VIXEN bassist Share Ross spoke to Metal-Net about how she and her bandmates have been trying to stay creative during the coronavirus pandemic. She said (see video below): “It’s been challenging during the quarantine, because we actually ended up in four different cities. So, it’s pretty hard to get together with anybody. Britt [Lightning, a.k.a. Brittany Denaro; guitar] and I had done some stuff together, and then me, Britt and Roxy [Petrucci, drums] had done some stuff together in studios. And then we did a lot of stuff with the four of us, just getting into a room and just record all these crazy ideas that we come up with. So we’ve just tried to do a lot of different things. Even at soundchecks, we would just jam out ideas and stuff — ‘Yeah, whatever. Record us. We don’t care.’
“We really love spontaneity — when you’re not trying to write a song,” the musician, who lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, explained. “And there’s something to be said for being in the room together.
“I would say that the whole COVID-19 thing, it made it a little bit challenging to feel creative for a lot of time. Initially, there was the, ‘Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. What’s going on?’ And then I actually had COVID-19, and Bam [Share‘s husband] had to nurse me back to health. I was down — I was totally down. I couldn’t breathe for about three days, and then I stayed in bed for a month. So that happened. And then there was sort of a panic about, ‘Oh my gosh. How are we gonna keep paying the bills?’ So I think there was a scramble from everybody — everybody in our band.
“We don’t all live off — there’s not some massive VIXEN royalties or anything going out,” Share added. “So it’s really, like, ‘Okay, I’ve gotta deal with my day-to-day. What are we gonna do?’ So there was a little bit of panic for a while. Fortunately, that’s lifted, and everybody’s got things going on again now, so that’s good.
“But, yeah, when you’re panicking about eating, it’s hard to feel creative, I think. So we didn’t do a whole lot of back and forth — a little bit here and there, but not as much as I’ve seen other bands do. And I’m very impressed by that — I’m, like, ‘Wow! That’s amazing that they can do that.’
“Personally, I just do better when I’m in a room with somebody. That’s just the thing for me. I like to feed off of the person — I really like that feeling.”
In January 2019, VIXEN recruited Lorraine Lewis as its new lead singer following the departure of Janet Gardner.
Lewis had already performed with VIXEN in March 2018 in Durant, Oklahoma while Gardner was recovering from surgery.
Prior to Lewis‘s addition to VIXEN, Petrucci, Ross and Denaro vowed to “expand upon the VIXEN legacy while remaining true to our musical roots.”
Gardner, Petrucci and Ross are considered to be part of VIXEN‘s classic lineup, along with founding guitarist Jan Kuehnemund, who died of cancer in October 2013.
Gardner contributed lead vocals to VIXEN‘s most commercially successful studio albums — “Vixen” (1988), “Rev It Up” (1990) and “Tangerine” (1998) — as well as the group’s latest release, 2018’s live album “Live Fire”.
