You may know Nita Strauss as the razor sharp guitarist for Alice Cooper or from her work in the outstanding Iron Maiden tribute band called Iron Maidens. Her love of shredding guitar cannot be denied. Nita is branching out into creating her own music with a campaign to fund her first solo album. She is also working to get her new band “We Start Wars” out into the wild. Nita was kind enough to find a couple minutes during her hectic schedule to chat with us about her new album, touring with Alice, and the grind to make it as a professional musician.
We started out talking about the current tour with Alice Cooper and asked Nita if she could tell us what she enjoys most about being on the road with such a legendary performer.
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Given Nita’s wheelhouse is dazzling pyrotechnic guitar with a metal edge, we wondered how much of a challenge it was for Nita to switch gears and play more traditional rock music for Alice.
The Kickstarter campaign that Nita started for her first solo album has vastly exceeded the funding target. Given this pending demand for her first solo record without a track record in creating her own original music, we wonder what her thoughts were on this overwhelming response.
Digging a bit deeper into the new solo album we talked about the musical path she was taking and whether the album would be purely instrumental or incorporate vocals. We also wanted to find out if the music would crossover into genres outside of metal music.
The days of scoring the coveted record deal for a band or a solo artist is harder than ever. The dream of landing the deal and being a rock star seem to have passed. However, Nita seems to be following the model of other current musicians in that they are doing whatever it takes from clinics to endorsements to make a living playing music. Our musical heroes had to pay their dues, yet we wanted to know if Nita felt that the quest to make a living as a musician has fundamentally changed.
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If you search for interviews with Nita on the internet, you’ll find this wonderful Google talk from 2017 which provides some fantastic insight into Nita’s playing and her career to date. We were curious how she became involved with doing a talk with Google.
Finally, we touched on her band “We Start Wars” to find out when fans could expect a recording and if there were plans to take the band out on the road.