Steven Page once stepped outside an undersold gig in St. John’s, and heard a cover band doing Brian Wilson

On Friday night, Steven Page and his trio headlined the annual Big Ticket fundraiser for the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra in St. John’s. What an evening. (The photo above and another below come from the wonderful Alick Tsui, whose photos of the night are here.)

Among Page’s specialties in his post-Barenaked Ladies career have been these kinds of symphonic performances. He sang some well-known hits and some solo songs, all arranged with a full orchestra behind them. It was a great evening, and the NSO sounded terrific, too.

There was a lot of comedy, too, from the start. No surprise, given that Barenaked Ladies always had a tongue in its cheek, even though many of their early songs were about the vulnerability of growing up, particularly about moving out of late adolescence and into early adulthood.

For instance, the song Brian Wilson. Named for the period when the genius behind the Beach Boys could not get out of bed, it’s a song that Page, then a 19-year-old university student, wrote to make sense of the depression that he was feeling. It was one of the first Barenaked Ladies recordings, done again for their breakthrough album Gordon.

Page told a funny story on Friday night about another episode in his life that started out as quite the downer.

In 2013, Page was in his solo career, and it was … not going that great, he said. He was in St. John’s playing with collaborator Craig Northey (of the Vancouver band Odds), who is still part of his trio. (Cellist Kevin Fox is the third.)

Page told the audience at the Arts and Culture Centre — which was sold out, it’s important to note — that he had a very different night for a booking at Club One, just off George Street. There were, at most, a hundred tickets sold. He stepped out onto George Street for a smoke, and heard something depressing: a cover band in a place next door, which was evidently packed to the rafters, leading a raucous singalong of Brian Wilson.

As the audience laughed, Page said nowadays he would have popped up on the stage, and then Pied Pipered the crowd over to Club One. Instead, he slumped back to his own show.

I found this video on YouTube from that 2013 date.

Meanwhile, kudos to Page for slipping in some local content for the singalong of the early BNL hit If I Had $1000000.

Page answered the line about the tree fort and the “little tiny fridge in there somewhere” with finding … seal flipper pie. (And then musically wondered if it was “meat or fish, meat or fish…”)

Another funny story from the evening.

Page described how — when One Week became a worldwide smash hit in the late Nineties — Barenaked Ladies were booked into something called the World Music Awards in Monaco, and were given the conspicuously named award for “best-selling Canadian band.” The group figured the name of the award was conjured up to justify the booking. (The yarn reminded me of a famous bit from the Simpsons.)

Because the performance was lip-synced, not everyone travelled abroad as a cost-saving measure. Out a keyboard player, the actor Jason Priestley volunteered to step in and pretend to play the keyboards. And … they agreed.

Page said you could find the “performance” on YouTube, and I did.

Steven Page wore a tux for Friday night’s orchestral show. Now 55, he’s a long way from the shorts-wearing kid whose band touched a Gen X nerve 30-odd years ago. He still has a lot to say, and he was a gracious, generous performer with the NSO.