Nita Strauss on Alice Cooper, Demi Lovato and Taking The Next Step on 'The Call of the Void'
Wednesday, 05 July 2023
Written by Simon Ramsay
Try as you might, you won’t find a more appropriate title for guitarist Nita Strauss’s exhilarating new solo record than ‘The Call of the Void’. Referencing a scary concept known as ‘high place phenomenon’, where someone stands on top of a tall building and, for a brief second, wonders about jumping, it actually represents a subconscious decision to step back from the ledge, and take control of your life.
One of the most talented and in-demand guitarists walking upright, not only has the 36-year-old gunslinger, affectionately known as Hurricane Nita, become one of shock rock icon Alice Cooper’s longest-serving axe-wielding foils, she recently brought shredding to the masses in a way that typified her irrepressible thirst for new adventure and unshakeable aversion to artistic stagnation.
Hooking up with Demi Lovato for the pop icon’s epic 2022 world tour, much to the disdain of many a short-sighted rock fan, Strauss’s pyrotechnic fretwork and infectious energy lit up the superstar’s concerts in a way that’s sure to have inspired youngsters in the audience to pick up a guitar and follow in her trailblazing footsteps.
But where 2018’s ‘Controlled Chaos’ was a sizzling all-instrumental affair that reflected Nita’s formative passion for ‘80s shredders such as Steve Vai and Marty Friedman, ‘The Call of the Void’ is a mainstream-crashing affair that places visceral instrumentals alongside mouth-watering collaborations with a host of guest singers, including Lzzy Hale, Anders Friden, Dorothy and Cooper himself.
We caught up with Strauss to discuss this bold creative leap forward, the controversy that followed her perceived defection to Lovato’s band and what kind of fresh brilliance, now she’s back in the Alice Cooper fold, fans can expect from her boss's forthcoming new album ‘The Road’.
You’ve said making ‘The Call of the Void’ helped you ‘grow so much as a musician and songwriter.’ In what ways?
My first solo record was me figuring out what I wanted to do as I went along, and writing from a pure place of emotion. But once you get into working with different singers, you have these different constraints. Is the song going to go on radio? If so, it has to be within these time constraints. The key can’t be too high or low for the singer, or too fast or slow. There are all these rules you suddenly have to follow that you don’t have when you’re making instrumental guitar music. But it was amazing because I needed that structure to take a step back, take a little time and understand composition and songwriting more. So I’m much better for it, even though it was a lot to learn.
With regards to the album’s special guests, were the songs co-written with them or did you write them yourself and then have to find the voice to fit what you came up with?
We wrote everything with a type of vocalist in mind. It wasn’t necessarily, ‘We’re going to have Lzzy Hale on this song, so let’s write a Lzzy Hale song.’ It was like, ‘This is for a female powerhouse vocalist, a Dorothy or Lzzy or Lilith Czar so we’re gonna write in that wheelhouse.’ Other songs, like Dead Inside with David Draiman, or Golden Trail with Anders Friden from In Flames, we just gave them the musical backdrop of the song, let them do their thing and both of them absolutely knocked it out of the park. No one can write a David Draiman vocal like David Draiman.
And what can you say about working with the powerhouse that is Lzzy Hale on Through The Noise?
I mean, powerhouse is the only word. She is such a monster vocalist, performer and friend. Incredible human being. And when she finished recording her vocal parts she sent a text and was like, ‘You’ll see some takes where I was experimenting and trying some stuff, if you don’t like it, please don’t feel you have to use it.’ And then I listened to these incredible runs she was doing at the end of the song, screaming her lungs out and hitting these notes that I knew she could do, but it still gives you goosebumps to hear, and I had tears in my eyes and texted her back all in caps like ‘LZZY, WHAT THE FUCK?’ It was incredible and I love that her delivery of this unbelievable performance was like, ‘Hey, if you don’t like it you don’t have to use it.’ That story says a lot about who Lzzy is as a performer. She’s one of the greatest in the world at what she does but is still humble.
You’ve said you wanted Winner Takes All to showcase a different side to Alice Cooper. How did you set about accomplishing that?
We crafted the lyrics and melody with Tommy Henriksen, who is my Alice Cooper bandmate and also a longtime Alice Cooper contributor. He co-wrote the last few Alice records, and actually produced the most recent Hollywood Vampires record, so the only person that knows Alice Cooper’s vocal style better than Alice, and maybe Bob Ezrin, is Tommy. I went to him at the beginning like, ‘What key does he like to sing in? What’s his comfort zone? How can we make something really cool?’
So we sort of created this very classic Alice Cooper track on the bed of a heavy modern rock song. Something much heavier, with more distortion, dropped tuned seven string guitars, totally different than he would normally sing over, but his usual vocal range and key. I think we married the two styles really nicely and smoothly. We’re not going to reinvent the Alice Cooper wheel, we would never ask him to rap a part or sing a high note. We’re really letting Alice be Alice, as only he can do, and just showcase it a little differently. Afterwards Shep [Gordon, Alice’s long time manager] said, ‘Alice wrote this vocal, right?’ and I was like, ‘No, Tommy and I wrote it.’
Do you ever feel frustrated that you can’t sing the songs yourself?
You know, I never wanted to be a singer or frontperson so I wouldn’t say it bothered me or held me back. I can sing backing vocals fine, so it’s never stopped me from contributing to the show in that way. But it’s definitely frustrating during the demo process where, if I had an idea, it just doesn’t sound good enough when I do it myself. It’s better if I plonk it out on the piano and send it to someone better to sing it. So I’d like to get better at singing, someday, if only for that reason. I don’t plan to sing a lead vocal any time soon.
And what can you say about the inspiration behind Digital Bullets?
I wrote Digital Bullets with an amazing songwriter called Johnny Andrews. When we were sitting down to craft the song he said, ‘So, what do you want to write about?’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m really positive and uplifting and like to cheerlead everybody, so maybe something like that?’ And Johnny spun around in his studio chair with this thoughtful look on his face and said, ‘I don’t really do that.’ So you have to have a connection with the person you’re working with and the common ground we found there was how frustrating it is when you’re out there putting your heart and soul into your music and there are people online that have nothing better to do than just tear down everything you do. That was the basis for the troll character on Digital Bullets.
You’ve previously spoken about attacks you endured from Orianthi fans after you replaced her in Alice’s band. Is that kind of thing still an issue?
You should have seen what happened last year.
Of course. You were perceived as having left Alice to join Demi Lovato and rock die-hards were aggressively questioning your motives.
It was brutal, but it might have something to do with metal being this sort of sub-genre, a subset of a subset, and it’s the natural instinct of people to lash out and protect things they care about that they think are in danger or are being threatened. Obviously, once you really take a step back objectively and look at me stepping away from a few weeks of Alice Cooper touring to tour with Demi, you’d see it wasn’t actually threatening anything, there was no drama there. People like to rush to conclusions without knowing the full scope of what’s going on.
When you joined Alice’s band you went for some guitar lessons to learn how to be more of a rock player. Did you have to do anything similar when you hooked up with Demi?
I didn’t, no. Anybody that’s heard Demi’s latest record knows it’s a pretty straight forward rock album with pop-punk and industrial moments. Her older songs that weren’t as hard rocking were all revamped for the show into rock versions. So it was easy for me to step into that role and I’m very grateful they hired me because they like me and the way I play. I had a lot of fun with it and maybe I’d venture to say it was a little closer to my own playing style than what I do with Alice.
If you listen to ‘Controlled Chaos’ and ‘The Call of the Void’, that’s what I sound like as a guitar player. If you listen to what I sound like with Alice, it’s a very different style because you always want to be respectful of the gig, the style of music. And Demi’s music, the tour we did is more modern, a little harder, a little edgier, and so I was able to cut loose in solos and do stuff I wouldn’t normally do in an Alice show, such as sweep picking and a lot more tapping and stuff like that. So it wasn’t something I felt uncomfortable with at all.
Returning to your new record, and by extension how you sound as a guitar player, did you have to write this record’s instrumental numbers so they were cohesive and blended well with the vocal songs?
Honestly, I didn’t. I’m glad they fit well and I hear that they do, but If I’d wanted to write a 15 minute instrumental song I would have. I don’t compromise the instrumental stuff, at all, to fit anything. That’s sort of my middle finger to convention. Yes, I understand the next natural step in my evolution is to make more mainstream songs with vocalists, but I won’t be told how to do instrumental stuff, which is why there are super heavy songs like Momentum and Consume The Fire and very mellow songs like Kintsugi. They’re just their own part of the story, that’s all.
Looking forward to what’s coming later this year, what can you tell me about Alice’s new record, the one that has the live band playing on it?
Yeah, ‘The Road’ album was so much fun to make. It was a really unique experience for me, as an artist. I’ve recorded a lot over the years and have never recorded anything the way that we did this album. It was recorded in the round at Bob Ezrin’s studio in Nashville and we all sat in one room facing each other with Alice in the middle when he was singing the song. With vocals you can’t really do them with everyone in the room, it has to be an isolated take. But when he was singing for demos and stuff he would stand in the middle and we recorded everything right there on the spot. It gave everything such a special feeling. Alice said, ‘I don’t want you guys recording separately, I want you all in the room together. I want to show how good this band is live.’ So what you’re gonna hear on the record is what we do live.
And does the record fall into any particular period of Alice’s back catalogue, stylistically speaking?
Honestly, I think it’s something new, something fresh. Myself, Ryan [Roxie, guitar], Tommy, Chuck [Garric, bass] and Glen [Sobel, drums], we’ve been the band for almost a decade. We’ve been Alice’s band longer than the original band was a band, which means nothing, obviously they’re the OGs, the great ones, but we have such a unique perspective on what Alice has fun singing, what he enjoys, what the fans react to, because we’re in it day in and day out. We’ve spent more of the last 10 years together than we have with our own families. So we have a really solid understanding of the Alice Cooper sound and where it’s at now. It was fun and we really made it with the fans in mind. So I hope you guys love it as much as we loved making it, because we had a ball making it.
'Call of the Void' is out on July 7 through Sumerian.
Nita Strauss Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu July 06 2023 - LOS ANGELES California - Whisky A Go Go (USA)
Sat July 08 2023 - LAS VEGAS Nevada - Space - Las Vegas (USA)
Sun July 09 2023 - PHOENIX Arizona - Crescent Ballroom (USA)
Tue July 11 2023 - SAN ANTONIO Texas - Main Stage at Rockbox (USA)
Wed July 12 2023 - DALLAS Texas - Trees (USA)
Thu July 13 2023 - HOUSTON Texas - Scout Bar Houston (USA)
Fri July 14 2023 - NEW ORLEANS Louisiana - House of Blues (USA)
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