Interview with Barenaked Ladies

I was super excited to get on the phone recently with Tyler Stewart, drummer for the legendary Barenaked Ladies to talk about their upcoming tour and how crazy shows at Red Rocks can be. The Last Summer On Earth Tour was actually founded in 2012 — the same year the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world. Lucky for us, that didn’t happen and we get them back in Colorado for 2025. 

Over the course of 37 years, the quartet, made up of vocalist/guitarist Ed Robertson, bassist/vocalist Jim Creeggan, keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Kevin Hearn, drummer/vocalist Tyler Stewart, has sold over 15 million records worldwide. Widely acknowledged as one of the best live acts on the planet, Barenaked Ladies have done it all, pretty much: hosted a cruise, had their own Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, and participated in the first-ever “space-to-earth musical collaboration” with astronaut Chris Hadfield.

This tour will feature all the hits we know plus the bands’ freestyle go-with-the-flow approach to live shows, which makes fans appreciate each stop even more. Tyler was super nice and I can’t wait to see them at Red Rocks here in June! 

Header photo by Matt Barnes

Barenaked Ladies Interview With Tyler Stewart

Aimee:
Thank you so much for taking the time. I wanted to first of all congratulate you on this big tour for 2025, the return of The Last Summer on Earth. Can you talk about what went into it?

Tyler:
Well, really we just needed another excuse to come back to Red Rocks, so thought we better make a tour that is worthy of such a beautiful place. We put our heads together and came up with a lineup that we think is a great show for the fans and also for us. Those are our good friends that we have with us, Guster, Sugar Ray, and also Fastball. We’ve known them for years. We’ve played together in the past. Really it’s an evening of recognizable hits from your younger years. Plus, obviously we’re a band that hasn’t stopped making music, and so is Guster. We keep putting out records, and we keep evolving. We’re doing it because we love it.

Aimee:
I know that you have been here many years at Red Rocks. Do you have any memories that stand out to you?

Tyler:
Every single time we play Red Rocks, it’s awesome. I remember the first time there, it was under renovation, and the dressing rooms were up higher than the stage, kind of on the stage. I thought, okay, this is a place where I’d seen YouTube videos from back in the day. It was such a storied place, and I remember just being in awe of the structure itself. Now we’ve played there at least 10 times.

Aimee:
Yeah. I was going to say it had to be. At least.

Tyler:
Every time we go back, the staff there are so incredible, the catering’s always great, and for some reason I think just the environment, the venue, it elicits great performances from people. You can see the crowd, they’re right there and stacked vertically right in front of you. During the day, if we don’t go on a nice hike, at least we get some exercise going up and down from the tour bus. It’s quite a vertical there, man.

Aimee:
Right? That’s one of my favorite things when I’m photographing is watching the band look up and see all the fans so excited. Capturing that “wow face” in the photographs.

Tyler:
Yeah. It’s an amazing feeling.

Aimee:
So, I know that your last album, In Flight, that now you’re reimagining it as a acoustic version coming out in May. Can you tell me a little bit about that and what made you decide to do that?

Tyler:
Well, the album itself was such a joy to make. We’re 35 plus years into this thing, and it gets… As we go, it gets more fun and more interesting.

Aimee:
That’s good to hear.

Tyler:
Yeah. We had some crazy days back in the late ’90s, early 2000s selling millions of records and traveling all over the world. That was great. Number one hit single, etc. But I found over time, I’ve actually learned to appreciate it more now because back then we were so busy. We were just constantly working, and we had young children. It was a huge juggle to get anything done. But now I feel like I can take the time to reflect and to sit back, and so when we make a record, I feel a lot more present in the situation. I think that goes for the rest of the band as well, we all feel very connected to the process. This record, In Flight, was such a joy to make and we loved a lot of the songs. We realized that some of them really lent themselves to just four guys in a room playing, which is how the band started. We are an acoustic band, acoustic instruments abound, and we’re all singers, so harmonies and acoustic instruments. We thought, why not take advantage of that built-in ability and make an acoustic record? We did it, and we filmed it as well, which was fun.

Aimee:
Was that fun or distracting?

Tyler:
You could see a concentrating… You could see us concentrating really hard on the parts. [Both laugh.]

Aimee:
Is that going to come out too? The video?

Tyler:
Well, we are releasing stuff song by song on the socials, as they say. Maybe eventually we’ll have a full video album. It’s wild how everything’s changed now though, right? Even using the terminology seems weird… album.

Aimee:
Right.

Tyler:
Unless you’re holding a piece of vinyl. Anyway, yeah, so that was the impetus there, and it was a lot of fun to make that too. We had our friend, Kendel Carson, who’s an incredible fiddler, come in and play some violin on the tracks. She makes everybody play better, and that was a real pleasure as well.

Aimee:
That’s amazing. I know you have so many fans, like someone my age, that has been there since the beginning, and then new folks. Is there anything that you’d like to say to your fans, particularly here in Denver?

Tyler:
Well, Denver and Boulder have always been incredible cities for us, and Colorado in general. Whether it was the early support of KBCO back in the day, and all the rock radio in Denver, it’s been great. Our shows, whether it’s that Fiddler’s Green or Red Rocks or the Paramount back in the day, we’ve always had amazing shows in and around, also the Boulder Theater, all around the area. We look forward to coming back, and this lineup is pretty exciting. We’re happy to be back on tour, and can’t wait to see everybody at Red Rocks.

Barenaked Ladies with Guster and Fastball
Last Summer on Earth Tour
Red Rocks Amphitheater
June 17, 2025

Buy Tickets

Check out other past interviews and posts from Red Rocks!