Nita Strauss is first and foremost known as one of the best guitarists around. From 2011-2015 she was shredding in the all female Iron Maiden tribute band The Iron Maidens. In June 2014, it was announced that Nita would replace legendary guitarist Orianthi as Alice Cooper’s touring guitarist for his 2014 tour. She has since remained the guitarist for Alice Cooper and took the world by storm wowing crowds all around the world and truly making a name for herself as one of rock and metal’s best guitarists. In addition to her work with Alice Cooper and The Iron Maidens, Nita has also played with R&B star Jermaine Jackson, early MTV darlings Femme Fatale, video game supergroup Critical Hit. In 2017 she took the stage in front of a sold out crowd in Columbus, Ohio at Rock On The Range and played the National Anthem in support of our nations military. In January of 2018 Nita was officially announced as the first ever female Ibanez signature artist with her own model guitar, the Ibanez JIVA10. She also released her signature pickups, the DiMarzio Pandemonium. April of the same year saw Nita playing WWE Superstar Shinsuke Nakamura’s entrance music at Wrestlemania in New Orleans in front of an audience of 78,000 fans and millions streaming worldwide, and in the same month she launched a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign for her debut solo record ‘Controlled Chaos.’ The campaign reached its goal in two hours, doubled it by the end of the day, tripled the following day and ended up over 800% funded. ‘Controlled Chaos’ released November 16, 2018 and made a huge debut on the Billboard charts at #1 Top New Artist, #3 Label Independent, #8 Top Rock, #8 Top Internet, #20 Top albums, and #7 on the iTunes Rock chart. In addition to her already grueling tour schedule with Alice Cooper this year Nita will also be touring in support of her solo album, the tour kicked off May 14th in Charlotte, NC. The Alice Cooper tour with co-headliner Halestorm and support from Motionless In White will kick off on July 17 in Allentown, Pa. This tour schedule isn’t for the faint of heart and it’s one reason Nita is referred to as Hurricane Nita. She is unstoppable.
We had the honor of sitting down with Nita Strauss while she was hanging out in Rockingham, North Carolina preparing to kick off her solo tour in Charlotte. While she was at the festival Nita also stepped in and played a song with one of the Friday’s top performers Evanescence. We talk about her performance with the band and what preparation she went through to prepare and her admiration for lead vocalist Amy Lee. Nita also talked about the upcoming tour with Alice Cooper and that the entire stage showed has been revamped which i’m sure the shock rock fans will be looking forward to seeing. We also talk to Nita about any bands that may be on her bucketlist that she has yet to see live. Her years of touring have provided her the luxury of seeing a vast array of bands, but the one that has eluded her is AC/DC. When posed with the question of who she’d rather see fronting the band long time vocalist Brian Johnson or Guns -N- Roses main man Axl Rose who stepped in with the band on their recent tours, Nita explained it didn’t really matter to her as long as she got to see the band live. The guitar virtuoso also talks about her new fitness challenge called Body Shred which is the first fitness challenge aimed specifically at musicians and music fans. Nita also has a new e-book, “Body Shred: Your Guide To Feeling And Looking Like A Rock Star.” We talk about her grueling tour schedule, and one of her solo tour dates which includes a date where she joins the Static-X reunion tour which also includes Devildriver. You can watch the full video interview below:
