It’s unlikely Bif Naked will ever inspire the usually clean-cut Canadian Idol hopefuls to riff on her image – be it her penchant for tattoos or growling vocals – when auditioning for the show. And she’s happy to hear that.

“Bless your little heart,” says Bif with a laugh. “But that’s because I’m a hack. A lot of those people are trained and that’s what they’ve always wanted to do. I never did.”

What she wanted was to play shows like tomorrow night’s Bear Children’s Fund New Year Bash at the Shaw Conference Centre. She takes to the stage with Three Days Grace and Social Code.

Performing for about 18 years, and now 35 years old, Bif says she’s lucky to have broken into the music industry when she did. Back in the day, it was all about just playing shows. Now, there’s a bunch of other stuff she’d sooner dispense with.

“Now you have to do a lot of TV shows, especially in America,” she explains. “And you go on these shows and they ask you where you buy your clothes or who your stylist is. I never thought it was that interesting. I’m like, ‘I don’t know; I went to Wal-Mart.’ What can I say? The content is sort of lost on me. People can’t just do a gig anymore; these other things are sort of imposed upon them – and it sort of sucks.”

Playing live shows remains Bif’s forte, only doing TV shows, or even heading into the studio, out of necessity. The machinery of the music industry has always been something she’s recognized and confronted, but Bif says how rapidly it’s changed in the last few years is mind-boggling.

“It’s really hard to sell records, period. There’s no middle ground anymore. You either sell records in 50 Cent numbers or you don’t sell records.”

Bif had to shop around 1998’s I Bificus, for example, after her distribution deal fell through. She knew the writing was on the wall when her label mates in Social Distortion were looking at the same situation.

“And they had what I consider a radio hit. I just thought, ‘Wow, if Social D is getting cut, there ain’t no way I am going to last at this label – and I didn’t. They weren’t going to put my record out, and I wanted to walk away with it.”

Fortunately, says Bif, she’s always been something of a do-it-yourselfer, namely running her own label – Her Royal Majesty’s Records – and licensing her albums to larger labels for distribution. It’s something she says every band or artist should be doing anyway.

As such, Bif doesn’t see the majors as the evil empires they’re often made out to be.

“We need the record companies. You need them to believe in you enough to put marketing money behind you and put ads in the newspaper when you’re coming to town. The record labels are not the bad guy; they’re the big guy we need help with in the school yard. They always get a bad rap.”

So, while she doesn’t think the advent of a “singing contest” like Canadian Idol is necessarily a bad thing, she does think the kids taking part are being deprived of valuable experiences got by battling it out in the trenches. Like the truth of sitting in a van beside your puking drummer.

“There’s something they’ve missed out on,” Bif says. “I don’t mean a good thing, but a real character-building thing. That’s how I see it now – kids are soft.

“But anyone can say that in any industry. But I’m really glad I was able to slug it out in the punk rock clubs.”

Name-dropping Edmonton venues like the Polish Hall and the bygone Bronx, Bif says she’s got a lot of affection for River City. She says one of the best gigs she played last year was NAIT’s Ookfest, and she’s definitely looking forward to tomorrow night’s show, the mosh pit, the crowd, the music.

Beyond that, Bif says she knows with the new year come new year’s resolutions, but she’s always hesitated to make them because she’s never really bought into the idea.

However, and while she’d normally describe herself as being a rather Zen kind of person, she doesn’t mind saying this past year has been among the most stressful she can recall. Back problems with her bichon frise coinciding with Christmas have her resolved to laugh more.

“This spring, my bichon had back surgery, poor little thing. That was tough, because everyone wants you to put your dog down. You take your dogs on tour for two months, they survive everything, and then I get home at Christmas and my dog jimmies her back again. I tell ya, I went from a little tired and a little overwhelmed at Christmas to turning into the biggest panicky stress bucket. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”