Barenaked Ladies change gears for holiday-themed children’s show at CAA Theatre

It’s hard to categorize Barenaked Ladies. It’s even tricky just to define their ethos.

At times during their 33-year career, Scarborough’s favourite quartet penned earnest folk while wearing kitschy wool sweaters. Other times, they combined ‘90s alt-rock and hip-hop, creating a dizzying blend of college and geek rock fitting of their friendly facade. Even at the peak of their international popularity, they could just as comfortably appear on a mixtape with Hootie & the Blowfish as they could with Metallica.

If you ask them how to situate themselves within popular music’s ever-growing taxonomy of genres, you’ll get a fittingly enigmatic response.

“I think we’re songwriter rock,” co-founder Ed Robertson pondered, speaking from his home in midtown Toronto. “Sometimes we sound like a folk band and sometimes we sound like a rock band.”

Tyler Stewart, the band’s longtime drummer and de-facto deputy frontman, chimed in with a characteristically witty but thoughtful take on the same question.

“Diasporic pop?” Stewart asked aloud when addressing the genre dilemma. “No one has ever been able to put us in a box, sometimes to our detriment and sometimes to our advantage.”

Added Stewart: “We sound like Barenaked Ladies.”

However delightfully ambiguous their genre may be, the band colloquially known simply as “BNL” will be shape-shifting yet again this holiday season. In December, they’ll play 15 shows over the course of 21 days at Toronto’s CAA Theatre as part of the “Hometown Holidays with Barenaked Ladies” series, a family-friendly holiday residency that’ll feature numbers from their “Barenaked for the Holidays” album. There are also three matinees, which, in turn, will centre on their 2008 children’s album “Snacktime!”

“I think it’s gonna be a family show,” Robertson noted, emphasizing that the “Snacktime!” shows, in particular, are more child-oriented.

It’s somewhat surprising that Barenaked Ladies, of all acts, are taking the stage in front of kids — this is the band that wrote such cheeky tunes as “Alternative Girlfriend” and “Be My Yoko Ono,” after all. But, to them, this latest live endeavour is a perfect encapsulation of their motives as musicians. Though most of their career has been spent toeing the line between brilliantly comedic and crassly juvenile, Robertson insists that their one and only goal is to entertain whatever audience they find themselves in front of.

“Our goal is just to make a great and entertaining show,” Robertson noted.

“I think that’s always been a hallmark of the band, is that we appeal to all ages,” Stewart added.

Having a conversation with Robertson and Stewart is akin to speaking with Rush’s Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, since their chemistry is just as comedic as it is musical. Having been friends since 1990 when Stewart slowly inserted himself into the fold of a still-evolving living room band, the pair bounce off each other’s talking points effortlessly, poking fun at each other and rattling off a series of inside jokes. That friendship is part of what makes their live performances such an intriguing hodgepodge of improvised banter and laughter.

“Every Barenaked Ladies show is different,” Stewart quipped.

“You never know when we’re going to bust into spontaneous rhymes about mistletoe and eggnog.”

On a cultural level, Barenaked Ladies have long been integral to the fabric of homegrown Canadian music, exemplifying a certain kind of familiar suburbia in sonic form. If Canada had a musical Mount Rushmore, they’d be right next to the Tragically Hip and Arcade Fire. As they talk through their recent favourite records, Robertson tells of a casual exchange he had with Great Big Sea’s Alan Doyle via text message, a conversational pairing that seems as natural as fries and gravy.

Their banter — onstage or otherwise — is organic, genial, and relentlessly sharp. Even in addressing the very nature of holiday-themed shows for kids, a bit of their signature wit seeps in.

“It’s me trying to push it to mistletoe and Ty trying to drag it to cameltoe,” Robertson tacked on without missing a beat, which evoked an exuberant laugh from his bandmate. “That’s the age-old continuum. We have to find the medium there.”

“That’s the ‘Barenaked’ dynamic,” Stewart chuckled, right on cue.

Humour aside, the idea of doing a residency of this variety had been percolating in the minds of both Robertson and Stewart since they did a short holiday-tinged tour in 2005. Alongside their now-legendary hit songs “If I Had $1,000,000,” “One Week,” and “Brian Wilson,” they performed their takes on such holiday classics as “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “I Have a Little Dreidel.” The concept and execution were so popular that fans and industry executives alike were clamouring for more festive content.

“It’s a not-so brave new world, I guess,” Robertson remarked, referencing their previous foray into holiday music.

More broadly though, the band points to the fact that children have a sense of humour that, in most cases, is just begging to be unlocked. As a result, they don’t foresee having to change their tone dramatically in the presence of younger audiences.

“Kids get humour, they’re smart,” Stewart, a father of three, reflected. “Kids get it. We don’t have to alter our show too much when we play for kids.”

Aside from the jolly veneer consisting of Santa hats and fluffy snow, the “Hometown for the Holidays” shows are, at their core, going to be Barenaked Ladies concerts; no BNL song (or lyric, or banter … ) is off-limits and both Robertson and Stewart are dedicated to bringing the same energy to these shows as they do onstage at say, a gig at Scotiabank Arena. In other words, the venue in question may only seat 700 people and the average age of those in attendance may be 30 or so years younger than their normal demographic, but it remains a show in which the goal is to entertain.

“One of the great things about this group is that it started in a living room,” Stewart explained, “and we’re comfortable playing acoustically and stripped down.”

When addressing the band’s forced break in touring caused by the pandemic, Robertson emphasizes the degree to which Barenaked Ladies cut their teeth on extemporaneous live performances, going back to their early days touring alongside Corky and the Juice Pigs. Their records may be coated with a smooth veneer of studio production, but the true magic of their personality, they say, can only be experienced live and in-person.

“We’re a live band,” Robertson observed. “We’ve been a live band for 33 years. Nothing intimidates us, no bill freaks us out.”

This holiday season, that bill is just them, singing festively in front of families of all varieties. And, from the sounds of it, they’re ready.