Steven Page comes out of the pandemic—and to Vancouver—with a new appreciation for live, in-person concerts
The iconic Canadian singer-songwriter and former Barenaked Ladies member performs with Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum—a dream come true, he tells Stir
Steven Page.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra presents Steven Page with the VSO on March 12 at 8 pm and March 13 at 7 pm at the Orpheum Theatre.
STEVEN PAGE HAS just bought some concert tickets when Stir connects with the musical icon on the line from his home in Central New York. It’s something that everyday people and, it turns out, stars like the Scarborough-born singer-songwriter and former Barenaked Ladies member took for granted prior to the pandemic shuttering music venues the world over.
“I’m going to see Lindsey Buckingham,” Page says of the American musician who first gained fame as lead guitarist and head male singer for Fleetwood Mac. “He’s one of my heroes. I’m also going to see Ringo Starr. I’ve never seen him live before. He’s 82; how much longer will he be touring? I love his solo records.
“There was a point for me for years where I spent all my time on the road, and the idea of sitting down in a seat to watch a concert felt like a place I wanted to leave; it felt like a job. Now I can’t wait,” the Grammy-nominated artist says. “I feel like there’s something about the idea of being in the audience that has given me this sense of anticipation for the concert. Being in a room with other people listening to somebody we all enjoy is a pretty amazing thing.”
Local audiences will have the chance to be in a (rather gorgeous) room with Page when the acclaimed musician performs live with Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum. Joining him are longtime collaborators and friends Kevin Fox (the composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist here on cello and vocals while taking on the role of music director) and guitarist-vocalist Craig Northey (founding member of Vancouver-based alternative-rock band Odds).
For Page, going to so many concerts as a teenager is what made him want to become a musician himself. Seeing the Violent Femmes in 1986 was a life-changing experience; so was going to a Billy Bragg show. “Both of them had that punk spirit but also a folk element, and that combination of folk and punk spoke to exactly where my brain and tastes were at that time,” he says. “Billy Bragg just talked almost casually with the audience; they are storytellers. He knew about Toronto and things going on in municipal politics. I just thought ‘He knows my place.’ It didn’t feel like he was pandering; he felt connected to wherever he was. Bands like Spirit of the West and the Skydiggers: I would watch them intently every night. They had a sense of connection to the audience.”
Since leaving the chart-topping Barenaked Ladies in 2009, Page has gone on to make five solo albums, including Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt.2. from 2018, the same year he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame with former BNL bandmates. He has performed widely with the aforementioned trio. A regular collaborator with Toronto’s Art of Time Ensemble, he has composed six theatrical scores for the Stratford Festival and co-written a musical, Here’s What It Takes, with Governor General’s Award-winning playwright Daniel McIvor. (Its opening was sidelined by the pandemic.) A father of three, he has spoken at TedXToronto and crisscrossed North America as host of TV’s The Illegal Eater.
Page’s upcoming Vancouver appearance is part of a spring tour throughout Canada and the U.S. that kicked off on February 25 in Vermont. On the eve of his travels, Page admits he’s equal parts eager and apprehensive about heading back out on the road at this point, the pandemic waning but always on the back of his mind.
“I’m excited and nervous and cautious about the whole thing,” Page says. “Being reunited with Craig and Kevin, with the [Steven Page] Trio, is a dream. But I’ve got Canadians coming down to the U.S. to tour, and that’s my biggest sense of anxiety. A lot of people who are regular concert-goers are not quite ready to be out in public yet. If I’m lucky enough to do some shows in person, I have to ask myself: ‘Would I feel comfortable coming to the show as an audience member?’ It’s hard to know how to go about it.”
It has been one of the weirdest and most stressful times to be an artist, but like so many others, Page quickly adapted to the stay-at-home scene. He found new ways to connect with audiences, including the countless people who grew up listening to his instantly recognizable voice on BNL hits like “One Week,” “Enid”, “It’s All Been Done”, and “What a Good Boy”, and those who continued following him or became fans anew when he went solo.
After COVID-19 shut the world down, Page, inspired by Dan Mangan, launched Live From Home, a weekly instalment of Zoom concerts that he performs on Saturday evenings in the basement of the home he shares with his second wife, Christine Page (Munn). He takes requests in advance via his website and charges $8 per ticket plus tax. This past January and February, he introduced the Live From Home Album Series, playing most of nearly every studio album he’s ever made, both BNL and solo, skipping some tracks and reinterpreting others. Page doesn’t plan on bringing the online concerts to an end just because he’s booking live gigs on both sides of the border. “It has been so much fun,” says Page. “The fact that we just did the 84th one on the weekend shows how much the audience enjoys it. Over the course of the pandemic, we developed this amazing sense of community. There are people who wake up at five in the morning from Australia to watch the shows and people from Europe and the UK, and we’ve become friends with each other.
“I keep Zoom on gallery view so I can see 50 people at once, and I feel like I’ve almost developed this sixth sense to feel their response without even looking at the screen,” he says. “Those performances have been really great for me.”
Although Page, a prolific writer, composed a few singles during the pandemic to reflect the times, including the aptly titled “Isolation”, it’s unlikely he’ll pen more songs related to the era of masks and physical distancing. “In three years, are people going to want to hear about the pandemic?” he says. “It’s become part of us, but it’s not the most important thing in our lives. Our interpersonal relationships are really what have come into focus—how important it is to take care of each other and to be cautious and careful and helpful.”
A few stops on his tour are at a venue called City Winery, a chain of intimate cabaret-style venues across the U.S. where you can have a meal and a bottle of wine while you watch the show. “The sound system is good, the dressing room is nice; it’s an easy, pleasant place to play—it’s a grown-up place to play,” he says. “I don’t have to come to town and play the grungy clubs I did when I was 20. I'm at a point in my career where my audience might have to get a babysitter.”
The Orpheum makes for an entirely different vibe, the venue being one he’s especially excited about playing. He understandably doesn’t want to give too much away about the set list, but audiences can expect solo tracks as well as a few BNL favourites accompanied by the VSO under the direction of associate conductor Andrew Crust.
“The Orpheum is such a beautiful venue and so big and its acoustics are so different; it’s magnificent,” Page says. “It’s also stressful in a different way—it’s not our everyday setting. We have to tune our ears differently to listen to the time of the conductor and to the tuning of the orchestra. It’s a slightly different way of listening that takes up a lot of energy, and at the same time you want to be able to perform for the audience, not just be thinking internally about all those technical details. I love that challenge. The way we play with an orchestra is to really highlight what the orchestra can do. A lot of times in pop or rock the orchestra fades into the background. For us, it’s all about being part of the orchestra and working together. It’s a dream come true.”
Steven Page.
For more information, see Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
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