This is the LONG VERSION of the BC Bat Benefit press release! A short version has also been sent out...
For immediate release: First Annual BC Bat Benefit to raise money for and awareness of BC's struggling bat population. Event page here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/
Event in brief:
BC Bats are in crisis, with problems due to habitat loss, predation by housepets, declining insect numbers, and other man-made factors already making the situation dire before the arrival of White Nose Syndrome (WNS), which can wipe out whole roosts while they hibernate. The fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome, Pd (for Pseudogymnoascus destructans), which was accidentally brought into North America from Europe, has now been found in BC, and will likely further deplete bat populations. The Community Bat Programs of BC have enthusiastically welcomed the idea of a bat benefit, and Regional Coordinator Brynne Graham is preparing a presentation on bats.
Origins of the event: The organizer of the BC Bat Benefit, Allan MacInnis, had written a song with NO FUN called "If I Was a Bat" https://atomicwerewolf.bandcamp.com/track/if-i-was-a-bat and has a long, fond history with bats. After discovering that a 2024 concert he had organized, which already involved songs about bats, coincidentally took place during International Bat Week (October 24th-31st), MacInnis decided to organize an actual bat benefit for the Community Bat Programs of BC. This year is the first official BC Bat Benefit.
Event details: The concert this year will be held on Sunday, from 2pm to 6pm, at LanaLou's Rock'n'Roll Eatery (362 Powell), and will involve headliners NO FUN, Victoria-based band Hüskee Düde (Nick Venditti of Gnash Rambler, Little Guitar Army, and others); Sister DJ and the Hired Hand, fronted by Jill Mandrake of Sister DJ's Radio Band; and Rowan Lipkovits (Creaking Planks/ Accordion Noir). More on the artists below!
Admission is $20 at the door. The venue is all-ages and kids are welcome, BUT NOTE that the event is designed with a mature, sophisticated audience (albeit ones who enjoy, at times, immature and/or frivolous songs) and there may be profanity, eccentricity, and "mature themes" during the course of the night. After covering costs and a small honorarium to performers, proceeds will be donated to the Community Bat Programs of BC.
Event page here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/
Origins of the event: The organizer of the BC Bat Benefit, Allan MacInnis, had written a song with NO FUN called "If I Was a Bat" https://atomicwerewolf.bandcamp.com/track/if-i-was-a-bat and has a long, fond history with bats. After discovering that a 2024 concert he had organized, which already involved songs about bats, coincidentally took place during International Bat Week (October 24th-31st), MacInnis decided to organize an actual bat benefit for the Community Bat Programs of BC. This year is the first official BC Bat Benefit.
Event details: The concert this year will be held on Sunday, from 2pm to 6pm, at LanaLou's Rock'n'Roll Eatery (362 Powell), and will involve headliners NO FUN, Victoria-based band Hüskee Düde (Nick Venditti of Gnash Rambler, Little Guitar Army, and others); Sister DJ and the Hired Hand, fronted by Jill Mandrake of Sister DJ's Radio Band; and Rowan Lipkovits (Creaking Planks/ Accordion Noir). More on the artists below!
Admission is $20 at the door. The venue is all-ages and kids are welcome, BUT NOTE that the event is designed with a mature, sophisticated audience (albeit ones who enjoy, at times, immature and/or frivolous songs) and there may be profanity, eccentricity, and "mature themes" during the course of the night. After covering costs and a small honorarium to performers, proceeds will be donated to the Community Bat Programs of BC.
Event page here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/
Allan MacInnis and friends
Event in full/ Backstory:
1. Why Bats? The origins of "If I Was a Bat" and the BC Bat Benefit
Allan MacInnis is the BC Bat Benefit event organizer and co-author, with David M., of the lyrics to NO FUN's "If I Was a Bat". He's long been fond of bats: "As a child, growing up in Maple Ridge in the 1970s, pre-Internet, one of the things some of the neighbourhood kids used to do for cheap entertainment was to go out into the parking lot of a local bar and throw pebbles in the air to see if the bats flying overhead would mistake them for bugs and swoop for them. Back then, there were plenty of bats to be seen, and it was fun to interact with them and see them dive. We made a contest of it: success meant getting the bat to dive and/or catch the rock. I hope none of the bats were hurt when they discovered what they thought was a fat flying insect was actually a small stone!"
Later in life, MacInnis would enjoy seeing our local bats swooping around under streetlights, hunting for moths and mosquitoes (and a plethora of other insects). When he moved to Japan for three years, 1999-2002, he found they also had lots of bats. "I would always be very aware of as I rode my bike through country roads on the way home from work, between rice paddies and bamboo groves; sometimes they would swoop quite close to you, so you did kind of notice them: 'Duck, it's a bat!' It was then, dodging bats on my evening commute, that I had the idea for a song lyric in which I imagined myself as a bat. I kind of envisioned it as a bluegrass song, originally: 'If I was a bat, girl, would you still love me?' It seemed important that it not be in the subjunctive mood, since a real bluegrass musician wouldn't sing, 'If I were a bat,' you know?"
Flash forward to 2017, when the "If I Was a Bat" author discovered he had squamous cell cancer on his tongue. "My girl Erika Lax and I were going to get married, and we had to move the date up, because we wanted to be married before I went in for surgery, which was going to remove a part of my tongue. I wanted to give her a memorable wedding gift, and I needed a best man for our wedding. So I asked my friend David M., of the so-called 'Beatles of Surrey', NO FUN, if he'd be my best man and write music for and perform 'If I Was a Bat' at my wedding. He did! His music was different from the peppy bluegrass tune I'd initially imagined but it worked perfectly and has become definitive."
David M., founder of NO FUN, the headliners of the BC Bat Benefit, writes: "I was surprised to get an email with a set of song lyrics from Allan MacInnis a few weeks before his wedding in March of 2017. The lyrics came with a request to set them to music so as to be performed by me at the reception as part of my contribution as best man at the wedding. I didn't change a word, including the 'Eep Eep Eep Eep, Eep Eep Eep' part, which stayed at 4 eeps then 3 eeps, and I emailed a demo version of the new song back to Allan about an hour after I got the lyrics. The demo didn't change much by Allan and Erika's wedding day, and it hasn't changed since. I know Allan had something different in mind for a musical setting, something more like boilerplate ragtime, but I think the intent of his lyrics was better served with another musical approach."
The first public performance of the song was on March 18th, 2017, in Duncan, BC, mostly in front of Erika Lax's relatives, many of whom were conservative Brits. M. says now of the performance: "When I played the song at the wedding reception, I sort of enjoyed the mild apprehension of the wedding guests about what they were about to hear. I mean, the groom and the best man wrote a song? Oh, no... but they relaxed almost immediately once the song started and they realized it would be pleasant and touching, and then very amusing with the eeps. It was a great moment in a great day. Thanks, bats!"
"It was perfect", MacInnis remembers. "I was nervous that I was going to be left speechless by my tongue surgery, where I'd only be able to express myself with sounds, not words, hence the 'Eep eep eep' chorus, so the lyric totally fit. How would Erika feel about having a husband who couldn't speak? Luckily my surgery went better than I had feared, so I can get onstage now with David and help with the eeps, which I did not in fact do at the wedding. But it was really fun to see David walking between the tables of the wedding guests in troubador mode. He did other songs, too, like a mixup of Bruce Springsteen's 'If I Should Fall' with Ben E. King's 'Stand By Me', but the bat song was the highlight, and I was delighted when, later that year, David performed it when he opened for Marshall Crenshaw at the Rickshaw. He reported that he could see Crenshaw chuckling at the side of the stage."
More on that story here: https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2024/10/why-bats-story-of-if-i-was-bat-my.html
"If I Was a Bat" remains a staple of NO FUN live sets, and was performed at LanaLou's in multiple versions in 2024 at the 20th anniversary of MacInnis' blog, along with other batty contributions (like Rowan Lipkovits doing the Sesame Street song "The Batty Bat"). Members of his wife's family attended, hearing "If I Was a Bat" live for the second time in their lives. Local photographer Gord McCaw was on hand to document the event.
The event planted an idea in MacInnis' head: to hold another concert explicitly understood as a BC Bat Benefit, to raise money for and awareness of the plight of BC bats. Because he had known for years that something was amiss with BC's bat population. The once-plentiful bats that swooped around streetlights were few and far between. One evening in 2012, he had walked out into the countryside looking for bats, photographing streetlights as he went north on 224th. There were no bats to be seen; this was the topic of a blogpost entitled "Batquest 2012: Where have all the bats gone?" https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2012/05/batquest-2012-where-have-all-bats-gone.html Colony collapse disorder among bees was already getting attention, but no one seemed that concerned about local bats.
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2. BC's Bats in Crisis
Brynne Graham is the Regional Coordinator for the Metro Vancouver-Squamish Community Bat Program of BC. and an enthusiastic supporter of the BC Bat Benefit, not just as a potential fundraiser, but as a way of widening the conversation about bats, which, she says, are a stigmatized, misunderstood animal. Most of the calls that BC Bats get are people who are worried that they have bats on their property, and are along the lines of "how do we get rid of them" or "Is it safe?"
"It's shocking how many people still really dislike bats! We get contacted all the time about having bats living on the side of their home, in their barn, on their property, things like that. The biggest thing that people can do if they do have bats is, allow them to stay. Bats really are not problematic to have living around your home, as long as they're not getting inside. And I think that's a big misunderstanding that people have: they think that, you know, so many bats carry rabies, it's not worth the risk. Or people think that bats do damage to structures, and they don't; they're incapable of chewing or digging or damaging anything. So allowing them to stay if you have them is definitely the biggest thing, because it allows the population to remain in a safe spot that they've likely been using for years, sometimes for decades."
Another positive thing people can do is combat disinformation by talking about bats. People think that bats are "flying rats", but they aren't even rodents; as part of the order chiroptera (from the Greek for "hand wing"), not only are they the only true flying mammal, they're more closely related to cats and dogs and other carnivores than they are to mice or rats. And less than 1% of bats in the wild test positive for rabies. Finally, of course, bats are long associated with vampires, but in fact, BC bats are more likely to prevent your blood loss by eating mosquitoes, since Canada's bats are entirely insectivorous.
Brynne Graham continues: "The more we don't recognize their importance and continue to spread misinformation about bats, the more likely people are to get rid of them when they do have them, or demonize them when they see them, or to only ever talk about bats in the capacity of them having rabies and things like that. And I think as that kind of stigma shifts, so that people see how bats are critically important to our ecosystem, honestly in so many ways to our lives as well, that people will at least have a different view of bats, or be more inviting to having bats in the area. That's a really big part of it."
Because all the bat species in BC are insectivorous, declining insect numbers is also a challenge bats face. "If there are less insects, there are going to be less bats. Their population can't withstand that, they need those insect populations in order to thrive. And similarly, we have really manicured lawns now, where there are fewer insects growing and surviving, where we're scooping up all the leaf litter and getting rid of all the [insect] eggs. There are so many factors where we aren't necessarily helping bats all that much. And insects are also demonized! People don't want to have insects. When you tell people that they can garden for bats by encouraging insects to their properties, people don't really want to do that, because they don't want to have more insects. So it's unfortunate. And also, with lawn care now, people are getting plants that aren't native, or they aren't planting that many plants. I can't tell you how many lawns I've seen where it's flat grass, or even fake grass, and they don't have any shrubs, they don't have any flowers, so there's not really any way to support a robust insect population, which would then support a robust bat population."
New Roost for 2026 by Mike Gravnic
Habitat loss is the biggest problem faced by BC bats, Graham continues. "ll those places where bats have historically been living, people are now, what we call, 'excluding' bats from those properties. So many people don't want to have bats live on their property, even if they're totally harmless. They don't want them there, and they'll exclude them out, and they'll have to go somewhere else. Not to mention that there are also pest control companies that don't get rid of bats in a proper way; and there are people who still kill bats, even if that's illegal, you can't do that. But there are people who still do those things. I think when the environment changes so much, and we have all these big skyrises going in in areas where bats may have previously been living, all of a sudden, they're not there anymore. Sometimes they get killed without us even realizing it: buildings get demolished that have huge bat colonies living in them, and people don't realize. The building gets knocked down with all these bats inside. There can be these really big populations of bats in certain areas, where we were seeing them previously, and then their home gets taken away, and either they perish or they have to move somewhere entirely different in order to continue. It's really unfortunate."
White Nose Syndrome is a fungus that spreads among hibernating bats, and has decimated bat populations back east, including Ontario, where Graham first came in contact with bats as part of her work with Ontario Parks. Though it has not yet been found in a BC Bat, the fungus that causes the syndrome, Pd (Pseudogymnoascus destructans) has been found in BC, so it is only a matter of time, Graham continues. "It's killed about seven million bats in North America since it came here in 2006. It's a huge number of bats, many of those on the eastern side of the continent. When they're hibernating, their immune system shuts down; they hibernate similarly to a bear, so they're asleep during the wintertime. So it's kind of like getting poison ivy in the summertime, and you're trying to sleep: it starts growing onto their wings and their face and their ears, and it constantly wakes them up. It's itchy, they're trying to groom it off themselves, and every single time they wake up, they're wasting energy that they've been reserving through that hibernation. Some of them can also wake up in the dead of winter, and since they are all of a sudden awake, fly out looking for water or food, and they're met with an icy landscape where there's no food, there's no water to get to, and unfortunately they die." Graham previously worked for Ontario Parks, and saw her own park's population of a couple of hundred bats dwindle to about ten in a short time span due to White Nose Syndrome.
The Community Bat Programs of BC are studying bat populations in the hopes of better preparing them for/ insulating them from the effects of White Nose Syndrome, but meantime, Graham notes, other things people can do are to:
- Garden for bats, plant native plants that attract moths and other night time insects
- Keep large old dead trees when possible, cut them off at 20-30ft to leave habitat for bats
- Keep pet cats inside when it is getting dark out, cats are a number one predator of local bats
- Allow bats to roost on the side of your home so long as they aren't getting indoors
- Don't use pesticides or harmful deterrents like sticky tape
- Avoid fake cobwebs at Halloween
- Fight to protect local Riparian habitat, a must for healthy bat populations
-Talk about bats! Share your passion for bats and help dispel harmful myths about them.
- Report dead bats to our program from November-March (email address: bcbats@gmail.com, toll free# 1-855-922-2287.)
-Help count bats with us every summer!
- If you have a bat colony roosting on your building, call us for information on how to live safely with bats, or for best management practices on how to exclude them without harming them.
White Nose Syndrome is a fungus that spreads among hibernating bats, and has decimated bat populations back east, including Ontario, where Graham first came in contact with bats as part of her work with Ontario Parks. Though it has not yet been found in a BC Bat, the fungus that causes the syndrome, Pd (Pseudogymnoascus destructans) has been found in BC, so it is only a matter of time, Graham continues. "It's killed about seven million bats in North America since it came here in 2006. It's a huge number of bats, many of those on the eastern side of the continent. When they're hibernating, their immune system shuts down; they hibernate similarly to a bear, so they're asleep during the wintertime. So it's kind of like getting poison ivy in the summertime, and you're trying to sleep: it starts growing onto their wings and their face and their ears, and it constantly wakes them up. It's itchy, they're trying to groom it off themselves, and every single time they wake up, they're wasting energy that they've been reserving through that hibernation. Some of them can also wake up in the dead of winter, and since they are all of a sudden awake, fly out looking for water or food, and they're met with an icy landscape where there's no food, there's no water to get to, and unfortunately they die." Graham previously worked for Ontario Parks, and saw her own park's population of a couple of hundred bats dwindle to about ten in a short time span due to White Nose Syndrome.
The Community Bat Programs of BC are studying bat populations in the hopes of better preparing them for/ insulating them from the effects of White Nose Syndrome, but meantime, Graham notes, other things people can do are to:
- Garden for bats, plant native plants that attract moths and other night time insects
- Keep large old dead trees when possible, cut them off at 20-30ft to leave habitat for bats
- Keep pet cats inside when it is getting dark out, cats are a number one predator of local bats
- Allow bats to roost on the side of your home so long as they aren't getting indoors
- Don't use pesticides or harmful deterrents like sticky tape
- Avoid fake cobwebs at Halloween
- Fight to protect local Riparian habitat, a must for healthy bat populations
-Talk about bats! Share your passion for bats and help dispel harmful myths about them.
- Report dead bats to our program from November-March (email address: bcbats@gmail.com, toll free# 1-855-922-2287.)
-Help count bats with us every summer!
- If you have a bat colony roosting on your building, call us for information on how to live safely with bats, or for best management practices on how to exclude them without harming them.
Brynne Graham is preparing a brief presentation to run before NO FUN plays!
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Brynne Graham
3. About the bands:
NO FUN, the Beatles of Surrey, is a long-lived comedic folk/ punk/ glam band that has existed in many forms since the 1970s. Their most famous incarnation also involved guitarist Paul Leahy (also of Toys, Transvestimentals, and POLLY), who passed in 2017. The duo were long associated with the Railway Club and their lively themed shows (NO FUN at Christmas, NO FUN on Drugs, NO FUN in Love), and opened for artists as diverse as the Violent Femmes, John Cale, Tupelo Chain Sex, and (in a solo incarnation, billed just as David M.), Marshall Crenshaw.
David M. continues to play around Vancouver and record under the NO FUN banner. Much of NO FUN's sizeable catalogue, which was for the longest time cassette-only, has now been reissued via the US-based Atomic Werewolf label.
NO FUN bandcamp here: https://atomicwerewolf.bandcamp.com/album/eep-eep-eep-eep
Most famous albums: 1894, Snivel; most famous songs, "Be Like Us", "I'm Not Taking Suzy to the Be-In", and "Mindless Aggression", which appeared on the legendary Vancouver Complication LP in 1979, alongside another song by NO FUN, "Old," and music by the Pointed Sticks, D.O.A., the Subhumans, the Shades, U-J3RK5, and the proto-Young Canadians band the K-Tels (featuring Art Bergmann).
A new song based on NO FUN's "Why Are We So Fat?" has been repurposed by David M. and Allan MacInnis to be bat-themed and will debut at the event on October 25th.
David M., left; Allan MacInnis, right. Bat: dangling from my hand.
Hüskee Düde is the alter-ego/ brainchild of guitarist/ vocalist Nick Venditti, whose has been in several bands, from Sex in Sweden to Aging Youth Gang, from Little Guitar Army to his own main project Gnash Rambler. Hüskee Düde was originally conceived of a Hüsker Dü tribute act but has expanded its pallete to include songs by bands as diverse as Mission of Burma and local heroes the SLIP~ons, as well as Nick's originals; though the set on Sunday will still ikely involve a few Hüsker Dü classics and deep dives. Nick fondly recalls his own interactions with bats: "I remember when my family went to Italy in the summer of 1983 my brother an I stayed up at our hotel room in Bologna to sit on the suite balcony and feed the bats there with tiny bits of salami. They would catch the pieces, chirping away to get a fix on the airbourne deli meat to catch it."
Nick Venditti
Gnash Rambler bandcamp here: https://gnashrambler1.bandcamp.com/album/gnash-rambler
Nick singing with Greg Norton of Hüsker Dü at Buddies Vancouver in 2025: https://youtu.be/D3jeX5uApOQ?si=teaZODMC4aiKOV4c
Sizeable interview with Nick here: https://www.straight.com/music/all-young-dude-many-guises-of-gnick-gnash#
Trivial side-note: Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü once toured with a bat-themed t-shirt! None of us have it though.
Sister DJ & the Hired Hand:
Jill Mandrake is the former frontperson of Sister DJ's Radio Band. She has a long-lasting friendship with David M. of NO FUN, and references bats in her song "Halloween Lullaby". https://sisterdjband.bandcamp.com/album/halloween-treats-2 She normally performs with a small band billed as "Sister DJ and the Hired Hands", but since only one of her hired hands is available, guitarist Quentin, she has has requested for the singular to be used ("the Hired Hand"). She describes the event as a "fascinating fundraiser", pledges to put 100% of her honorarium to the cause of supporting our bats, and plans a short set of songs that are themed around Halloween or bats!
Jill Mandrake is the former frontperson of Sister DJ's Radio Band. She has a long-lasting friendship with David M. of NO FUN, and references bats in her song "Halloween Lullaby". https://sisterdjband.bandcamp.com/album/halloween-treats-2 She normally performs with a small band billed as "Sister DJ and the Hired Hands", but since only one of her hired hands is available, guitarist Quentin, she has has requested for the singular to be used ("the Hired Hand"). She describes the event as a "fascinating fundraiser", pledges to put 100% of her honorarium to the cause of supporting our bats, and plans a short set of songs that are themed around Halloween or bats!
Selfie by Jill, with Quentin and Edgar Allan Poe
Lipkovits records often-humourous covers of popular artists re-interpreted for accordion, which he posts on his Youtube Channel,Stupid Accordion Tricks with Rowan. Rowan is taking seriously the task of learning seasonal/ species-appropriate material, like the Sesame Street favourite "The Batty Bat", to kick the night off in a suitably chiroptera-centric way. Rowan, asked by MacInnis if he has any bat stories, says, "I got nothing, My involvement is due to my respect for your strange and deep seasonal reverence for the humble bat."
Note: Since at least one of the performers (Nick Venditti) and one of the audience members (Adam Kates) are celebrating a birthday, there will be cake! Kates and MacInnis actually first met at a Grant Hart show at the Lamplighter (Nick was there too, I think).
The first annual (?) BC Bat Benefit will take place Sunday, October 25th, from 2pm to 6PM, at LanaLou's Rock'n'Roll Eatery (362 Powell). Again, the event is all-ages and educational but it is not necessarily designed for children: there may be mature themes! Caveat emptor!
Event page: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/
The first annual (?) BC Bat Benefit will take place Sunday, October 25th, from 2pm to 6PM, at LanaLou's Rock'n'Roll Eatery (362 Powell). Again, the event is all-ages and educational but it is not necessarily designed for children: there may be mature themes! Caveat emptor!
Event page: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/
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Hibernating Myotis by Jordi Segers
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