Barenaked Ladies mine the Net for fan input as they return to indie roots

By Cassandra Szklarski

TORONTO (CP) - The Barenaked Ladies are turning to their online fans to develop T-shirts, a music video and remixes tied to a new album being released in a variety of digital formats.

Their contract with Warner Music over, the fun-loving Toronto band is independent once again, allowing them to try some new experiments with wholly-owned music and merchandise from "Barenaked Ladies Are Me." Tech-savvy music mashers have already started work for a remix contest that asks fans to reinterpret five of the band's catchy numbers any way they want.

The results have been wildly divergent, with interpretations that incorporate country, reggae and even waltz.

"People are doing amazing remixes," singer-songwriter-guitarist Ed Robertson said in an interview.

"We're getting these ridiculous disco versions of our songs. There's a lot of people that are really good."

The gimmick is just one of several digital dalliances tied to the new album.

The band - also made up of front man Steven Page, bass player Jim Creeggan, guitar-keyboardist Kevin Hearn and drummer Tyler Stewart - has also solicited the best air-guitarists to appear in a video for the second single, "Wind It Up."

This summer, fans were instructed to go to the BNL MySpace web page, download the song and film themselves playing along. The best performances are being mashed together into the actual video, to be released soon.

Those wishing to do behind-the-scenes work can enter a T-shirt design contest being run in conjunction with online art community www.deviantART.com. The winner will be chosen by the band and receive more than $1,000 in prizes.

And then there's the music.

Although the new CD includes just 13 songs, there are 16 more being sold online.

Robertson says the band simply produced too many tracks for a regular-length CD, but didn't want to discard them. So, hardcore fans wanting all the music can either download the songs, buy a "deluxe" CD pack or go for a USB stick containing all 29 songs, as well as other goodies.

"The main thing is just shifting the focus to the fan and letting them decide how they want to consume the music," Robertson explains.

"It's kinda like, whatever you want, and then you can listen to it, however it pleases you."

If the remix game is to be believed, many of the Ladies' fans like their music very un-Ladylike.

"Wind It Up" has been run through the wringer, emerging as a lumbering country song in "sOuThErN fEeL," done by someone with the online moniker "MasterMike."

Another contest entry turns the lead-off single "Easy" into a bouncy disco club-pleaser, with soaring strings and chirping rave whistles in the background.

Another version goes old-school - very old-school - with "Waltz Me Up."

The remixes can be heard at http://stems.barenakedladies.com. The best will be sold as a five-song EP, with all proceeds going to charity.

The Ladies' digital forays recognize that people today consume music in radically different ways, says Robertson.

"We just realized it's really not in our control," he says. "There used to be the days of: this is our record and this is how you're going to listen to it."

"People will not often even listen to a record anymore. They might download the songs and just listen to it on shuffle with all your other music or a bunch of other bands they like."

Of course, none of these stunts would have been possible with the band's previous records, owned by Warner Music Group. But the band is indie once again, having parted with the major label to produce material on their own label, Desperation Records.

"We've never been in a position to kind of offer the music in a variety of different ways at the same time," says Robertson.

"We're in a position now where going forward, making our new music, we own it so we can do whatever we want with it.

"It's been really liberating and really fun to be making a record, doing a podcast live from a studio while Steve's recording a vocal and being able to take some of the music and put it on our website for people to check out. We weren't able to do that before because we didn't own it."

"It's a (bad) time for record labels, it's a great time to be a musician. You can reach out to your fans directly."