by Chris Walter
SNFU travelled south for a show in Bremerton, Washington, which is only accessible by ferry unless one takes the long way around. Since they were already running late, Brett positioned the van so they would be the first off the ferry when it docked. Due to a malfunction, however, the main gate would not open, and all the vehicles had to reverse from the ferry through a rear gate. Not only did Brett have to back up the van but the trailer as well, and a ferry worker made the job that much more frustrating by guiding him along foot-by-foot, even though he clearly didn’t need help. Rob Johnson, sitting in the passenger seat, expressed amazement that Brett didn’t jump out and punch the guy in the face. As a crew-member, Brett was already learning how to practice restraint.
After a decent show in Eugene, the band stopped to see a close friend in Sparks, which is a small town outside of Reno. Instead of playing Reno the guys drove to San Francisco, where they spent the night. They left the next day for a poorly attended gig at Jerry’s Pizza in Bakersfield. “It sucked balls,” said Brett, failing to give the show a whitewash. Again, the contrast between the good engagements and the bad ones was unnerving.
At the Troubadour in LA , Brett Gurewitz watched his newest band critically. The record mogul obviously felt that SNFU had what it took to go the distance. In fact, everything Brett saw that night led him to believe that he had a winner. Something Green and Leafy This Way Comes wasn’t selling all that well, but maybe the next album would. “That show was awesome,” remembers Brett Hopkins.
Brent remembers talking to Dexter Holland at the Epitaph office, and was amazed that the frontman was so calm about the late release of The Offspring’s new album Smash, which they had recorded more than nine months ago. “He didn’t seem too upset, but maybe he was just hiding it well,” guesses Bunt, who won the office lottery by guessing that Smash would sell more than 80,000 copies in one week. The success of that album would transform Epitaph into a bigger, wealthier machine.
The band left town for Salt Lake City the next day, but Brent wanted to stay behind to hang out with Xina. As it turned out, he spent most of his time trying to pick up the tour jackets Epitaph had commissioned for the band, driving all over LA in the process. Weather was also a factor, and his flight at LAX was delayed. The band waited anxiously. Brent missed soundcheck, and was so late by the time he finally landed that booking agent Stormy Shepherd had to pick him up from the airport. “The guys were not happy with me at all,” says the guitarist, remembering the scowls he received. He barely remembers the show.
The next day, frowns turned to laughter when the boys saw the quilted navy blue Dickies-style tour jackets. The Hispanic garment workers, who had relayed the information over the phone, couldn’t pronounce the letter “v,” so the embroidering on the backs of the jackets was spelled incorrectly. Because of the miscommunication, Dave Rees had become “Dabey Boy,” and Brett, whose nickname at the time was “Brett Lover,” was now “Brett Lober.” The other guys found this extremely amusing, and Dave and Brett were stuck with new nicknames. “We didn’t like them much, but that’s what makes a nickname great for everyone else,” says Brett, who shed the tag and became “Limo” after finding employment as soundman for NOFX in early 1994. He still has his jacket.
The Bouncing Souls joined SNFU for the show in Salt Lake City that night, and the two bands left town afterwards, stopping outside Las Vegas to take pictures on the Hoover Dam. Thanks to Osama bin Laden, vehicles are no longer allowed to stop on the massive structure. From there, they played Phoenix, Arizona and Austin, Texas before making a “wickedly long drive” all the way to the Somber Reptile in Atlanta, where the boys found a great strip club down the street from the venue. “We finally noticed we were the only white people in the place, but everybody was cool because they somehow figured out we were Canadian,” says Brett. “We were culturally amazed by the strippers in America—the way they put their ass in your face and shake that fuckin’ thing!” The show that night wasn’t as fun for Brett because he had to go into the crowd to retrieve several props stolen from the stage. “Something went missing and I almost got into a scrap, which kinda sucked for me.” After the gig, the promoter tried but failed to cheat them.
At the venue in Lawrence, Kansas, Chi Pig hit it off famously with a soundman and musician named Bob. The pair conspired to see each other as much as possible during the next several years, but obviously they couldn’t get together very often. The singer thinks that Bob just might have been his one true love. They would eventually live together for two years before slowly drifting apart. Despite his many thousands of fans, Chi Pig has lived a lonely existence.
SNFU and the Bouncing Souls moved across the Midwest and down the Eastern Seaboard, hitting the usual places along the way. “The Bouncing Souls were awesome, and we became friends right away,” says Dave Fortune. Some of the shows were great, but others not as much. “The punk intelligentsia such as Maximum Rock & Roll loved them, but maybe they were slightly less melodic than the music that was becoming trendy in Southern California at the time,” says Brett Gurewitz. “To me, SNFU was completely compatible, but then again, I grew up on Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys.” Fans of Green Day and The Offspring were less likely to appreciate SNFU.
Gentleman Jim Norton joined the tour in Salt Lake City. “Jim earned the title of World’s Slowest Roadie on that tour,” recalls Brett Hopkins. “He was super professional, but he was so slow that I had to jump in sometimes, even though I wasn’t supposed to.” Jim Norton, with his wire frame glasses and hairline so low it almost met his eyebrows, introduced the band each night wearing a tight Speedo swimsuit and Doc Martens shoes. “He looked like a bear, and he’d get up there and yell ‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, SNFU!’ That was his deal,” says Brett.
Despite the spotty attendance, Brett Hopkins reports that SNFU was a powerful force. “At that point, SNFU was like a well-oiled machine. As a sound guy, it was so great to mix them in the small clubs,” remembers Brett. “They were playing songs from the next album like ‘Rusty Rake’ and ‘Eric’s Had a Bad Day.’ The kids always got a great ninety-minute show.”
The boys were almost involved in a bad collision in the American Midwest with Gentleman Jim driving. In near whiteout conditions, Jim attempted to pass a semi-trailer and the trailer full of gear behind the van jackknifed, causing them to do a complete 360° facing the ditch. “We stopped at the next gas station and bought new tires because ours were almost bald,” says Muc. The brush with death or serious injury was a sobering experience.
After stopping in Detroit, the boys crossed into Canada for a show at The Campus Café in Montreal on December 2nd, where Chi Pig changed Brett’s nickname to “Monsieur Lobier.” As anticipated, the venue was crowded to capacity, and the band responded with a fiery performance. SNFU fan Chantal Montreuil remembers the action that night. “The pit was one of the most vicious I’ve ever seen, and I could have sworn that somebody jumped from the balcony into the pit. I hope not because that balcony was pretty high.” After a sweaty and violent encore, the musicians and crew partied into the early hours, drinking more than was healthy or wise. Some nights were like that.
Dave Fortune was nowhere to be found when the boys awoke the next morning, but they eventually located him in a house near Fairmont Bagel on 74th Avenue. Although he was in bad shape, Dave phoned the promoter in Ottawa to confirm the next show, only to be told that the gig was cancelled because they hadn’t sold enough advance tickets. The problem was resolved when SNFU agreed to scrap the guarantee and play for a percentage of the door. Although they would have loved to nurse their hangovers instead, the boys drove all the way to Ottawa for a sweaty show with Alice Donut. When it was all over, the promoter suddenly wanted to reinstate the guarantee so he could keep more money for himself. Dave Fortune and a member of Alice Donut argued loudly with the slimeball, who flew into a terrible rage and threw the money on the floor, a sore loser to the end.
The boys recovered the next night for a show at The Embassy in London
, Ontario. To the delight of everyone present, Stephen Moses from Alice Donut joined SNFU with his trombone for a lively rendition of “Watering Hole. “ That was awesome,” recalls Brent. They moved out the next day, wishing that home wasn’t quite so far .
December 4th found SNFU at the Palladium in Toronto. From there, the guys moved west, city by city, stopping in Thunder Bay before reaching Winnipeg for a half-empty gig. “Shows in Winnipeg weren’t as good in those days,” Bunt muses. “It just kinda stopped happening for us there in the early ‘90s.”
Regardless, the band forged on, hitting the usual places, but going out of their way for a show in Kamloops, where Tim Chiba and the Holowaychuks always treated them well. Finally, in mid-December of 1993, SNFU arrived home in Vancouver, grateful for the light rain and temperate climate.
Basically homeless now, Brent and Dave Rees checked into the Granville Hotel because Dave Fortune, who billeted rock groups there, got them a discount rate. SNFU would be leaving for Europe in several weeks, so it didn’t make sense to rent an apartment. As touring musicians, they were adapting to the lifestyle.
One afternoon five days later, the pair went to a hockey game with Starbuck, where Ed Banger, who had promoted SNFU’s first gig in Vancouver back in 1985, gave them approximately fifty beer tickets. The boys had such a great time that they decided to drive to Edmonton to see the game the next day. First they went to a house party, but after narrowly missing a road check, Brent stopped drinking and sobered up a little before they left. The trio stopped to get some sleep somewhere along the way, and by the time they rolled into town, Starbuck decided to spend Christmas with his family instead. They dropped him off, and then Dave Rees also decided to bail. Unfortunately, no one was home at Dave’s house, so Bunt left him in the enclosed porch and went to the bar to collect his thoughts. There, he saw Dave’s dad, who somewhat reluctantly went home to greet his son. “I didn’t want to go to the game alone, so I went home too,” says Brent. Marc was also there, and the brothers spent Christmas together before returning to Vancouver in Earl Grey.
Back at home, Marc, Brent, and the other musicians hurriedly prepared to leave for Europe. This time, they packed a large number of shirts printed in a wide variety of designs. Merch was the bread-and-butter for most touring bands, but the band had funding from Epitaph now and wasn’t dependent on shirt sales to put gas in the tank. Although SNFU took time out to party on New Year’s Eve, they were back at work the next day, preparing for the upcoming tour.
1994 was shaping up to be a very active year for SNFU, the busiest they would ever know. After the European tour, they would return for a full American tour in the early summer, followed by yet another trip to Europe in the fall, this time in support of Bad Religion and Green Day. Somewhere, amidst all this activity, they still had to find time to write and record their next album. Had they stopped to think about how much work was involved, they might very well have keeled over dead. “Exhaustion,” contrary to popular belief, is not always a euphemism for “fucked up on drugs.”
Tired or not, SNFU flew to Frankfurt, Germany on January 12th, 1994. Although Epitaph helped with equipment and merchandise, the band organized the tour through Dave Pollock, the German booking agent with Destiny International. Crowded into one smelly van, along with all the musical gear, were the five musicians, Monk the roadie, road manager Fitzjoy Hellin, and his current girlfriend, who worked the merch table off and on. If Rob Johnson had expected to travel like a rock star, he was sorely disappointed. Fitzjoy, on the other hand, would soon find work managing The Offspring, a position he holds to this day.
The winter tour of 1994 was in vast contrast to the next trip SNFU would make to Europe only seven months later. “It was… crowded,” ventures Bunt, making the understatement of the year. After several shows, they realized that merch wasn’t moving as fast as it once had. In 1988, band T-shirts were still fairly new and everyone wanted them. Now, at every show, dozens of different styles and designs were available for the discerning concertgoer. “The shirts kinda became like this albatross around our necks,” recalls Bunt. “I understand that merch is necessary, but sometimes I fucking hated it,” adds Muc.
Not that it was really a problem, but the leftover booze from each rider began to pile up. “You couldn’t just throw it away,” says Rob Johnson, who was the only band member capable of drinking Kriek, the cherry beer so popular in Belgium. “We had cases of the stuff, but I couldn’t drink it fast enough.”
Not only were they tight for space, but Fitzjoy and his girl, whom he had met just recently, soon began to quarrel. The band wasn’t selling a lot of merch, so they didn’t really need her around. Monk began to petition against the young woman, even offering to run the merch table along with his other duties. “She wasn’t having fun, so she started drinking more. I think she was mostly toughing it out to prove something to Fitzjoy,” theorizes Brent. “She was nice and everything, but we were just a bunch of smelly guys in a van.”
Moving through Spain and Italy, the musicians were crowded during the day but slept in hotels at night, where they at least had room to stretch. “Spain was always great to us,” recalls Rob Johnson. While the hotel bills cut heavily into the money they could have taken home, the guys—with the exception of Rees and Johnson—were in their thirties now, and had paid their dues. SNFU would sleep on a tour bus the next time they were in Europe, which saved them money, even if the bus cost more to rent than a van did. “We’d only be in the hotels maybe four or five hours, so it was a big waste of money,” explains Bunt.
Finally, towards the end of the tour, Fitzjoy and his girl parted company, and not on the best of terms. By now, the cramped conditions were really starting to wear on the musicians, so they were happy for even the tiny bit of extra room her departure afforded. SNFU finished the last few engagements and flew home on March 22nd. While the tour was a success and the band made money, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience.
Back in Canada, SNFU did not have time to relax. Rather, they had to finish writing the material that would appear on The One Voted Most Likely To Succeed. While they were already playing songs such as “Eric’s Had a Bad Day,” “Rusty Rake,” and “Drunk On a Bike,” they still needed a couple more. After looking around a bit, the band found a cheaper rehearsal spot at Renegade Studios across from the Astoria Hotel on Hastings Street. The move from the West Side to the Downtown Eastside was no huge deal, but they did check to make sure the place was equipped with a sturdy steel door. Here at the new rehearsal spot, the band went to work, fitting lyrics with riffs to make complete songs.
Still homeless, Brent alternated between Dave Fortune’s couch and his brother’s house, moving on when he sensed his hosts were becoming annoyed with him. He and Dave Rees eventually found accommodations with Brent’s friend Garnet Harry, who lived in Kitsilano. The arrangement was temporary at best, which would have been difficult for anyone but touring musicians. They didn’t plan to stick around town any longer than absolutely necessary.
Meanwhile, the Wheat Chiefs attempted to stir up major label attention by bringing Ed Dobek to Vancouver for a Music West showcase at the Commodore on May 13th, 1994. They followed the show with a trip to the Lingerie Club in Holly-wood, where they performed for a number of important music industry types. This time, sadly, the Wheat Chiefs failed to capture the enthusiasm of the bigwigs, and the window of opportunity abruptly slammed shut. The A&R guy who first approached them was no longer with Mercury, and the fickle nature of the music business made it difficult for any band to negotiate the endless hurdles on the road to success. Indeed, that path was rife with landmines and punji traps.
Although disappointed, the Belkes continued to work in coordination with booking agents who were busy plotting the SNFU summer tour. The boys also played several local shows before Brent flew to LA to visit Xina, whom he was still dating off and on. “I saw Brett Gurewitz in LA, and he asked me why I wasn’t writing songs with the band,” Bunt laughs. Muc remembers sittin
g alone with his guitar, working on new riffs and thinking about the things he’d seen and done in the last several years. While there were worse things in life than cooking at Earls, that job would never have taken him to Spain or Italy.
The time passed quickly, and soon SNFU was on the road again. On this tour, Gentleman Jim Norton drove a rented van pulling the gear in a trailer, and Brett “Monsieur Lobier” Hopkins piloted Earl Grey. This time, the smokers and the non-smokers were divided between the two vehicles, which provided much relief for the non-smokers. After stopping in Calgary on June 1st, the boys hit Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg in quick succession. From there, they continued east, landing in Thunder Bay and Sault St Marie. The show in Hamilton was cancelled for some reason, but the boys carried on to London, Guelph, and Toronto with barely a pause. From Toronto, SNFU wound their way to Montreal for a show at the Spectrum with Voivod, who weren’t living quite as high on the hog these days. The reemergence of punk and the rise of grunge had put the bite on ticket sales. In fact, promoters took Voivod off the bill at the last minute. The boys would be back later though, and metal would rise again.
Although the dates in Quebec City and Trois Riviéres weren’t completely packed, they were full enough to make the trip worthwhile. From there, SNFU made the long drive all the way to the East Coast. The show in Fredericton was crowded and loud, just the way everyone liked them. “SNFU was easily my all-time favourite Canadian band ever. Great people to work with, and great entertainers,” says Fredericton promoter Matt Carter, who was also a fan.
SNFU pushed on to Halifax before crossing into the USA for a show on June 24th at Club Babyhead in Providence, Rhode Island, which was full to bursting with enthusiastic young people. “Providence was always really good to us for some reason,” muses Rob Johnson, baffled by the capriciousness of his band’s popularity. As was customary in Providence, they stopped to say hello to Chil Mot and Gail Greenwood, friends they had made on a previous tour. Gail’s band Belly made the cover of Rolling Stone later that year, but the group broke up in ’96, after which she joined L7 and Bif Naked’s band. “Gail was an actual rock star, but she was totally down-to-earth and cool,” says Brett Hopkins. Starbuck remembers that Greenwood wore an SNFU shirt when Belly appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.