Despite everything that she’s been through, Canadian punk singer Bif Naked is still here.
“I’ve been a recording artist and a performance artist for over 30 years, and playing, touring, playing, touring, performing,” she said. “And then I got breast cancer at 36, and then I went through all the treatment and the harrowing experience with that — I didn’t croak. “Then I have a stroke, and then I have to have heart surgery. Harrowing, harrowing — I didn’t croak.”
The fact that the “I Love Myself Today” artist is still in the game after health scares is admirable enough on its own. But it’s just a footnote in the story of her life, explored in the upcoming documentary Bif Naked, which premieres at the Calgary International Film Festival this September.
“It’s incredible how it all came together,” said Naked. “It’s been a real journey, and going through all of the footage and footage I never knew existed. There was no digital presence when I started out, and for most of my career, there has been no social media. It was like watching my own eulogy.”
The documentary explores how Naked carved her own path in the punk rock scene, right from the very beginning.
“[The] filmmakers want to do a documentary regarding my story of origin, so being born in India and being adopted, and all these kinds of different trials and tribulations,” she says. “Trying to find my birth mom and all these romantic, terrible things that happened throughout my life of misadventure.
“It’s hard for me to watch my birth mom talk. I cried throughout the whole thing,” she continues. “I hope that my fans are moved and find it touching, and I hope that they learn stuff about my birth mom and about that whole aspect of my story.”
From her birth in India and her adoption by American United Methodist missionaries to losing her friends and collaborators, Naked’s life has been anything but easy. But despite the hardships, she still loves the punk rock scene, because it makes a difference.
“We’re going to live in poverty. We die in poverty. We don’t care. We’re artists,” she said. “We still do this because we love it. We still have this utopian idea where we still love the world, and we’re still like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna go and we’re still gonna go march, and we’re still gonna shout about it, and we’re still gonna try our best, but at the end of the day, we’re still gonna skateboard.’”
Punk creates a culture of speaking up against injustice. Being a bisexual woman herself, the trends of politics in Canada and the U.S. surrounding 2SLGBTQIA+ issues are weighing heavily on Naked’s mind.
“What a mess. It makes me cry, because I just think, ‘How on earth can they be going backwards in 2025?’” she says. “If I had children and I had a daughter or a son who was gay, or if I had a trans kid … Where do you go? How do you keep your kid safe?”
And though things may seem bleak to Calgary locals, to others, it’s a light in the darkness. “My bestie from Vancouver … bought a townhouse in Calgary as a backup plan for them and their wife, because they say that they’re going to retire in Calgary if the world goes completely batshit, which it has now. Calgary is their safe haven,” she said.
Naked has toured worldwide and all across Canada, but Calgary, her “favourite city other than Ottawa,” gets the privilege of hosting the world premiere of her documentary.
“I have a long relationship with Calgary. The first time I played in Calgary was in 1989 with my band, Gorilla Gorilla,” she said. “Calgary has always been very, very important to me. My late guitar player, J.D. Eckstrom, is from Calgary. I could not be more tickled than to come to Calgary with this film.”
Bif Naked is about more than just a celebration of the figure that graced our screens on Much Music throughout the 2000s. It’s about acknowledging the past and all that it teaches us.
“Many of us, as we become adults, talk about how we never healed our ‘child wound’,” says Naked. “You know, we never healed our ‘child happy’ either.”
Catch Bif Naked’s documentary on September 18 (CIFF’s opening night) at the Globe. Tickets available at ciffcalgary.ca. Read more of The Scene’s conversation with Bif Naked here.
