Barenaked Ladies shed adversity

• What: The Barenaked Ladies in concert.

• When: 7:30 p.m. May 23.

• Where: Keller Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay St., Portland.

• Cost: Tickets $36.50-$46.50 through Ticketmaster; 800-745-3000 or http://ticketmaster.com.

• Information: http://www.pcpa.com/events/keller.php.

The Barenaked Ladies had developed a reputation of being the “sunshine boys” of rock ‘n’ roll, in a career that stretches back 20 years.

That image stems from humorous songs such as “If I Had a Million Dollars” and “Be My Yoko Ono,” the band’s buoyant personality at its concerts and a sometimes quirky approach to pop music instrumentation. And when it came to songcraft, the Barenaked Ladies had increasingly proven with songs like “One Week” and “It’s All Been Done” that the group was capable of creating highly catchy, tightly constructed pop songs.

But behind the cheerful public image, life was not all fun and games within Barenaked Ladies. It was with the arrest of singer/guitarist Steven Page on cocaine charges in July 2008 that signs of discord within the group began to bubble to the surface.

The band remained supportive of Page throughout his ordeal, and the singer-guitarist had his charges reduced to a misdemeanor and then dropped in April 2009 after he fulfilled conditions of his plea agreement.

By that time, though, problems in Barenaked Ladies had already reached a head, and Page had left the group to begin a solo career.

The four remaining band members — singer/guitarist Ed Robertson, bassist Jim Creeggan, keyboardist/guitarist Kevin Hearn and drummer Tyler Stewart — chose to go forward as Barenaked Ladies. And now the newly streamlined group has emerged with the new CD, “All In Good Time,” and, according to Creeggan, a more positive outlook.

“I think maybe just because of simple re-evaluation, and also making the record, which was a really big healing process for us, too, all of those things together really made the bond stronger,” Creeggan said in a recent phone interview. “Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely better off now. We’re on a path and we’re all, more than I can remember, really behind it.”

As Creeggan’s comments suggest, times had not been entirely happy within Barenaked Ladies for some time. But events of 2008 caused the band to face the hard question of whether the Barenaked Ladies had a future and if so, in what shape or form.

Not only was there the Page arrest, in August 2008, Robertson crashed his single-engine Cessna plane near Bancroft, Ontario. He and three passengers walked away from the crash without significant injuries. A month later, Robertson’s mother died.

Following this series of events, the band members started to open up with each other about their feelings toward the band, toward each other and whether they wanted Barenaked Ladies to continue.

“I think we were just drifting apart in ways, maybe artistically, maybe for so long we really worked hard to keep the band together through different struggles everyone has at different times,” Creeggan said, adding “I think individually every one of us said, I know I said to myself, ‘I’m not sure if I can continue on with this band, repeating personal problems.’”

Finally, at a meeting in early 2009, the band and Page decided to go their separate ways.

Page’s absence is very apparent on “All in Good Time.” For one thing, the trade-off in lead vocals of Page and Robertson from song to song — long a Barenaked Ladies signature — is gone.

And though it could be mainly a reflection of the difficult times that preceded the making of “All In Good Time,” the album is considerably more darkly hued than Barenaked Ladies albums of the past.

The CD lacks the kind of chipper pop tunes that had peppered past albums (“It’s All Been Done” or “Too Little Too Late”). And while “All in Good Time” still sounds like a Barenaked Ladies album and still has its share of sharply crafted songs, the group displays an edgier harder rock sound on several songs (“Summertime,” “Every Subway Car” and “Another Heartbreak”) and a more subdued feel on songs such as the mid-tempo rocker “You Run Away” and ballads like “On the Lookout” and “I Saw It.”

The evolution of Barenaked Ladies will be apparent in the live setting as well. Creeggan said the group has reworked some of its older songs to work in a four-man setting and isn’t shying away from playing songs associated with its former singer/guitarist. And the surprises don’t end there.

“I think you’ll probably hear ‘If I Had a Million Dollars.’ It’s almost not a show unless we play it,” Creeggan said. “And then one thing we just finished practicing for the tour coming up and we’re really excited about is breaking it down and really playing songs like really sort of very simplistically, like just two guys playing or just one guy playing an instrument and everybody else doing (vocal) back-ups. We’re going to change it up every night, so it’s going to be a lot of fun.”