Janet Gardner has opened up on her departure from VIXEN.
When asked, she said (via Blabbermouth):
“There’s a lot of personal things — not with them, but in my life. [My husband] Justin [James] and I, between the two of us, have three kids. Nobody in VIXEN has kids. I can only contribute so much and do everything else that’s going on in my life. A lot of people, they’re saying right now, ‘Well, you can do your solo stuff.’ But that’s [a collaboration between] Justin and [me] — we live together. We’re here together every day, so for us to sneak down in the basement and record a couple of songs, it doesn’t take that much time.
“I was very stressed, and there was some conflicts between, you know, if I was playing a [solo] gig somewhere, then VIXEN couldn’t play there within a certain amount of time,” she explained.
“Booking, all kinds of things like that, it all got very stressful, and it got to the point where I couldn’t even see straight. I was, like, ‘I can’t do this anymore. Something has to go.’ So I made the decision to do that.
“In hindsight, sure, I miss them, but I don’t regret it,” Janet added. “It was definitely the right thing to do. My life is good; everything’s in balance. I feel good. I’m not stressed.”
When asked about the split with the other members, she said:
“There was no reason to get [into] mudslinging or anything,” she said. “And I didn’t have any desire to fight over the name or anything like that too, so that was a bullet that we all got to dodge. It was just, ‘You guys go ahead. I’ll go my way, and we’ll part as friends. And onward we go.'”
When asked if she would reunite with them, she said:
“I’m a never-say-never kind of person. I can’t imagine that happening, but I don’t know… There’s all these bands, like, ‘We’re breaking up and we’re never gonna get back together,’ and then, two years later, they’re back together. So, what’s the point? You don’t know [what can happen]. ‘I would never do that,’ and then there you are doing it.”