Chart-topping Barenaked Ladies play Yuengling Concert Series at SteelStacks in Bethlehem on June 19
From a press release:
Grammy-nominated, chart-topping Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies will play the SteelStacks in Bethlehem on Monday, June 19 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the 2017 Yuengling Summer Concert Series.
Tickets for the concert, which takes place at the Levitt Pavilion (789 E. 1st St., Bethlehem) at the base of the former Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces, are $35 in advance and $39 the day of the show. They’ll go on sale starting this Tuesday, April 4 at 10 a.m. to ArtsQuest Members and Friday, April 7 at 10 a.m. to the public at steelstacks.org and 610-332-3378.
Hailing from Ontario, the Barenaked Ladies have been together for nearly three decades, producing 15 studio albums that have collectively sold more than 14 million copies. The group has won eight Juno Awards, earned multiple Grammy nominations, and recorded the theme song to one of TV’s most popular shows, “The Big Bang Theory.” Among the band’s biggest hits are the chart-topping singles “One Week,” “Pinch Me,” “It’s All Been Done,” and “If I Had $1,000,000.”
“I still love writing songs,” lead vocalist Ed Robertson said. “And it’s such a privilege to work with these guys. They have my back, and I have theirs. It’s pretty amazing to watch the crowd light up when we play a song we recorded 25 years ago, and then hear them sing along with something brand new.”
The group’s most recent recording, “Ladies and Gentlemen: Barenaked Ladies and The Persuasions,” will be released on Friday, April 14. The album, featuring legendary a cappella group The Persuasions, includes 14 tracks reimagined from the Barenaked Ladies’ award-winning catalog, as well as the classic “Good Times.” It was recorded live off the floor with The Persuasions in the fall of 2016 at Noble Street Studios in Toronto.
“I don’t think there’s a secret,” Robertson explained to People magazine last year when asked how BNL managed to not just survive, but thrive, continuing to sell out venues wherever they go. “It’s work. You’ve got to respect each other, you got to give each other space, but you also have to support each other. … This band learned early on to communicate, right from the beginning; we didn’t want to burn out. We wanted to keep making music.”
“It’s not easy to be hyperactive, brooding and whimsical all at once,” the New York Times pop critic Jon Pareles once wrote about BNL. “But the Barenaked Ladies do just that.”
“We appreciate what we do more than ever,” Robertson explained. “We’re not looking for external validation. We’re enjoying working together, and we’re doing some of the best shows of our entire career.
“Our fans have been on this journey with us, so we’ve kind of grown up together. It’s a special relationship, within the band and between our fans. Every band says they have the best fans, but we actually do. And we know that because other bands tell us that.”
