Either individually or when previously co-leading Canada’s alternative pop superstars Barenaked Ladies, Steven Page has an immediately recognizable voice with some of the finest and frequently funniest songwriting around.

Those fingerprints can be found on everything from the multi-platinum past of “It’s All Been Done,” “Brian Wilson,” “If I Had $1000000,” “The Old Apartment” and “One Week,” to the recent likes of the long player, “Excelsior,” leading him to headline the North Shore Center For Performing Arts in Skokie on Thursday, March 27.

Prior to the intimate performance, Page called Chicago Concert Reviews to bare all on then and now, becoming a leader in the livestream universe, opening up for The Who’s massive “Hits Back!” Tour and another “Pinch Me” moment involving a beloved Beach Boy.

What’s in store for the North Shore Center?

Steven Page: This show will be a duo show, so it’s myself and Craig Northey, who I’ve been playing with forever. Some people may know him from his own band, the Odds. Barenaked Ladies used to tour with them back in the ‘90s. I’ve known them since the early ‘90s and we started writing together when I left Barenaked Ladies in 2009. He’s been part of the Steven Page Trio since that inception. I think we’re coming up on the tenth anniversary of the Steven Page Trio.

This one is just a duo, so it’s myself and Craig. We’ll be doing everything from the earliest Barenaked Ladies stuff, up to the most recent Steven Page stuff. He’s just a great guitar player, great singer and we have a real camaraderie. I think die-hard fans will know him well from other shows we’ve done together and my livestreams, so it’s a joy to bring him with us. And then we’ve got out pal Dag Juhlin [Poi Dog Pondering, The Slugs, Sunshine Boys], who’s coming to open the show as well.

What comes to mind when you think of performing around the Chicago area?

Page: In doing it since 1992, we played so many times in and around Chicago that I feel a real affinity for it. Being from Toronto too, the two cities have a real connection. They feel very similar in a lot of ways. I think the musical appreciation is quite similar, so that’s a nice to thing to be able to do. I can’t say that I remember ever playing in Skokie specifically before, so there’s still room for firsts.

The last time you were here was actually opening for The Who. How did that come to be and what did you take away from that experience?

Page: I think that came through my management and Live Nation. Apparently, what they have to do is they take the potential opening acts to Pete [Townshend] and Roger [Daltrey]. They kind of take turns on approving people, so I guess we were Pete’s band. He was super nice to us and said some really nice things about us from the stage, which is mind-blowing to be able to be in the same room as those guys and watch them play every night. They were the first band that was my favorite, that wasn’t The Beatles, as a kid. There’s so many memories wrapped up in listening to them, and then being able to watch them every night and watch them just kill it. You really can still go out there, and do it and create an exciting show. It’s about nostalgia, but it’s about who these people are now, as well as who they were then. It’s a lesson to learn as you get older as an artist.

Tell us a bit about your latest album, “Excelsior,” and how that’s been received on the road throughout these last few years.

Page: The music had started long before the pandemic, but then you get locked down [and think], “How am I gonna make this record?” Maybe I’ll take this as a challenge to see what I can do on my own as a person who was in a band for so long, and then kind of find my way as a solo artist and have a lot of fun doing that. This was an opportunity to show myself what I’ve learned over that time. It’s the first record I’ve ever done where I’m the sole writer on all the songs and I play almost everything on the record too. That was a big deal for me.

I started doing these livestreams over COVID and I still do them. I did the 129th one this last week. There are a group of die-hards who come to these “Live From Home” concerts and I think they really felt a connection to that album, like it was their record in a lot of ways and I think in a lot of ways they’re right. It was born from a shared experience that we had on our own. I mean, it’s a not a COVID record in the sense that it’s about that, but that’s what it came from. It’s the work I did in that time, and I wish more people knew about the record cause I think it’s a really interesting and rewarding record to listen to. I think for a lot of people, it’s definitely under the radar and hopefully will be discovered as time goes on.

How were you able to make the jump into the livestream world so successfully?

Page: It became part of like my musical identity, in a way, and it’s something I actually resisted. At the beginning of lockdown times, I really resisted doing livestreams because you’re watching everybody live from their kitchen on Facebook live or Instagram live. It was like, “For god’s sake, the last thing that we get paid for as musicians is now free? Gimme a break.” How do you compete with Garth Brooks live from his kitchen or whatever else when I’m just some schmo from Syracuse, New York. Who cares?

But then I watched a friend of mine, Dan Mangan, who’s a singer/songwriter from Vancouver. He did one over Zoom and he charged for it, like eight bucks or something like that. I decided I would watch it and I was blown away because you weren’t just singing to the void. He was singing to an audience, you could see the audience watching each other and there’s a chat going on. I thought, “Okay, you know what, I’ll try this.” So I did try it, whatever. We had a thousand people come, which is as much as you could squeeze into a Zoom conference at that time, and it was amazing.

There were all kinds of technical problems. It took me a few weeks to get a sense of how to set up the studio so the sound was right, and the video works, and the things were in sync and all that other kind of stuff, but I think people enjoyed (laughs) the fact that they were watching me struggle and figure out how to do this stuff. Five years later, I’m still trying to figure stuff out. I’ve still got technical problems, but I think the production values have increased over time and it becomes a social event for a lot of these people as well, a place for them to hang out and to catch up.

We’ve had a lot of in-person events that we’ve been able to do, even before I started touring again. We could have people over to my studio to watch me do one of these shows live or we had a picnic here in Syracuse one year for all the supporters of my Patreon. Then this last year, we did “Summer Camp” in the Catskills that we’re gonna do again this year where people come from all over the world to hang out, basically cause they’re all fans of my music. But it happened because they were all connected watching these livestreams that they’ve created this community of people. That was not in the plan when I started doing it. It was just kind of something to do and out of that came this amazing community of really great people.

Is there anything planned for your next project?

Page: Yeah, I’m in the middle of working on a record right now. In 2005, I put on an album called “The Vanity Project” that I did with British songwriter Stephen Duffy, who’s a co-writer of mine. We’ve been writing together for years, even before that. I would call him my mentor and he’s one of my teenage musical heroes. He’s still a hero of mine. We put this record out in 2005, and now 20 years later, we’re recording a follow-up to that. We’re in the overdub stage now and hopefully that record will be out, if not before the end of the year, then early next year. I’m excited about it.

When you first went solo, in what ways were you hoping to establish yourself outside of Barenaked Ladies?

Page: I bet if you were to ask me back in 2009, I think I would’ve thought that I would be playing the Chicago Theatre right now (laughs), like have my own TV show or something. You gotta set your sights a little bit lower than that. I would say that’s initially what I thought, but I also thought it’s just a chance to work with whomever I want to work with, or work in whatever style, or medium, or genre and that has absolutely, one hundred percent come true. I’ve been able to work in everything from musical theater, to modern classical music, to working with symphony orchestras. I have the Steven Page Trio. I do full band shows. I do solo stuff. That has been a really amazing experience and great sense of privilege that I have to be able to do that.

What were the best parts of being in that band and also some of the hardest?

Page: Oh, I mean we got to travel the world, see so many amazing things and play to such incredible audiences. It was absolutely an amazing time to be in that band and those guys were great friends, but the hard part was growing up together in a way. We started that group when we were 18, and over time, you kind of find your own way in life and it doesn’t always sync up with the way everybody else sees it. Sometimes just being around the same guys all the time when you’re young like that can be wearing on people, and you end up getting on each others’ nerves and stuff. Those are growing pains.

The music you made together speaks for itself and you’re responsible for so many iconic songs. What do you remember about that really popular period?

Page: We worked so hard, but for us, the great thing was we could see the results. We toured straight for about 18 months at one point, without barely a break, and we were able to do that at that point. We were in our twenties and everywhere we would go, we would come back and play a bigger audience every town. You could really feel that every time and that was exciting for us. And we shared a sense of humor, so we could always find things that were hilarious to do, try to push the envelope a little bit and entertain ourselves. We always knew that if we were entertained by something, if we thought it was funny, or fun, or exciting, then people in the audience would be in on the joke. That was a big part of the way we operated. It was like a whole series of in-jokes that the audience was invited to join in on.

You last performed together at the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. What type of scenarios, if any, would lead you to all want to connect again?

Page: Well, I can’t speak for the other guys. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were to play again together because I think it was fun. I think for those guys, they worked really hard to kind of establish themselves without my songwriting, without my voice. I suspected they would probably look at it, if we were to play together, that it would be a step backward. But I think it’s just something we could potentially do for a one-off, if it was the right situation, charitable event or something like that, that we could go and have fun with, then go back to our regular lives. It sounds like we could both be totally fine, but I’m not sure if that’s something they’d be interested or not.

The 1990s and early 2000s are back in a major way. Are there any ways your songs have found unexpected audiences now?

Page: I mean TikTok is definitely big. That’s a whole other world that I’m barely even cognizant of. I know if I dive in there, I’ll never come out, so I’ll try to stay away. But it’s amazing to see, like just the meme-fication of “It’s All Been Done” and “One Week,” I always think is hilarious and great.

You started in the cassette era, moved on to CDs and are now online. How have you navigated all these changes and adapted to the new trends?

Page: Everything that we did was out of what was available to us, what was affordable. Recording our first stuff on a four-track cassette recorder, then just duplicating cassettes ourselves and then getting them professionally duplicated because it was the cheapest way to do that kind of stuff. Eventually we started [going online] as the internet became a thing. Even before, there were CD-ROMs and enhanced CDs. Anytime that technology was available to us, we thought, “Why not get in there and start playing with it?” See it as a not only a tool, but a toy in a way like, “How to do we make this fun?”

As you get older, it’s harder to innovate with that. I look at if we were 18 or 20 now, I’m sure we would be on the cutting edge of whatever is next when it comes to social media or even AI, which is terrifying for oldies like us, but maybe less terrifying for a lot of young artists. I’m not about to dip my toes in there right now, but I imagine a younger Steven might have. It might have come up with something hilarious and gruesome at the same time too.

You’ve done a ton over these three-plus decades. What do you consider to be you top “Pinch Me” moment?

Page: Probably the number one would be when we were making our album “Maroon” back in 2000. Our producer was Don Was and he said, “Come to the studio down the hall for me. I’ve got a surprise for you.” We go in, and we sit down and they bring in Brian Wilson. He’s there with his wife Melinda and talks with us for a few minutes. Then he goes, “I have something I want to play for you” and he put in a CD, like a CD-R. It’s him and his band playing our song “Brian Wilson” before it ended up on his “Live At The Roxy [Theatre]” album. I mean how does it get [better]? We’re recording in the studio where they made “Pet Sounds!” He’s playing us his version, him singing the song I wrote in my parents basement when I was 19. That’s probably the ultimate “Pinch Me” moment!

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Steven Page performs at the North Shore Center For Performing Arts on Thursday, March 27. For additional details, visit StevenPage.com and NorthShoreCenter.org.