Peaches sat down via Zoom with Heidi Shepherd of Butcher Babies to chat about new music and a variety of other topics. Enjoy!
Artist Interrogations Podcast
Peaches Interviews Heidi Shepherd of Butcher Babies - March 2023
of the artist interrogations podcast. - Hey Heidi, how are you? - Hi, good, how are you doing? - Doing great, sorry. For some reason, oh, the whole computer just crashed. Are you still there? - Yep. - Okay, for some reason, the whole screen went black. So we're off to a great start here. - Oh, oh good. - How's it going for you? - I'm good, I'm good. Just chillin' with my daughter. - There we go. Is it warm where you're at? Because it's the first day of spring in here in Idaho, it decided to snow again. - Oh man, I am in Las Vegas. So we're getting a little bit of what California is getting, but not much. So it's windy, but it's still nice. - Yeah, I'm originally from Southern California. My whole family's there still, so I get weather updates constantly. It's raining hard, and the whole thing, but. - Oh yeah. - Nowhere near as cold is here. Yeah, I totally. - Utah originally, so I know exactly what you're going through. - Yeah, obviously the latest single Beaver Cage. We've played it a few times on Jank Show. So just a fun track overall. And what makes me laugh about it is, I think someone sent a radiocopy to us, and it was like perfect, and then reached the halfway point, and I think they just gave up, because that's when it became uncensored again. (laughing) - Oh no, I didn't know that. - It's all good, I always listen to them beforehand, because of stuff like that can happen to those songs. - I did not know that. Did someone censor it, I mean, we sent out a clean version, but it has a bunch of like record scratches and stuff on it. Is that the one you have? - I think so. I'm not sure. - Oh man, I'm not just checking out. (laughing) That's not good. Okay, well, we'll get you a better one. - I'm waiting for some station out there to get just getting trouble with like the F-bombs and such. It makes me laugh every time, because I do check all the metal songs we get, and I've gotten used to like that type of vocals now, where I hear like the guttles and the growling, and I just, wait a second, was that a F-bomb, and reverse it, and fun stuff. Fun stuff behind the scenes. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah, but I know how that is. I was a radio DJ for seven years, and so I understand when accidents like that happen, it can be detrimental, so I will get on that immediately. Thanks for letting me know. - Yeah, yeah, you were a radio DJ for seven years. I did not know that. Like, where did you, what states, Utah? - Yeah, a lot in Utah, and then in Southern California as well. - Oh, we're out in Southern California. - It was for Playboy Radio for SiriusXM. Well, it was before SiriusXM merged. It was a long time ago. I gave that up a long time ago. Someday I'll hopefully go back to it, but for now, I'm enjoying my career, so. - I was gonna say, you have butcher babies, you're taking off with that. I mean, you guys have been around since 2009, which is phenomenal, and continue the journey to making music and such. I'm shocked, which, like, I know it's like, you and Carla, best friends, going on the road, how do you two not butt heads at all? 'Cause I feel like if I went on the road with any one of my friends, I totally would have been just fighting with him every single day, and all that. - Well, I mean, we have, we've been touring together for a really long time, so we're used to it now. In fact, touring is the most fun for us. It's when we actually get to hang out, 'cause we do live in different parts of the country now, whereas when we used to live by each other, where we go to the gym together every day, go get smoothies together every day, but now when we get together on the road, it's just pure celebration, 'cause we actually get to hang out together. But we are best friends with our whole band, you know? So it's, of course, people butt heads, and I say, like, this, like, Carla and I are more like sisters, and so we'll butt heads like sisters, but we'll love like sisters as well. But I think butting heads is just normal in any band, and luckily, we don't do it a lot. I think that that's contributed to the longevity of our band. We really, really respect each other. We always say this. First things first were friends. Band, second, friends first, and so that's really been like the catalyst for us being able to, you know, maintain a good friendship and a good working relationship as well. - Absolutely, and I know with coming up, I think I saw on your guys' website, you guys are gonna be hitting up Germany and a few other countries overseas. - Yeah, we will be doing a bunch of festivals in Europe at the beginning of, I guess, like mid-June, sorry, into the beginning of July. And then we are announcing another US tour in a couple of days here. - I know with like going someplace overseas, like Germany and all the other countries I saw listed over there. What exactly do you guys do, like outside of the show? Do you guys enjoy the scene itself out there in Germany and whatnot? - Oh, yeah. Oh, everywhere. So last year, we were on tour for six months straight, and half of that was, well, we were in Europe, then we came into the US run, then we went back to Europe. So it was beautiful weather the entire time, and we would go out during the day, see the sights, and then go play a show, and then continue to see the sights after the show. So we just, we like to take it in fully. We will go out and see everything possible. We'll hike the tallest hill to get to the nearest Starbucks, you know, just normal American stuff. - Yeah, I'd be grabbing like every souvenir I could, because every time I go to some sort of like gift shop, I'm always trying to find like a fridge magnet. I got one from Butte, Montana when I was going there, Salt Lake City, of course. It's a lot of fun, and I know with Carla, I think Carla's heavily into comic books. I think she mentioned that. - Yeah, she does a lot of comic book type of stuff. So you'll find her in the mornings at local coffee shops, like drawing her naked ladies. - And then like-- - They all naked ladies. - And then like, what hobbies do you have? What do you do besides the hiking and such? I mean, do you just kind of sit down and recomics too? - No, no, I am more of a sleeper. So on tour, I really have to sleep a lot for my vocals to recover. I can't really take out my voice and put it in the trailer. So I sleep a lot. That's the number one thing to preserve of voice on tour is sleeping. No, my hobbies are sports, sports, sports, sports, sports. And so any time I get a chance to do anything physical on tour, that's where that's where we're able to find me. Sleeping or at the gym. - What sports are your favorite? - Well, I was a junior Olympian, actually, in track and field. So, you know, anything that has to do with anything like that, that's my go to Steve's. But watching sports, everything, I like everything. Big football fan. - Oh, really? Okay, yeah, no, I'm a big time basketball fan. Oh, you can't see, I'm six foot nine. So I played college basketball and such. - Okay, yeah. (laughing) - That'll do it. - Right, yeah. No, magically they get taller when you get past a certain level. Like high school, I was like head and shoulders above everybody else, college, a little bit. And then all of a sudden I'm guarding guys who are like seven foot three. I'm like, I can't stop this dude from scoring over the top of me. So it's just-- - You know, it's really interesting. I was a high jumper and I competed in the junior Olympics in high jump. And I'm five four. And as you were saying, as you progress into high school, everyone's kind of the same. College was a little bit different, but when I competed in Russia, those women are all six five. And so they're just like sitting over the bar and I'm like, I don't like, they call me twinkle toes 'cause I would just twinkle my toes right over the top of it. So I do understand that as you progress further along, people get magically taller. - Right, in high jump, you just gave me flashbacks to like middle school when we had to do that for PE. And I completely got the form wrong and I would somehow like jump the wrong way and like almost not land on the pad. - You're like doing front flips over the bar. - Yeah, there you go. - Yeah, it's lit. - Right, yeah. And I know you guys have a cover of Doja Cat and Sweetie saw on Best Friend and it's phenomenal. I love it 'cause it's just fun music overall. But I saw Doja Cat recently said something about trying to do a hardcore punk album. But do you think it's kind of crazy to see these pop stars kind of go towards like the rock feel? I know Post Malone is doing screams on stage now for some reason, he's really good at it too. - Well, he's always been, he's always been a metalhead. You know, country artists, pop artists, we know a lot of them that are just frustrated metalheads. Doja Cat definitely is one of those Lady Gaga loves metal, Post Malone, you know, he was, he tried out for I think it was Crown the Empire or something like that. He, you know, a lot of these people, they've been very successful in their different genre, but that doesn't mean they can't love another genre. It's just like me in particular, you know, like I of course love my metal, but I love everything. And I think that it's very important for you as an artist to open your eyes to other genres. So I think that these pop musicians or country musicians leaning on into the metal rock world, I think it's a beautiful thing, you know, it's all art, it's all music, it's all beautiful. So why not share the genre? - And you were talking about your voice earlier and just hearing those screams, how long did it take you to, 'cause I'm always curious as to who, people who do those types of vocals, like how do you learn to do that and then keep going and keep your voice safe and with, did you have a coach along the way? - Well, my mom says it was 'cause I was an angry teenager, but she started in a car seat. But no, I've just, I've always been passionate about metal music and the emotions that you can portray through screaming. So it was always just something I tried. Like I remember when you Fly Leaf came out and she had those screams in there and that was so exciting for me. So I would drive around and scream along to tracks. I would scream to Rob Zombie, it would scream to all sorts of different bands and it just was something that I figured out the technique very early on in order to be able to maintain it for all these years. Yes, you have to have a technique. I definitely watched the Zen of Screaming with Melissa Cross. I definitely watched all those things. I've worked with different artists to try and make sure that I'm doing it correctly. And it's definitely something that as the years have gone on, I've progressively gotten better at it. It's just like you wouldn't go run a marathon without practicing and building up that stamina to that time. It's a muscle in your throat and it's going to, you're going to wreck it sometimes, but that recovery and the repetitiveness is really what has preserved it. I think there was a break that my boss and I did for about five minutes. We watched like extreme vocal institute on YouTube and we just sat there going, "Oh, and they're doing all these different things." And it just sounded horrible, but it's crazy how much work, like you said, has to go into it and everything with just vocals overall. I mean, I wish I could sing, but I can only imagine trying to do like that plus also doing the screams at the same time. Yeah, bouncing back and forth with something early on in our career, I had to really get used to because it does come from a different part of your throat. Different screams come from different parts of your throat. So learning to quickly move from place to place to place, that's something that just comes with repetitive use. That just comes with practice. So luckily I've had 15 years and a lot of those years have been on the road for many months out of those years. So I've had a lot of time to practice. Do you have like any tea on the side waiting for you? Like when you're not on stage, you got like that throat coat tea, whatever it's called? You know, I used to use it a lot more, but I have found that just water really, really works well for me. Tea, you have to be super careful because sometimes if you make it too hot, that is just as damaging as, you know, singing or screaming incorrectly. - Never would have thought that. I know when I was watching prior interviews with you guys and just people talking about woman and metal overall. And then magically, you know, from 2009 to now, there are a lot more, I mean, you have bands like arch enemy, really big, you have spirit box, you have ginger, it's just in the predominant cable audience we have here is mostly woman who call into my show requesting the heavier tracks. Isn't it crazy to see that transition from the early base to now? Yeah, it's crazy, it's great. - It's really cool. When we first started, you know, arch enemy was of course around, but spirit box was not, ginger was not, you know, all these bands have really come together and really built each other up and we've really created like this girls club. And you know, not like no one, no males invited, but it's awesome because we build each other up and we support each other, especially, you know, thinking about 15 years ago, we weren't actually, there weren't a lot of us. And so like we celebrate that, there's more and more and more of us together. - 100% and just wanted to say thank you very much for joining me today. I know probably they could go in here soon, but I know Beaver Cage, the latest single, it's the lead up to what is it, your fourth studio album? - Yes, yeah, it's actually gonna be a double album. We recorded most of it, well, half of it in 2019 with the anticipation of releasing it in 2020, but of course we held back on that. And so you're gonna hear stuff that we recorded and wrote in 2019 and then stuff that I just got a single today in my inbox from the producer who's just finally, we're just finally finished with it. So this album is gonna be a double album spanning four years and it's going to be this summer. So very, very excited about it. - Yeah, it's gonna be great to see that plus the US tour announced. And like I said, just thank you so much Heidi for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking time to talk to the station here in East Idaho and everything. - Thank you, appreciate you. Have fun and I know. - Hey, thanks. You have fun in Vegas. (laughs) - See you up there sometime soon. - Great, I'd love to see you. - All right, bye. - Bye. (upbeat music) - The Hardest Interrogation's podcast is the production of Riverbend Media Group. 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