How did you and Steven meet and start making music together? Steve and I actually had gone to school together since the fourth grade.  We were never close friends, but we sort of knew about each other and had friends in common.  We didn't start hanging around with each other until after high school. Did you both study music while at school? We were both in the school msuic programs in Scarborough.  I was in a couple of covers bands that did some original material. Your debut album, Gordon, arrived with a very refined, eclectic level of musicianship.  How were you able to achieve that? We were all fans of different kinds of music.  One of the things that was exciting about the band was that all of a sudden we were playing with people with completely different interests.  It was a refreshing clash of elements.  Everyone was eager to make all those different influences work together.  We all had fun melding country, pop and jazz--and whatever was coming into the mix was coming in honestly and energetically. Were your initial co-writing experiences with Steven a matter of sitting down with acoustic guitars in a room and bouncing ideas off each other? Well, yeah, and that was the whole band for about a year and a half--just Steven and I and two acoustic guitars.  Our very first sort of break was doing a tour of universities and college campuses in Canada, opening up for a comedy troupe called Corky and the Juice Pigs.  we would get up, play a couple of songs, joke around and have a good time. So humor was part of the mix from the very beginning? I don't think we were ever that funny.  It's just that we weren't afraid of being unfunny.  So we just had fun up there.  Having a good time has always been a huge part of the band. After Gordon came out and made a huge splash in Canada, did it also take off overseas? Unfortunately, it was a huge hit in some Eastern European countries that no longer exist.  So there are no records of our success.  The files were burned in the revolution.  It didn't really make a lot of waves outside of Canada, at first.  Then we really concentrated our touring in the U.S. and, over a period of years, did nothing but just pound the streets down there and tour and tour and tour. Was conquering the U.S. a major goal for the band? Definitely.  There are only so many cities in Canada, and we played them all.  It was time to start getting something going elsewhere.  Also, the industry is smaller here, so when you have huge success there really isn't room for much more.  It was time to set our sights elsewhere. What were your early influences? My main influence was country and western music.  I grew up listening to that and listening to my mom and dad sing harmony around the house.  I come from a fairly musical family.  My dad played guitar around the campfires and at parties.  I have an uncle who plays the banjo and another uncle who can pick out some lead lines and another uncle who can play the harmonica.  So we had a lot of big family jamborees.  And that is why I wanted to play guitar, so I could sing George Jones and Tom T. Hall songs. Did your father teach you how to play? It was a combination of my dad showing me some chords and me just being really into it.  I just wouldn't put the guitar down.  An old boyfriend of my sister's was pretty good and he showed me some things.  A friend of my brother's played and he showed me some things.  I was always hungry to learn stuff on the guitar, so it wasn't long before I was showing my dad things. How about Steven?  What's his musical background? Steven comes from a very musical family as well.  Both of his parents are teachers, but his dad was also a drummer in a sort of jazzy folk combo thing, so there was always music around the house. It sounds like by the time the band formed, you were already accomplished players. I just think we were really eager.  We were so excited to be doing what we were doing that we worked our asses off and had a good time. On your last album, Stunt, was it just a coincidence that the first major U.S. breakthrough single was "One Week," a song you wrote by yourself? I just think it was a matter of timing.  It had more to do with all the work that the band had done beforehand coming together on that song.  We're a pretty communist organization when it comes down to it.  We split all our publishing because I really believe in the work ethic of the band.  Everybody arranges the songs.  We do take the songwriting "credit," but mainly for pride.  I don't think "One Week" would have been such a big hit if it was just me on my acoustic guitar. Do you write most of your stuff using an acoustic? Yeah, pretty much. What do you play? I play Larrivee guitars. When you sat down to write "One Week," did you have the concept in mind:  a funky free association rap sort of thing?  A lot of people thought it was a real departure from your previous work. The song is actually very typical of what happens on stage a lot.  Steven and I do a lot of improv, dance-hall stuff.  So "One Week" didn't feel like too much of a departure until it was done and recorded, and we said "well, I guess we've never done this on a record before."  I think for anyone who has seen the band before, it is very Barenaked Ladies, very improvised.  In fact, that is how the song was written; it was free-styled off the top of my head, and Steven said, "dont chage a thing, it's perfect." You and Steven co-write much of the material.  Tell me about your working relationship. Generally, Steve and I bring eachother half-finished songs, and we finish each other's songs.  I always write to a point where I get stuck, and then I just move on.  I go to another song because I know that, when I get together with Steve, we'll unstick those parts.  Also, I like to have different opinions and different voices in the songs.  So when I bring the song to Steve, I'll say, "So, this is what I've got," and he'll say "Okay, that's good.  Let's go here with it." Has the success of Stunt resulted in the band touring more? We've always been touring hard.  I don't think we tour any harder now, it's just that the shows are bigger.  We're in Sweden instead of Syracuse.  And that is a concern because I have a second child due in October, and instead of being in Phoenix, I'll be in Fiji.  It means a 25 hour trip home.  So those are new concerns. I udnerstand that when you were trying to break into American radio with "The Old Apartment," from Born on a Pirate Ship, Reprise did nine separate radio campaigns for that song.  They must have really believed that they had something in you. We got very lucky and we did things the right way.  We sort of won the record company over, literally from the bottom up.  When our first record came out, we played for everybody in each department, starting with the mailroom. Also, when we were just doing shows around the country and not really selling a lot of records, we didn't have a profile with the big radio people and VIP's at the company.  But the local radio people were coming to our shows and going "Wow, these guys are working their asses off and they're really friendly and great guys, I'm going to do what I can for these guys."  so we were always being mentioned on conference calls, even though there was nothing really going on with the band.  By the time stuff started going on, we had the whole company pushing for us. You were probably so effective in winning them over because you could go into their offices with your acoustic instruments and  play for them in such a direct and immediate way.  People really seem to respond to that sort of performance. Yeah, and we did a ton of that, from in-store appearances to squishing into the smallest radio studios you've ever seen just to pull it off.