Barenaked Ladies. // photo credit Matt Barnes
On Sunday, June 11, two iconic ’90s acts, Barenaked Ladies and Semisonic, take to the stage at Starlight for a night of songs to which you know all the words, even if you’re too cool to say so. Given that both acts are identified with a singular single which defines them nearly 30 years on—“One Week” and “Closing Time,” respectively—and have been through the ups and downs of the last three decades in the music industry, we figured that one interview with two acts would make for a fun time.
On Tuesday, we first hopped on the phone with Barenaked Ladies’ drummer Tyler Stewart in the morning and followed that up by chatting with Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson in the afternoon. We asked them both the same questions, and the results were thoughtful ruminations on making new music as legacy acts and getting back on the road ahead of The Last Summer on Earth Tour’s stop on Sunday.
Semisonic. // photo credit Steven Cohen
The Pitch: Given that the band has this single, which seemingly everyone knows, what are the challenges as musicians to get outside that pocket of people who might define you by it?
Tyler Stewart: Well, I think the main thing for us is we’ve always kept going. “One Week” was on our fifth album, to put a context on that. We just kept doing it and kept touring, kept playing up the fact that people were into it, and it gets everybody excited and singing along. It’s very much the same with Semisonic and “Closing Time,” and that’s one of the criteria really for The Last Summer on Earth Tours. I think bands still doing this and are good at it and have these hits that have been on the radio for two decades still want to do it.
Dan Wilson: That’s a really central part of the drama of being in Semisonic. It’s funny—I never really expected it. My take about “Closing Time” has always been, “How lucky are we?” and I’m very earnest about that. I’ve never been mad at “Closing Time,” and so I think, in some ways, it’s been a challenge for the band that the song is more famous than we are.
On the other hand, that comes with incredible benefits and opportunities and fun and so I hesitate to maybe try to characterize it in one sweeping way, but it definitely is a big, big part of our lives. And I think, you know, if we could have had four songs that were a quarter as huge as “Closing Time,” we might have actually had an easier time being a successful touring band, a well-known band, do you know what I mean? But you can’t pick and choose. You can’t say, “Oh, I wish I had a different kind of incredible lottery win.”
Do you have a back-pocket song that makes you just happy to see the audience respond positively? Is there a deep cut or a left-of-center choice you love to hear the response to?
Tyler Stewart: Oh, definitely. Usually, I find the greatest reaction is to brand-new stuff. Stuff that isn’t released yet or just has come out months or weeks before that. That’s what’s happening on this tour. We’re playing three unreleased songs, and I find the reaction to those has been great.
When your newer material or deeper cuts, as you say, blend in with your hits, that, contextually, makes sense. I enjoy that because I feel like our band is a kind of singular band. No one sounds like us, really. We take pride in the fact that we can mix up the set, put in a song like “One Week,” which is a number-one single, and then play a relatively new ballad that people haven’t heard yet, but still sounds like the band.
That’s the goal, really: to have a varied show and have a show that challenges us, keeps us interested, but also makes the audience happy by giving them the hits that they’ve paid good money to come and see.
Dan Wilson: Well, let’s see. There are two that have always given me the sheerest pleasure to play and a sense of almost like, if I could say on stage while playing a song, “Dan, you did it. You wrote the kind of song you always wished that you could”—that would be “DND” and “Across the Great Divide.” I just love those songs so much. They have the kind of dead simplicity, emotional depth and good vibes, and sonic beauty that I always wished that I could have done, and I think we did it on those two songs.
How does it feel to have your songs regularly used in TV and movies and maybe in a context you might not have thought about when you first recorded them?
Tyler Stewart: It feels nice to earn a living is my answer to that, ’cause you actually get paid for those things rather than on some of the more modern music delivery systems. It’s amazing. Like The Big Bang Theory—when we were developing that song, Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, who put the show together, were Barenaked Ladies fans and came to us.
They said, “We have this new idea,” and they sent us a pilot of the show about nerds, essentially—smart people—and we weren’t sure at first whether they were making fun of smart people. They were celebrating smart people? We didn’t really know. It was very much a bit of a shot in the dark, and then lo and behold, doesn’t it go on to become the most popular TV sitcom of all time? We’re very fortunate to be the first foot through the door on that. It’s on TV 10 times a day around the world. My children can go to university, you know what I mean? It’s pretty good. Absolutely.
Dan Wilson: That’s a very mixed bag because all of us in the band are very picky about art in general. It’s always kind of a dice roll. If you say yes to putting a song in a movie, it’s kind of a dice roll because maybe the movie doesn’t necessarily turn out great or lasting or even good. But we’ve been really lucky on a couple of those.
That’s sort of almost the best you could ask for. If you get connected to a big product of cultural capitalism—if you get your little song attached to that, you have a tiger by the tail. You’re no longer in charge of anything, and so you just really, you really do have to get lucky because a movie will never have the songwriter of the song’s best interests. They just don’t give a shit, you know? That’s a strange thing.
But I mean, we’re on tour with Barenaked Ladies who, after having hits and hits and doing great stuff and big tours, also wrote The Big Bang Theory theme song, and who knew that that was gonna be kind of a cultural touchstone. That’s just great. That’s a beautiful way for it to work out.
We have to imagine that you all have seen things change so much in the 30+ years that you’ve been a band, which has been arguably the most transformative 30 years in the music business.
Tyler Stewart: Yes, definitely. Oh my god. It’s crazy to think of the change. Our first recordings came out on cassette, same five songs on each side, ’cause if you had an auto-reverse tape deck, it just would keep going and going. And obviously even things like having cell phones and laptop computers.
I remember pulling over to the side of the road in the early ’90s to a truck stop. When we’d get out of the van, the tour manager would say, “Okay, guys, have a long lunch today. I gotta advance the next six shows,” and he’d be on the phone in a fucking phone booth, calling ahead the venues to make sure that they had the PA system that we needed or that they had all the Skittles with the red ones removed, backstage expanded. All that stuff.
We’ve obviously seen the Internet, and we’re one of the few bands who are lucky enough to have been played on the radio and actually sold units—moved units, and millions of them. Right in the middle of all that, everything totally changed, and we were able to adapt. Obviously, I think everyone who was in the old system took a hit in the new system. Things were not the same, but if you had that foothold, you know?
For us, it was always a live audience. We have an actual constituency out there who will pay to consume our product and follow the band. We’re very lucky, very fortunate to have those people, and we do everything we can to keep nurturing that relationship.
Dan Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who knows? I imagine if you were in a Dixieland band when radio started coming up, I bet switching from sheet music to radio was a big, crazy-ass disruptor. But I think the past, like, yeah, 30 years have been all the disruptions of the previous hundred years combined together.
The band, as well as pretty much everyone, had to take a break from touring for a while. What did it take for you all to get back into touring shape?
Tyler Stewart: Oh my God. Well, I certainly got out of touring shape over COVID, as did most of us. I was 60 pounds heavier than I am right now, and fuck, I hit the bottom of the barrel. It was terrible. Thirty years of doing something on a regular basis of leaving my home and traveling and getting together with my guys and playing music to people around the world—you get used to that and having that snatched away from you with no foreseeable return at any point. It was tough, man. It was really tough.
We made the Selfie Cam Jams while we were in lockdown. We recorded our parts separately and sent them to our filmmaker bud, who stitched it all together, and we managed to stay in touch with our audience, but the minute that we were able to get back on the road, we jumped at the chance, and we saw it last summer and the summer before—how grateful people were to be back out at concerts, living their lives. I feel like that buzz is kind of still happening. I find our shows are—people are just grateful.
It’s challenging for the band ’cause there’s so much available out there, and the dollar only goes so freaking far these days. I’m eternally grateful to the audience to still be doing this. To still be able to go out and do a 36-day U.S. tour, to me, is like—wow, what a blessing. After all this time, I can’t thank my lucky stars enough.
Dan Wilson: I can’t really tell you if we’re in a touring shape yet, so I don’t know how to answer that question. I think for me it’s possible that the main thing I had to come up with, aside from exercising and getting my voice in good shape—I think what mostly what I had to do was just muster up some gumption, ’cause there’s a lot to be nervous about. There’s a lot to wonder about. There’s a lot to fret that you forgot how to do it. Any number of things that one could have anxiety about. The big sort of project that I’ve had is just not to worry and just enjoy it, ’cause it’s bound to be a crazy experience and probably pretty beautiful, as well.
Barenaked Ladies, Semisonic, and Del Amitri play Starlight Theater on Sunday, June 11, as part of the Last Summer of Earth Tour. Details on that show here.
