Bach’s thoughts are with wildfire evacuees

Back in Peterborough Saturday, Monday for concerts at The Venue

Rocker Sebastian Bach was on tour last week when he got a phone call from his wife about how she might have to evacuate their California home as the wildfires were closing in.

The house — which is just outside of Los Angeles — didn’t burn, and Bach’s family was safe in the end.

But as the fires were ravaging California he was sitting in a hotel room in the Dominican Republic, on tour and about to leave for the next show in Florida.

“It’s hard to hear about it,” he said in his interview with The Examiner, after hearing from his loved ones.

Bach, who grew up in Peterborough, is making his way back here to play two shows at The Venue on Saturday and again on Monday.

When the first show sold out quickly, Bach added a second show on Monday that still had tickets available this week.

It’s the last couple of shows in a 100-show tour, he said.

He said he’s looking forward to it, although his thoughts during the interview were with evacuees in California.

Evacuations later took place in tony Malibu, and several celebrities had to flee their homes.

This week, Bach and some other rockers blasted U.S. President Donald Trump when he tweeted that California had mismanaged its forests and brought the “costly” damage onto itself.

Bach joined Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses or Tommy Lee of Motley

Crue in tweeting furious replies at Trump.

“You are the most USELESS human being ever to walk the Planet Earth,” Bach tweeted at the president. “Except for those idiots who vote for you.”

Sebastian Bach, 50, grew up in Peterborough.

His name was Sebastian Bierk; he’s the son of the late painter David Bierk (the founder of Artspace gallery).

For a couple of years in the mid-1980s, Bach was in a Peterborough band called Kid Wikkid.

Then he went on to success as the lead singer for the metal band Skid Row from 1987 to 1996.

Over his career he also performed on Broadway, appeared on TV shows such as Gilmore Girls and Trailer Park Boys, and wrote a memoir (18 and Life on Skid Row, which describes his childhood in Peterborough).

Bach seems to remember his hometown fondly: he says he has a massive collection of his father’s vintage photos of the Peterborough that he considers precious.

The photos depict the downtown in the 1970s, he said, as well as the founding of Artspace.

“I need help to find a way to share these pictures with Peterborough,” he said.

In the meantime, he has a show to perform in the city on Saturday and another on Monday, and he says he has “surprises” in store for his hometown fans.

Bach says that’s because there’s something special audiences get from a live show, “that communal, musical feeling” that concertgoers seek.

Everything else may be available on your smartphone, he said — but not that feeling.

“You can’t download it,” he says with a laugh.

NOTE: Tickets for Sebastian Bach’s show on Nov. 19 were still available for $40, earlier this week, through ticketscene.ca

The direct link to buy tickets is at https://www.ticketscene.ca/ artists/sebastian_bach_skid_ row/ .... Rocker Neil Young, who grew up in Omemee, has lost his Malibu home to the California wildfires, along with several other celebrities.