by Chris Walter
The brutally long summer tour of ’95 began in Pitt Meadows, BC of all places. A young punk named Chris “Dunner” Duncombe, who eventually became the program director for CFOX, promoted the event, which was packed with entertainment-starved kids from the boonies. SNFU moved on for a show at Club Red in Redmond, Washington on July 7th, which was also pleasingly full. Continuing down the West Coast, they stopped in Olympia, Portland, and San Francisco. The show at Casa Royale in Bakersfield was lousy, attended by a few surly locals who just didn’t get it. SNFU played the next three dates with Big Drill Car from Huntington Beach, where Dave Fortune was almost murdered by an enormous Nazi skinhead who was infuriated to discover that the singer of a band he had admired for years turned out to be half-Chinese. Dave didn’t bother to tell the angry skinhead that Chi Pig was also gay. “He would’ve blown his own brains out if he knew that,” says the unamused manager. We should be so lucky.
For this tour, the boys were travelling in style. Not only did they have an extra van, but they were also accompanied by roadie Gentleman Jim, soundman “Brett Lober” Hopkins, and manager Dave Fortune. As before, the smokers rode in one vehicle, and the the non-smokers in the other. Luckily, the numbers were fairly even. One van also towed a trailer containing the musical equipment, which had grown considerably in quantity with the influx of Epitaph bucks.
SNFU moved on to the Troubadour in West Hollywood with Big Drill Car, where Less Than Jake also joined the bill. Unlike some of the dates, this one was absolutely packed, and when Dave Rees bashed something loose in the middle of a song, roadie Gentleman Jim Norton gave the fans something that would haunt them forever. Wearing only a tight leather jockstrap and his Doc Martens shoes, Gentleman Jim rushed onto the stage and bent over to fix Dave’s kit, fully exposing his hairy backside in the process. “As he did it, there was this audible, collective gasp and the entire room went into shock,” laughs Dave Fortune. “Jim had a style all of his own.”
At Soma in San Diego, the promoter casually displayed a .45 pistol and told a frightened Dave Fortune that the band would only receive the minimum guarantee because the show didn’t sell out. Although this was an obvious lie, Dave did not find the courage necessary to argue, and simply took what he could. AFI, who were just starting out and opened for SNFU that night, received even less money from the scumbag promoter.
The show in Costa Mesa on July 18th erupted into a free-for-all when the lone bouncer failed utterly in his efforts to stop various factions from engaging in bloody warfare. SNFU collected the guarantee and moved on without playing a single note. “Somebody pepper-sprayed the shit out of everybody and the place became a toxic waste dump,” recalls Dave Fortune. The band stopped in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, Texas. To Dave Rees, it seemed as if they drove across the huge state for days. “We’d do a show, and I’d wake up the next day and we’d still be in Texas,” the drummer recalls. Stepping on the gas, the boys crossed Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia as quickly as possible to reach Florida. “We couldn’t get through the Deep South fast enough,” recalls Fortune. “The band always had bad times in Alabama and Mississippi.” The engagement in Pensacola sucked, making SNFU wish they hadn’t bothered to drive so far. At least Orlando helped make up for Pensacola. Each date was a gamble.
The tour moved on, zigzagging into Georgia for a show in Atlanta that wasn’t what it could have been. From there the boys hit Columbia, Norfolk, and Washington DC before landing at the Trocadero in Philadelphia for a show with the Bouncing Souls and One Ton Shotgun on August 5th. Here, the band made a critical error in judgment by headlining the event, even though the Bouncing Souls were kings of the roost in those parts. The show was tremendous, or at least it was for the Bouncing Souls. “The kids were singing every song, and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up,” Brett recalls. “It was epic.” Sadly, the club emptied out after the Bouncing Souls played. SNFU hit the stage in an attempt to win people over, but Muc’s guitar was woefully out of tune on the first song, “Rusty Rake.” Worse, they’d turned down an offer to play a festival in Toronto in favour of Philly, so the sting hurt even more. “To be honest, it was a bit of a shock to see people leaving. We’d never encountered that before,” says Dave Rees, who can laugh about it now. Brett Hopkins tries to take responsibility for the blunder, but Muc insists that the call wasn’t Brett’s to make. “That one was on us,” he says, sounding regretful, especially since they had discussed the matter beforehand. The band could only move on.
The show at Coney Island High in New York City was better because SNFU wisely allowed the Bouncing Souls to headline. Bassist/singer Chil Mot and his band One Ton Shotgun performed not only at Coney Island High, but also in New Haven, and at home in Providence. “Chil and Gail are great people,” says Dave Fortune. Moving down the Eastern Seaboard with the Bouncing Souls, SNFU stopped in Boston, Burlington, and Northampton. At this point, Brett Hopkins left SNFU to join NOFX, who were starting a tour in Southern California. He would be on the road for another six weeks.
Finally, after two solid shows with the Bouncing Souls and the Bruisers in Boston, SNFU crossed back into Canada for a string of dates across Ontario and Quebec. They played several shows before returning to Montreal, where they had a few days off. Mina and Renée flew in to see Brent and Marc, which kept them out of trouble for a bit. Brett Hopkins’ replacement Simon Head arrived in town with new guitar tech, Brian “Duckman” Downey, and the pair quickly joined the party. Simon had opted to work for SNFU rather than tour with Red Fisher as their bassist, so Red Fisher replaced him with John Sutton, who would later play for the Weakerthans. Because Simon was also a drummer, Dave Rees had someone to set up and tear down his kit for the first time ever. “It was great because then I could party as soon as the show was over,” says Rees.
Dan DeVloo, who also sold merch on the European leg of the tour, remembers the high demand. “The ‘Open Your Mouth and Say SNFU’ was always the first shirt to sell out,” says DeVloo. “A fan in Germany offered me fifty deutschmarks for a shirt I was wearing from a previous tour. It was fun to see a kid buy a shirt ten times too big for him, and then see the same style on a forty year old fan. Selling merch for SNFU was an experience I’ll always remember.”
Simon Head’s first show was in Quebec City with Trigger Happy on August 18th, 1995. “SNFU had already been on the road for more than a month, and Dan had worked with them before, so I was the new guy for the rest of the tour,” says Simon, although Duckman was also new. As usual, the show in Quebec City wasn’t as full as it could have been, but the band hadn’t expected it to sell out. Nevertheless, Simon was impressed by the band’s efficiency. “They were tuned just like a machine, and every show was incredible,” he recalls.
Duckman freaked out the next day when it turned out that he’d left two guitars in Quebec City. Luckily, the promoter put the instruments on a Greyhound and the band got them back. “He didn’t know our gear yet, so the mistake was totally understandable,” Bunt Belke says graciously. Although Brian, who got the job through Gentleman Jim Norton, remembers being dumbstruck to work with a band he’d admired as a kid, he was also overwhelmed by the large amount of gear. “They had ten guitars and tons of cabinets, and the load in was up two flights of stairs. I thought they’d send me home when I left the guitars behind, but they were cool about it,” he says, remembering the panic he’d experienced.
SNFU left Quebec City for a wild show at Café Campus in Montreal, which was everything the band had come to expect from that fair town. Doubling back to Kitchener, SNFU and Trigger Happy played to a full house before joining the first ever Warped Tour at the CNE Grandstone Exhibit Place in Toronto on August 23rd. Composed mostly of twelve year olds flush with allowance money, the Warped crowd flocked eagerly to the merch tables. Not that SNFU minded, but most of the new fans weren’t born yet when the band formed in 1982.
That night, Simon and several bandmembers ingested a quantity of magic mushrooms and walked several miles fro
m the hotel to Sneaky Dee’s, where they found the other guys drunkenly wrecking the place. “Dave Rees was trying to throw a table through the window, but he was having some problems,” says Simon, who may have been second-guessing his decision to work with the band at that point. “Luckily, the window was covered with bars,” says Bunt, explaining why the table didn’t go through. The wasted musicians somehow made it back to the hotel, and no one went to jail. “The next day, everybody was covered with bruises from bumping into things and falling down,” Simon remembers.
By now, SNFU had proper visas and did not rely on subterfuge to enter the United States. Because of this, it was simple enough to leave Trigger Happy in Canada and cross the border for a show with new tour mates Bracket at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit on August 26th. For some reason, gigs in Detroit were nowhere as good as they’d once been, and the band could only wonder about changing trends and demographics. Moving on to Chicago, SNFU and Bracket shared the bill with ex-TSOL ruffians Joykiller, playing to a large and boisterous crowd.
In Cleveland, Joykiller’s drummer accidentally broke the arm of Bracket’s bass player during a drunken wrestling match. Simon Head filled in for the injured bassist when the tour reached Indianapolis, playing the minimum amount of songs necessary in order for the band to get paid. The tour headed across the heartland, stopping in Lawrence, Kansas where Chi was reunited with Bob, his boyfriend on the side. He was still seeing Lon, but all is fair in love and rock n’ roll.
The tour made several more stops before reaching Salt Lake City on September 9th with Joykiller and Bracket. Then, although SNFU was done with the tour and wanted to go home, Dave Fortune inexplicably booked another date in San Diego. This was the last thing the boys wanted to do, and relations between band and manager reached an all-time low. “We bitched and moaned about the whole thing,” recalls Brent. “We didn’t want to do the show.”
Locked into the gig with no way out, the boys headed southwest, grumbling bitterly all the way. If the thought of driving to San Diego wasn’t bad enough, the driveshaft on Earl Grey fell off somewhere outside Barstow. A driveshaft that separates from the transmission can dig into the road and throw the vehicle into the air like a catapult, but this one broke at the rear axle and merely dragged on the ground, spinning uselessly. Since the shaft had become twisted from bouncing around under the vehicle, mechanics at the garage had no choice but to fashion a new one from old parts. This would take a while, so the band rented another van and continued on to San Diego. The boys were pissed. They’d been on the road for more than two months with very few days off, and this was too much.
Although Muc claims that he and his fellow bandmembers were irritable and grouchy, Simon Head says that SNFU taught him a lot about what it meant to be on tour. “As a guy who has taken other bands on the road, I used a lot of the things I learned from SNFU. They had a code where you didn’t make someone else’s life miserable just because you weren’t happy. They were solid professionals.” One can be sure it wasn’t easy for the guys on this particular occasion.
SNFU arrived in San Diego on September 10th for an outdoor skate show with Down By Law and Sublime that was worth the effort. Dave Rees remembers that, for now, the Belkes wanted to put aside old classics such as “Cannibal Café” and “Victims of The Womanizer.” Although “Time to Buy a Futon” was still on the set list, the Belkes and Chi Pig were tired of the old hits. “Starbuck and I had to fight to get them to play those,” claims Dave Rees. To be fair to the senior members, tunes such as “Drunk On a Bike” and “Big Thumbs” would become classics for newer fans in the same way that “She’s Not on the Menu” and “Cannibal Café” were for older fans. Much later, Chi Pig would bring the old songs back.
Dave Fortune returned to Barstow to wait for the van to be repaired. SNFU went on to Costa Mesa, and this time they actually got to play. The guys were tired when they arrived at The Cattle Club in Sacramento for the final date. The boys expended the last of their energy and flew home, leaving the crew to drive back to Vancouver with the gear. They had already been back for a day by the time Simon dropped off the rented van and caught a flight home to Toronto. After the constant turmoil of touring, Simon was glad for a break from the smelly feet and relentless jokes. A week later, mechanics finally fixed Earl Grey and Dave Fortune made the long drive to Vancouver, hoping the band would cool off if he kept a low profile. He wasn’t aware that they were no longer angry. “We’d driven farther for worse shows,” Marc admits.
On October 10th, 1995, as frost coated most of Canada, SNFU toured across the prairies with all-female Vancouver punkers Ten Days Late, taking Simon Head and Dan DeVloo along as crew members. Singer Renee Poirier of Ten Days Late recalls that Chi Pig could be playful on occasion. Somewhere along the road, the mischievous frontman sat down to eat with the girls. He started off politely but his conversation became increasingly intense. Finally, chewing savagely, the singer asked, “What is your favourite food? Mine is GREEK!” Only about half of the band-members understood what he meant. Then Chi said, “You guys are all lesbians, right?” Renee says she learned more about Chi Pig than the singer did about them from the incident. “He’s like a kitten cannonball—you just never know when he’ll go off.” She also remembers that Rob Johnson sported a large handlebar moustache and a wifebeater, upon which he had written “FREE RIDES” with felt marker.
The two bands eventually arrived in Winnipeg for a show at Ozzy’s with Brand New Unit in the basement of the Osborne Village Inn, where they proceeded to dump more stuff than usual on the dance floor. After blackballing SNFU for years because Chi Pig told them to fuck off when they asked for an interview, MuchMusic even filmed part of the show. “We had to do a lot of sucking up,” says Brent Belke, the distaste apparent in his voice. A band has to do what a band has to do.
Because they were catching a flight to Halifax at 5:00 AM, the guys decided to stay awake drinking all night with Brand New Unit, using empty beer bottles as bowling pins in the hallway. Bowling was great fun and everyone was having a blast, even if the other guests stubbornly refused to join in. “This big half-naked guy came out of his room while Bunt was trying to pull a sconce off the wall in the hallway,” remembers Simon Head. Dan DeVloo recalls the chaos. “We flipped the beds, and we were smashing things. Somebody tried to push over the soda machine, and then the elevator door opened and it was the promoter. We had to pay a bunch of money for damages or they were gonna call the cops.” The drunken bowlers finally headed for the airport, where they boarded a flight for a show at Birdland in Halifax on October 19th.
SNFU fan, Cara McDonald, who was at that show, remembers drinking outside with several members of the band. “My groupie friend wanted to party with them at their hotel across the street, but they just laughed at her and drank all her booze. Chi Pig was wearing some weird zoot suit getup. It seemed so fucking strange at the time.” Cara didn’t know the half of it.
The band hit the Panther Lounge in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Dan DeVloo remembers that Chi snuck into his room and set his alarm clock to go off an hour and a half early. Then the band all laughed when he rushed frantically into the venue, thinking he was late. “Chi Pig was the funniest motherfucker I’d ever met,” says Dan, even if the jokes were often at his expense.
After plundering such far-flung places as Saint John and Moncton, New Brunswick, SNFU munched lobsters, guzzled beer, and played a rash of shows in Nova Scotia before flying back to Winnipeg, where SNFU and Bracket collected their vehicles and headed home. The snow was already falling, and the prairies were chilly, so the guys weren’t overly excited to go out of their way for a show in Kelowna on November 2nd, 1995. All the same, Marc remembers these as good times, and they proceeded towards the venue, unaware of the shit show that was about to occur. Just when they thought they were home free.
The gig went well enough at first, but Chi soon got into it with a thug bouncer who was beating on the kids. A vicious shouting match ensued backstage, and Simon
was trying to close the dressing room door when Brackets’ bass player made the unfortunate decision to question the bouncer’s sexual orientation. The goon freaked out, holding the musicians captive in the dressing room while he pounded on the door and yelled death threats. The bands finally escaped, but Dan DeVloo kicked a hole in the wall when he returned to make sure no gear had been left behind. A loud argument erupted in the parking lot during load out, which can be heard as a negative track on FYULABA. “We went out to the van, and these huge guys had Dave Fortune and Simon cornered,” recounts Dan DeVloo. “I thought I was gonna get the shit kicked out of me,” Simon confirms.
The band proceeded to the hotel, but within hours all the windows in the van were broken. “The guys were cool about me kicking a hole in the wall, but I’m sure that act of vandalism led to another,” Dan DeVloo says ruefully. The goons also broke a window on the van belonging to Bracket, prompting the vengeful musicians to jam the locks on the club with epoxy glue. Then they all got the hell out. “Those goons wanted to kill Chi,” recalls Dave Rees.
Back in Vancouver, the musicians learned that the new album was selling only modestly. While not a flop by punk standards, it was clear that The One Voted Most Likely To Succeed would not be the next Smash. “Artistically, that record was probably a better realized work than the first one was,” says Brett Gurewitz, refusing to view the album in purely commercial terms. On the contrary, Brett feels that it was an aberration for bands such as The Offspring to sell millions of records, and it seemed more natural if his bands didn’t hit that high mark.
Still, one can see that it might have been hard not to compare the two bands in terms of money generated. The boys in the band shivered collectively, wondering what other bad news 1996 might bring.