Bif Naked Is No Bitch

Between preparing Her Royal Majesty’s troops for the New Music West Festival, moving her record label forward with the upcoming release of albums Gabezra & The Way Out’s new album and LiveOnRelease, and anticipating the prospect of Purge hitting the international shelves, Bif Naked is going to have it rough finding the time to channel her inner villain. The Canadian rock siren says that she’s keeping her touring close to home because she has two parts in movies coming up. One of those roles is cloaked in mystery, but Naked does say that she will be playing a villain. She is thrilled at this prospect, but admits that she will have to work on being fiendish, because no matter what impression people might get from this strong, lean image of ink and piercings, Bif Naked is no bitch. "You know, when I was 18, I badly wanted to be mean," Naked says. "But, I was never any good at it so I got my yayas out on stage. I was able to be a real tomboy and get all that stuff out of my system." Naked admits that because she is a strong woman with a fiercely honest attitude and a less than conservative appearance, people will assume that she is a bitch. "(It happens) every single time, and it’s always funny ‘cause then if you’re not, they assume you’re either a suck up or a slut if you’re being nice to anyone," she says. "I don’t know. It’s kind of funny." But, as a woman in the music industry, Naked has learned how to cope with misconceptions. She had to if she was going to continue to do what she loves. Her eyes were opened early on when she was fronting the band Gorilla Gorilla, and they opened for an L.A. ska band they admired. "We were polite little Canadian kids, like I still am today. ‘Hey man, I’m Bif. How are you? It’s going to be a cool gig’. And these guys are like, ‘Oh yeah. So, which one of us are you here to fuck tonight?’ I was like, ‘No, no dude…oh, HA HA’. You know, oh ha ha, you funny, ‘cause you gotta be a good tomboy. And I said, ‘No. I’m in the band. I’m in the opening band’. And they’re, ‘Oh, I see. So which one of your band members do you fuck?’" Though, as a young, sensitive punk rock girl, Naked was hurt and astonished by the incident, she took it the way she tries to take most things, as a lesson she needed to learn at that precise moment. Naked says that it made her extremely conscious of her own behaviour, forcing her to be cautious not to send the wrong messages to people. She is quick to point out that she holds no grudges against the band that taught her that lesson. She has toured with them since without ever mentioning the situation, but she says that the memory of it is still fresh in her mind. Naked takes life lessons very seriously, and she values the experiences she has. She also values her fans. In the early days when she was drinking and living a generally wilder life, she put a stop to it all when she realized that so many of her fans were young. "I’m really glad that I’m not a piss-up ‘cause I was never really good at drinking," Naked says. "I always threw up on myself and I would really hate to be out of control like that." She says that somehow, that kind of behaviour would diminish the strength and honesty of her songs. As a musician, she had no choice, she had become a role model to her young fans, and Naked was determined not to be a bad one. Now Naked is straightedge, and the image of the strong independent woman who is also simply a good person, comes out with as much honesty and purity as in the words she sings. If people still want to believe that Naked is a bitch, the artist won’t be losing any sleep over it. Bif Naked is not someone who can be wrapped in a neat package, labeled and dismissed. She has worked too hard to get where she is today, constantly evolving, running her own label, writing and playing her own music, acting, living. But, at the end of the day, when Naked goes home to her soft spoken boyfriend and her dogs Nicholas and Anastasia, what does she ultimately what for herself? "Enlightenment. I want to be enlightened about everything. I want to finally get it". —April Labine