Page 33 - Black Velvet Issue 95

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ver since I can remember, being on
“Estage was my happy place, “ May-
hem tells us, backstage in Birmingham before
her show in the UK supporting Fozzy and Hard-
core Superstar. “My parents always tell the
story of me being two years old and they put
me in some toddler ballerina class and I just lit-
erally got on stage and just started bowing and
soaked it all in and we weren’t even done per-
forming. The kids, we didn’t even do anything.
I just stood out, just like, ‘This is it.’ Ever since
I can remember, whether it was school plays,
Off-Broadway, original theatre, whatever it was,
I just made sure I could perform, because no
matter what’s going on in life, once I’m on
stage, it’s all about the music and it’s all about
the people that are there to enjoy it, and it’s
kind of this cool energy that you get. I thrive off
of the crowd’s energy, they thrive off of my en-
ergy, and it’s this incredible experience that
you can’t really explain.”
Over the last few years, Madame Mayhem
has toured with the likes of Doro, Mushroom-
head and more recently Austin John Winkler
(previously vocalist of Hinder). While on the re-
cent U.S. tour with Austin John Winkler a show
was cancelled in Florida due to the weather,
but not to be defeated too easily, Madame May-
hem ended up still playing an acoustic set in
the Sand Bar – showing that nothing can stop
her from singing. Mayhem remembers, “With
weather there’s nothing you can do about a
show that can’t happen. It was supposed to be
an outdoor venue. When it was storming in
Florida, we had to cancel it, but for our routing
purposes we still ended up at the venue. There
was a hotel there. That’s where we were. We
still hung out there. The venue knew we were
there, so they had a nearby restaurant next
door, it was a lot more covered. We were just
hanging out all day. They were like, ‘Hey, we
have this tiny little corner where sometimes
people play acoustic if you guys want to. You
can just hang out,’ so we were like, ‘Yeah. Can
we stream it?’ We knew the show was can-
celled, we knew fans weren’t necessarily going
to come, but if people knew that we were there
they could come hang. We love to talk about
music. I usually run right from stage right to
merch just so I can meet people. I enjoy it. And
my band’s kind of the same way. So we were
just kind of sitting, chilling, talking to these
people and talking music and just randomly
made it up on the spot and did some acoustic
songs, and it ended up being a really cool day.
It ended up working out great. In the morning,
we were kind of upset that we couldn’t play a
show, ‘cause we love playing. When weather
gets you down, you’ve just got to find another
way to get your sound out.”
Being a female in a male-dominated indus-
try can be pretty hard. So meeting other fe-
males on the road is nice – and getting to tour
with the legendary Doro is even better. “For the
Doro tour we got to share a bus, which was
fantastic,” says Mayhem. “Their merch person
was also a female so there were three girls in
one bus which was really cool, and it’s kind of
like now that we’re opening for Fozzy and
Hardcore Superstar, we’re sharing a bus with
Fozzy, and there’s me and the tour manager’s
female and the merch girl’s female. When we
did the Mushroomhead tour, we had our own
separate bus so it was just me and the guys.
Same with some of the other tours.”
Her band consists of herself and four male
musicians, including Billy Grey of Fozzy –

MADAME MAYHEM