CREDIT: COCO AND KENSINGTON PHOTOGRAPHY
Between two books, a podcast, a CBD line, and new music, Canadian rock icon Bif Naked has plenty of new projects.

When speaking to Canadian rock icon Bif Naked, it’s not asking what she’s up to lately. Rather, it’s like what isn’t she up to?

A Feb. 17 press release sent to Interrobang announced her latest projects, including her new single “Jim” and its accompanying music video.

She just finished a book of poetry, and is working on a new book to help patients and their families navigate through cancer treatment in Canada’s health care system. Naked’s also got the CBD line Monalisa Healing and the New Riot Girls podcast series on the go.


“If you’re a freelancer or if you’re a self-employed artist, your workday is usually 22 hours a day,” she told Interrobang.

Some days, she’ll work on a short story on her computer, then answer emails, post social media, and then rehearse with her guitar player and husband, Steve “Snake” Allen.  

“Other things do take second fiddle and sometimes it’s relationships, and it gets hard to balance it, but I feel really lucky that I’ve been able to somehow manage for my entire adult life to just live as a working artist,” she said. “It’s not always easy and certainly, in this day in age when music is basically free, it’s hard to make a living, but you just have to never quit, never give up, and just keep going.” 

“Jim” is the first single from her 11th studio release Champion. Naked picked “Jim” as a lead single because she felt it sets the album’s tone. Doug Fury, a Fanshawe College graduate, co-wrote and produced the lead single. He began playing with Naked in 1996, toured with her for nearly 12 years and co-wrote her song “Tango Shoes.”  

“To come full circle and start writing with Doug again has really made all the difference for me as an artist,” Bif said. “I really feel like I’m in a really good place artistically and I’m really excited about the songs and about the sounds and I have to say Doug is a very massive part of that.”

Calling herself “a mature student of life,” the album title Champion reflects Naked’s feeling about her career and her personal life.   

“I’ve been making music and performing for 30 years. I never thought that I would even live this long, never mind be able to still go on tour and perform on stage,” she said. “I do feel like a champion at this point in my life and I just think that anything we survive — whether it is, in my case, breast cancer or divorce or whatever the case — I just think that it only really does make us stronger, hopefully smarter, but ultimately it makes us more resilient.”

Along with breast cancer, she also had heart surgery and kidney failure. She’s embraced a straight-edge lifestyle since her 20s, and found out during her cancer treatment that other women undergoing chemotherapy were using CBD to cope with the side-effects — and this was before Canada legalized cannabis.  

Naked said that while some use CBD to cope with epilepsy, anxiety, arthritis, and other health issues, others are nervous to try CBD because of they’re worried about the THC in cannabis.  Her mother, who broke her hip last year, was one of them.

“She could have really benefited in her recovery utilizing CBD but of course, she’s afraid of THC,” she explained. “There wasn’t a product on the market that I could recommend to her as her daughter that I could say definitively, does not have THC in it or was pure oil and didn’t have any blended oils in it.”

She was then inspired to create her own product, which was tested in three government-approved labs. The Monalisa Healing products are vegan, organic, cruelty-free and hemp-based. The experience taught her a lot.

“I have not ever been in the cannabis industry at all and you can’t really have a conversation about CBD without including cannabis, even though my particular product is hemp,” she said. “I’m still the same square, but I’m making a product that’s for squares.”

Naked will stop at London’s Aeolian Hall on Feb. 29 during the Stories and Songs acoustic tour. The first artist she ever managed, 20-year-old Delyn Grey, will open for her.

Naked’s set list will be a collection of songs from the past 10 albums and the stories behind them. She compared playing the acoustic sets to running what she called “an emotional three-ring circus” while making plenty of jokes. She likes to tease Snake by joking she’ll do an interpretive dance on stage.

“I mean, I probably won’t do interpretive dancing, but you never know. I may or may not do a costume change on stage and I did promise him that I would probably sing a song with a paper bag over my head. I’m not sure yet,” she said. “It’s very vaudevillian. It’s a bit like a cabaret show and we have loads of fun.”

No official release date has been set for the Champion album yet, but Naked’s aiming for a late summer release. More information about the “Lucky” singer and her upcoming show can be found on aeolianhall.ca/events/bif-naked-songs-stories-2020-tour.

PHOTOS BELOW COURTESY OF COCO AND KENSINGTON PHOTOGRAPHY Click on the thumbnails below to view a larger version of each image.