Dave Bidini Takes On Sex, Drugs And That Elusive Five Hole

Rheostatic Dave Bidini has exhibited a bookish obsession with Canada's favourite pastime in recent years. He first traded his guitar for a pen and tackled the topic of hockey in 2001 for his book Tropic Of Hockey. That was followed by The Best Game You Can Name last year.

Bidini has just written a third hockey book, though this latest venture is much different than anything he's done in the past. The Five Hole Stories, a collection of erotic shorts, marks Bidini's first foray into fiction — a genre jump that he found more than a little intimidating.

"All the hockey stuff has always been to try and humanize that experience, humanize that realm, because players are rarely portrayed that way," he says. "They're usually cardboard cutouts.

"This was my first kind of accidental, backwards plummet into fiction. My friend had this series of erotic reading nights. I never really would have started unless she asked me to compose a piece. I've always thought it would be best to leave fiction to people who are really committed to the craft."

For the most part, the six tales in The Five Hole Stories have no basis in reality, but Bidini found a bit of encouragement in the numerous legends he's been told over the years by both hockey players and musicians. The story I Am Bobby Wolf was inspired by an anecdote told to him by Bob Segarini about Hall Of Fame winger Bobby Hull.

"Bob Segarini — he was a DJ in Toronto for many years and was in a band called The Whackers," Bidini elaborates.

"When The Whackers would be playing in The Moustache [in Montreal], the hockey players would come over to the club after their games. Bob remembers going up to the second tier of the club, and Bobby Hull sitting there at this big table with all these girls around him, rolling a big fat hash joint. I just remember imagining what life must have been like for a '70s hockey player. It probably would have been pretty good."

Though sex, drugs and hockey seem like an odd mix, Bidini's latest opus has already found fans in Calgary's One Yellow Rabbit acting troupe.

"They were immediately attracted to the idea, because they're a salacious and strange group of people," Bidini says. "They were somehow easily able to envision it as highly adaptable."

Bidini worked with One Yellow Rabbit to create a Five Hole Stories stage production that will appear at Calgary's High Performance Rodeo in January. Bidini won't act with the troupe, but he assembled a makeshift band that will be responsible for the score, and he suspects that their performance will somehow be worked into the narrative.

"It's me, Selina Martin, Ford Pier and Barry Mirochnick as the drummer. I think we're going to be wound into each little vignette somehow, but we don't know exactly how yet. But, hopefully, we'll be up there."Bidini threw this group of musicians together for a very specific project, but he's enjoying the experience so much that he sees the configuration lasting past the play.

"We've recorded seven songs for the stage production and they all sound really good, so I'm thinking, at some level, maybe a musical co-operative or band — it probably will be a band — will evolve from this."

A new band for Bidini comes none too soon, as The Rheostatics have announced that they'll play their final show in March at Toronto's Massey Hall. Though the group have declared that this will officially be the end of the familiar Rheostatics lineup, Bidini now seems fairly certain that the band will continue in some yet-to-be-determined form.

"I think one of the best things a band can do is announce that they're going to break up because, all of a sudden, all of these interesting projects start to come down the pipe. There are a few larger, epic multimedia things that are in the offing. It's a project that's perfect for a band like The Rheostatics, if not The Rheostatics themselves. I had always kind of thought that after March 30 there wouldn't really be any kind of configuration. But now, I'm having second thoughts about that."

Bidini is also working on a solo album, but doesn't expect it to be released for another year.

Toronto's Gladstone Hotel will host the official launch of The Five Hole Stories on Dec. 5. Bidini will read from his collection with the help of sketch troupe The Imponderables.