Bif Naked lays bare her songs and stories for Ridgeway show
Go ahead, refer to Bif Naked as a “legacy artist.” The way she sees it, she’s earned it.
Rather than shy away from the phrase and its “over the hill” connotations, Naked celebrates it. It’s another sign she’s one of Canadian rock’s great survivors.
“I love it all,” she beams on the line from Toronto. “Honestly, I’m so proud that I can even walk upright, never mind still get onstage and rock.
“My benchmark is people like Tina Turner. I just look at her and I go, ‘Man, she’s like 75 in a miniskirt.’ Nobody cares, because they want to see her do the thing she’s famous for doing.
“My generation of women, it’s just different for us. You look at Gwen Stefani, I mean, she’s 50. If that’s what 50 is, I’m all in. I want it.”
Naked, 48, will share a night of songs and stories at The Sanctuary Centre for the Arts in Ridgeway Friday . The songs speak for themselves — Canadian rock staples such as “Spaceman” and “Lucky.” But it’s the stories that get Naked and her audience emotional — over the past 12 years she has overcome breast cancer, kidney failure and heart surgery.
She savours every show because she knows how close she came to never doing another one.
“The whole point of the Songs & Stories concert series really is to develop a feeling of mutuality with the audience,” she says. “They tend to share a lot.
“There are people on the stage. We do interpretive dance while my husband (gets) drunk on his bottle of wine. It’s a lot of fun. We laugh, we cry. I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to do a tour like this because they’re already booking all the rock tours for summer.
“This might be my last chance to do these beautiful touchy-feely shows.”
The rock shows will be for her upcoming album “Champion,” her first in 11 years. It comes out in the fall, but in the meantime she’s released the moody first single “Jim,” another one of those patented Bif Naked kiss-off songs about betrayal and love gone bad.
Despite what she has been through, Naked says her rock shows haven’t lost an ounce of energy. She’s still the stage-prowling ‘Princess of Everything’ that arrived in the mid-’90s with punkish pop songs such as “Everything.”
Naked credits her rigid self-care, vegan diet and exercise routine.
“I still do martial arts and yoga, (so) nothing’s changed,” she says. “I’m probably not anorexic anymore. The shows are still 90 minutes or more, and they’re relentless.”
Unlike in her early years, music isn’t Naked’s sole pursuit. Since her illnesses, she has released a bestselling memoir (“I Bificus”) and launched an all-hemp CBD online business, MonaLisa Healing. She has a new podcast about to start (“New Riot Girls”) and a book designed to help cancer patients navigate their treatments and the Canadian healthcare system.
All of it could keep her occupied. But being a rock star is still the most fun part of her job.
“Honestly, it’s so cathartic. It’s a vehicle for my poetry, always been a vehicle for my writing, and I love performing.”