Barenaked Ladies with Anne Murray and the kids of 60s Canada: an eclectic show

Canadian band are also to perform alone and with alternative American band All Time Low at extravagant event

Barenaked Ladies have changed gears for an extravagant children’s show, with TV, film and Broadway musicians as well as autograph-toting fans.

The trio of Gord Downie, Kevin Hearn and Stephen Page are known for their kitschy tracks about the French vanilla latte in the morning (I Am a Cherry Bomb) and two nights at the Hollywood Bowl singing Shania Twain’s That Don’t Impress Me Much (You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet).

At the launch event on Saturday, an elegant turn-up around the CAA Theatre in downtown Toronto saw the Canadians, plus pop stars Anne Murray, Olivia Newton-John and Cirque du Soleil, complete with ballet troupes and luxury ferris wheels and store windows, performing pieces they would never have published in such an enclosed space. “The Music and the Magic of Kids’ Shows,” as the promotional banners read.

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The marquee offers a playful analysis of how just as Patti Smith’s Horses brings a mob of fans out to a hearing, the show brings in our inner child to the CAA Theater, due to its “real small space for bouncing and playing.”

On one level, the acoustics are fantastic, as it unfolds as a crescendo, taking listeners on a trip through musical history, the Civil War, the 1950s, 1960s, ’70s, and 80s. On another, the show would never be allowed on Broadway, given its looser, looser context. For Canada, the transition is equally seamless, if not apt.

“All kids’ shows are funny at some point,” Hearn said. “I was thinking about how a lot of kids’ shows, they have this big fuzzy blanket, and all the little people are sort of bouncing in circles around this blanket and giggling. There’s really only one way to put that idea into a children’s show: it has to be ‘pay attention’ – you have to listen to the voices, pay attention to the songs, pay attention to the lighting and the tableaus and the tableaux.”

Dignitaries including Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, with his four-year-old daughter Ella-Grace, gave the band props.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, with his four-year-old daughter Ella-Grace, pose for photos with Barenaked Ladies lead singer Kevin Hearn and co-founders Stephen Page and Gord Downie. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Asked to describe the atmosphere in the room, he recounted the early band days, when they used all of the CAA Theatre, including the balconies, for a PR tour of their first album. “We had so much fun,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s about us, and not necessarily about this huge branding agency that wants to look like it’s doing something else. I’m an adult, in the spotlight all the time, but you try to balance it well.”

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In recent years, Barenaked Ladies have taken on subject matter outside of their signature summer tour: a collaboration with Olivia Newton-John on Feel Good Hit of the Summer featuring Jeff Lewis of Matchbox Twenty, a hometown show in Canada in support of new album, Democracy Drowning, which they are calling an album of political songs, and a sweet coffee documentary, Dirndl.

When asked what season Barenaked Ladies are heading for, Page said: “Springbreak, because then we can get laid.”

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