Steven page was on a Caribbean fan cruise in february, sailing somewhere between Key West and Miami, when he took his final curtain call as a Barenaked Lady. The voyage, the third in a series, was billed as “Ships and Dip V.” Why five and not three? “The sequel is always inferior,” Page explains, “so we numbered them every other.” This quirkiness sums up the band’s identity: kinda funny, kinda goofy, always original.

Page says that at the time, he didn’t know it was going to be his last show: “If I had, I’m sure we would have said something about it.” The official announcement was made about two weeks later via a tersely worded press release on the BNL Web site, met by an almost instant outpouring of shock and confusion (you don’t pack fan cruises without some pretty intense followers). “Our fans are like friends. They feel like they have to pick a side,” Page says, discussing the complexities of extricating oneself from a group after two decades. He says he left on his own terms; his bandmate Ed Robertson called the split “necessary” to move forward. Meanwhile, most of us assume that Page’s 2008 drug bust and total life overhaul must have had something to do with it. The truth is probably a combination of all of the above.

The end of his nine-year marriage to his summer camp sweetheart, Carolyn Ricketts, in 2007 was the first sign of trouble. The second sign was less ambiguous. Page made international headlines last July when he was arrested for drug possession in upstate New York at the home of his new girlfriend, Christine Benedicto. Close friends knew that he had a history of depression (what good lyri­cist doesn’t?), but his behaviour—worthy of a Cops episode—was totally out of character. In his mug shot, Page was unrecognizable: gaunt and waxy, with intense eyes and a couple of days’ growth. Fans were understandably aghast: sure Page was a rock star, but not that kind of rock star. Just a year before, he had been a married father of three living a Bare­naked bourgeois life on the Danforth. BNL had recently put out their first children’s album, Snacktime. They subsequently pulled out of a handful of scheduled Disney Block Party appearances in the aftermath.

Benedicto, referred to as Yoko in the BNL fan community, is a 28-year-old custom diaper designer whom Page met on MySpace. Page says his split from the band was in motion before the two got together, and that the drug bust wasn’t a factor. “If the arrest played a role, it created a moment where we all had to look at where we were, where we wanted to be. It forced me to gain confidence that I don’t think I had before.” He didn’t go to rehab, and received what amounted to a wrist slap from an American court, but the shrink-speak is no coincidence. Page remains in what he calls “pretty intensive therapy,” in pursuit of much needed stability.

Growing up in Scarborough as the son of two teachers, Page was in the gifted program, skipped Grade 1, and graduated from high school at 16. “I was a pretty grown-up young kid,” he says, recalling an early fondness for Leonard Cohen. He and Robertson came up with the name for their future group while clowning around at a Bob Dylan concert at the CNE grandstand. In no time, BNL developed a cult following. As musical tastes between the mid-’90s and the early millennium drifted from grunge to electro-rave and back to garage rock, BNL stood the course with their bantering, often shticky and occasionally pretty damn great tracks. Their first major release, Gordon, was number one in Canada for eight weeks, and three follow-up albums went platinum in the States. All told, their albums have sold over 12.5 million copies in Canada and the U.S.

Despite the success, Page was never completely comfortable with the good-time goofball image. “We carved out an identity for ourselves that incorporated only a portion of our personalities. There was less room for examination of deeper topics. That’s not what people come to us for.” He explains how the artists he admires—Neil Young, Cohen—aren’t held back by an image they’ve created (“They’ve cultivated a relationship with their audience that lets them be themselves”) and how he is looking forward to his new career as a solo act.

For several years now, Page has been honing his non-Ladies identity: he is a passionate and vocal supporter of the NDP and the World Wildlife Fund and has on occasion recorded non-BNL music under the name the Vanity Project. He already has projects on the go, including a score for the Stratford production of the rarely produced Bartholomew Fair—his third composition for the festival—which premieres next month, and a performance at the Canadian musician–studded Neil Young tribute concert, which may turn out to be the hottest ticket at this summer’s Luminato festival. He hopes that when he releases his solo album, fans will be willing to give him another go, but for now, he’s laying low.

Since the big announcement, Page has been spending half his time at Benedicto’s apartment in Fayetteville. He’s earnest and deliberate, and sounds nothing like the jovial, kinda fat, shorts-wearing ham of yesteryear. My expectations that he might break into nasal rap or wax poetic on the virtues of Kraft Dinner prove way off the mark, which, I guess, is his point.

He says “Running Out of Ink,” a song he wrote for 2007’s Barenaked Ladies Are Men, is indicative of his state of mind a couple of years back, when things were starting to unravel: It’s bleaker than you think / I’m running out of ink / Give a guy a break / This is what it takes / To drive a man to drink. His next chapter will depend on his ability to put the breakup (along with the self-destructive streak) behind him. Barenaked no more, it’s time for Steven Page to show us what else he’s made of.