DIF NAKED ICON EMBRACES ADULTHOOD
Winnipeg-raised, Toronto-based rocker Bif Naked returns to Vancouver to headline Khatsahlano
Bif Naked lives in Toronto these days, but one gets the sense that Vancouver will always remain home. The Winnipeg-raised singer arrived on the West Coast after tossing a coin with her first real band, Gorilla Gorilla, the choice being either Toronto or Vancouver.
That was circa 1990, and Lotusland won. “We came here and all our friends went to Toronto,” Naked says, on her cell from a rental car just after landing in Vancouver from Hogtown. “So really, for almost all my adult life, I’ve always lived in Vancouver. I get the city. I get the rhythm of the town and I have my roots here. I grew up here.”
That Naked found herself choosing between what were, at the time, Canada’s two underground epicentres speaks volumes about how she was driven to carve out a career in music. To make it in the ’90s, you didn’t stay in the ’Peg. She arrived from Winnipeg a hungry young punk, roaring right onto our city’s alternative scene with Gorilla Gorilla.
“Oh my God, it was all about PD’S Hot Shop,” she says of the long-time Vancouver skateboarding gathering place. “That’s all we did—go to PD’S and go skateboarding every day. I remember getting wicked road rash going down Arbutus to Kits Beach in a bikini when I was 19. I was almost hit by a car—it was no kneepads, no helmets. It’s all so funny to me now. The guys in the band had lots of friends out here and skateboard culture was huge. We were lucky enough to play with bands like the Wongs, which introduced us to places like the Cruel Elephant. My formative years were spent in, and around, those types of venues.”
But it’s for her long solo career that Naked finds herself back in Vancouver to headline the upcoming West 4th Khatsahlano Street Party. After Gorilla Gorilla, the singer fronted the metal-edged Chrome Dog, and then decided to go it alone.
It didn’t take Naked long to announce herself as a formidable solo talent, with the bittersweet “Daddy’s Getting Married”, off her eponymous solo debut, bridging classic Pacific Northwest grunge and winningly vulnerable alt-rock. What followed in subsequent years was a string of solid and welldeserved radio hits, from the electro-tinted pop explosion “Spaceman” to muscular hard rockers like the crowd-pleasing “I Love Myself Today”.
Naked gradually secured iconic status in Canada, scoring gold (2001’s Purge) and platinum (1998’s I Bificus) records and cementing a reputation as one of the country’s fiercest live performers.
Born in Mumbai and adopted by missionaries, Naked—who grew up Beth Torbert—is today a respected motivational speaker. She’s also dabbled in acting, with credits including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The L Word.
Naked—who marvels at the fact that few things are as difficult as staying focused in front of a computer screen—has also branched out into writing, penning a memoir titled I, Bificus. She has a massive following on Twitter, her tweets generally painting a picture of someone who considers each day on Earth a gift.
A decade ago, Naked was diagnosed with breast cancer, and eventually beat the disease through a lumpectomy and chemo. She’s up-front about how the battle changed her life.
“As an artist I probably played 300 shows a year for, I don’t know, 18 years until I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When that happened, it was all of a sudden like, ‘Oh my God, thank God, I can finally stay home,’” Naked says, laughing. “It was like it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was in Vancouver, which was like the mecca of tit cancer, so I was like, ‘This is fantastic shit that’s happening to me right now.’ At that time, I had two little dogs and had just got married to my second husband, so it all felt like serendipity, like ‘If I croak, I can die happy. And if I don’t croak, I get to be home with my dogs in the city that I love.’ ”
After successfully coming through treatment, she discovered that her priorities had changed.
“I went through chemo, turned 40, and suddenly I became a woman,” she notes. “In my 40s, it was like, ‘Oh shit—now I’m becoming the adult I thought I’d already been but never was.’ When I returned to singing, I really only wanted to do acoustic stuff for a while, just because it felt right. There’s a weird headspace that happens to a lot of women when they come back into their workplace after breast cancer. They feel really conspicuous in a weird way. It’s this embarrassing shit that happens. I didn’t want to try to recapture the weird, anorexic jumping-bean punk rocker that I had built my career on. I wanted to be a woman who was being authentic.”
As good and right as unplugged shows felt for a while, Naked eventually rediscovered—as many rockers do—that few things provide the adrenaline rush of hitting the stage and ripping things up.
“Everybody died,” she says with a laugh, “and I went, ‘Fuck everyone—i’m an old aging punk, so fuck the world.’ Now I just have fun playing live, so that’s also a good thing.”
What has her excited about being tapped for Khats is, as one might expect, getting to headline one of the city’s marquee music events, with a strong undercard including everyone from Frazey Ford to Slow. But her high-profile return to Vancouver is
important to her for another reason.
“I think the history of the festival is really amazing—the fact that it has so many bands, that they close the street for blocks, the fact that it’s free,” Naked says. “We do festivals every summer, but I’ve never played this one. So I feel like it’s a real honour and I want to do a good job. It’s going to be hard to follow a band like Slow because they are so iconic, but still I’m really excited. Basically, it feels like coming home.”
Bif Naked headlines the West 4th Khatsahlano Street Party on Saturday (July 7).