev: We write our own parts too, for the most part.
Shaun: So it's a band song…
Ed: Yeah. It comes to the band as a melody and lyrics and a general, like a skeleton of a song, and then it turns into a Barenaked Ladies song.

Q7 Could you just pick a song and tell us the story of how that song was written?
Ed: Sure. Do you want to pick a song?
Nic: (grinning) Conventioneers.
Ed: OK.
Nic: Because I like it and you haven't played it yet! (laughs)
Ed: We've played it a lot on the American tour, actually. We could do it tonight maybe.
Nic: That would be nice.
Kev: It's a fun song to play.
Ed: Steve had at least half of the first verse when we started working on it, and the shell of the… let me think… No, he just had the chords and the melody when we started on that one and I think it was my idea to make it about an embarrassing inter-office romance.
Nic: I find that interesting, because have you ever worked in an office, in that kind of environment? Ed: (laughs) No.
Nic: Is that just totally taken from your imagination, or from watching the TV?
Ed: It's just from watching Ally McBeal. (laughter) I've never actually watched Ally McBeal either. But that was a song that we laughed and laughed and laughed while we wrote it, because we just got really into the characters in the song. There are whole verses and sub-plots lost to the world that we just wrote to make each other laugh… about them farting in the bath and that spoiling the date and all this ridiculous stuff. I think that's why it takes a long time for Steve and I to write songs, it's cos we spend like 20 minutes in silence just trying to figure out a joke in rhyme and then sing it to the other guy and then finally start working on the real lyrics. That one we sat together in Steve's basement and just we already had the melody and the chords and we just fleshed out the story. We generally do that, we get the idea for the characters and the basic plot of the song and we decide on that. It's like writing a short story at that point, you already know the characters. You just have a certain amount of time within the pop frame to resolve the story.

Q8 (laughs) My next question is "many of your songs have a story to them. Are they all works of fiction or are they mainly based in real events?"
Ed: I think they are all based on real events or real emotions. But we've never been flown by helicopter to a war-torn area. That's speculation on our part. But that song Helicopters is based on the emotions of what it's like to be scrutinised for your beliefs be they political or emotional. And we have been asked to go to war-torn areas and I often think, do people want to see us there? Will they question our motivations for being there? Would it make a difference or would it just destroy us emotionally and maybe even, you know, credibility-wise. You go to try to make a statement and try to help out and people just question why you're there and write you off.

Q9 Lightening the tone a bit - what's your favourite song to perform live?
Kev: It kind of changes. Brian Wilson has always been one of my favourites and lately I've really been enjoying doing Tonight is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel.
Nic: That has gone down a storm at the shows I've been to…
Ed: That's been my favourite too.
Kev: Yeah. I think we're starting to stretch out a little bit more and be able to do more of our ummm, eccentric material.
Nic: I was really surprised when you played it at Birmingham.
Ed: Well, I think we'd kind of assumed we wouldn't play it and then we just tried it one day and it sounded great.
Nic: The crowds are really loving it.
Shaun: You can tell by the atmosphere I guess, but the crowd's always really pleased when something like that is played.
Ed: Cool.

Q10 Who did the artwork for the cover of Maroon?
Ed: The same guy who did the cover of Stunt – he's with a company called Arttwerks which is a division of Nettwerk, a guy called John Rummond

Q11 Kevin, are we likely to see your new album released over here?
Kev: No, I don't have distribution over here. But I'll be bringing it to our shows in the summer. Or you can call Nettwerk and I'll be selling it through them too.

Q12 Do you notice a difference between the crowds in the US and the crowds over here?
Ed: Yes. Immediately actually. A lot of the people here have silly British accents.
Nic: I can't believe that! Surely not. (laughs)
Ed: No we do. Definitely. Crowds over here are very… One thing I've noticed right away about British crowds is they're very experienced concert-goers. Between festivals and gigs and stuff, you know. You do a show in America and people come up afterwards and say "That's the best show I've ever seen!! The best show ever!!" But it doesn’t matter, you do what you feel is the best show you've ever done and you walk outside the Albert Hall and someone says "That was magic! That is the best show I've seen, this month!!" (laughter) There's always some qualifier on it. Because you know there's so many shows and festivals and gigs and stuff, and you've got to leave room. It's like diving judges, if a diver comes up and blows a quadruple somersault in the air and drops into the pool no splash, they still give him like a 5.4. Just in case the next diver does it even better. (laughter) Nic: Well, you know, you always have to hedge your bets.

Q13 Are you feeling better now?
Ed: I'm feeling much better now, thanks for asking. I had a bad tummy in Birmingham. How did everyone find out about that?!
Nic & Shaun: Cos you told us! (laughter)
Nic: I seem to remember a line of One Week changing as well…
Ed: laughing, that's right. [It changed from "Bert Kampfert's got the mad hits" to "I'm Ed, I've got the mad shits.]

Jim popped into the room at this point asking if it was the dressing room (I really hope he wasn’t serious, it was a completely horrible, nasty little hole, with lime green formica and peeling orange paint). Ed: Nah Jim, our dressing room has a fake fireplace.

Q14 How do you manage to keep the shows as fresh as they always are?
Kev: I think we genuinely make each other laugh.
Ed: And we make music. You know? It's fun. I think being out there together and kind of challenging each other and trying to entertain each other is fun. (laughs) The thing I'm thinking about is the other night, were you guys at the Cambridge show? [no!] It was a really fun show. There was one story, and a good 3 and a half or 4 minutes into this story, there's a jam going on behind and the guys were repeating what I was saying. I was saying "so I got my bag", "so I got my bag" and going on and on, and we're like way into this story now, and I say something and instead of echoing what I say, Kev goes "Better be good!" (laughter) I think moments like that on stage just make it all worthwhile. It's that, that comment was only for the guys on stage. Most of the audience would have missed it cos it was like "betterbegood" (really fast). (laughter)

Thank you both so much for sparing the time to do this. We really appreciate it and I know the UK fans (and the other fans who submitted questions) will really appreciate it too. [Hope you did!]