Nita Strauss may be on maternity leave from the rock and roll road, but she’s still been playing plenty of guitar for an audience of a special one.
On May 28, Strauss and her husband, drummer Josh Villalta, welcomed their first child, Maxwell James. Strauss tells us via Zoom from home in Louisiana that she’s “just loving this season now, with a vengeance,” including playing music in Max’s nursery, where she keeps a couple of her signature Ibanez JIVA electric guitars and a Marshall JCM 900 half-stack.
“It’s a good vibe in our nursery, let me tell ya,” Strauss says as Max coos in the background. “He’s just sort of listening in awe right now. I wish everybody listened to me with as much awe as he does,” she adds with a laugh. “It’s fun; I’ve got two of my tour JIVAs in here and a nice comfy chair to sit in, so it’s a good practice setup.”
She adds that, with normal infant needs, Max “has more wardrobe changes than I do these days.”
There’s no drum kit in the nursery — yet — but Strauss reports that dad is getting into the act as well.
The radio started playing ‘1979,’ and that unlocked that emotional block I had built up during the move and packing, and I just burst into tears.”
— Nita Strauss
“Josh, he’s always just tapping on things and moving Max in the rhythm of different songs. The drummer vibe is already strong — which is terrifying.”
Strauss’ pregnancy required a leave of absence from her regular gig with Alice Cooper’s band during this year’s touring cycle, but we’ll be hearing something new from her next month. Strauss recorded an instrumental version of “1979” for Sending Hearts to All My Dearies — A Tribute to the Smashing Pumpkins, a band-sanctioned salute that comes out digitally August 14 and on vinyl October 16.
Her involvement with the project started during the pandemic, around the time she and Villalta were moving from Los Angeles.
“We were driving out of California,” she recalls. “It was a really emotional time, during the pandemic. Josh and I bought our first house and we loaded up the car and the dogs and everything. I had really held all the emotion in.
“Then we got on the freeway and the radio started playing ‘1979,’ and that unlocked that emotional block I had built up during the move and packing, and I just burst into tears. It just took me back to high school and cruising around in the car with my friends, listening to Smashing Pumpkins.”
Given the massive popularity of “1979,” Strauss didn’t assume the song was still available when she signed onto the project.
“I threw out ‘1979,’ thinking there’s no way that song is still available — and it was. [English singer Barns Courtney does a vocal version of it as well on the tribute, which also features contributions from Tame Impala, Des Rocs, Between the Buried and Me and others.] So I was excited, and I got to put a pretty unique spin on the song.”
Doing it as an instrumental fits that description, of course.
I’ve got 10 or 11 songs banked and pretty well fleshed out, sort of ready for either solos or guest singers. It’s looking like new music by the end of this year or next year.”
— Nita Strauss
“The first thing I think anybody would’ve thought of is, Who are you gonna get to sing on it? But when I recorded this I hadn’t even put out any music with singers. That was pre-‘Dead Inside’ [with David Draiman], pre-any of the guest vocalist stuff I’ve done. I had only approached making my music from an instrumental standpoint. It didn’t occur to me until much later on, when it was finished, that maybe I should’ve gotten a singer on it.
“But I enjoy putting that kind of spin on songs that I like. And ‘1979’ has such a great melody that lent itself so easily to play on guitar. It just felt natural to approach it from that standpoint.
“I think it came out cool. When I listened back, I had sort of forgotten how many liberties I took with it, especially with the shuffle of the tempo at the very beginning; it starts out very moody and half-time, very different. But I did play it with a lot of reverence for the band and for the original track. I hope that comes across to the band and to the fans.”
In addition to “1979” and playing for baby Max, Strauss has also started work on her third solo album, the follow-up to 2023’s The Call of the Void.
“I started working on that about a year and a half ago, with the idea I was going to be taking some time off,” she says. “I’ve got 10 or 11 songs banked and pretty well fleshed out, sort of ready for either solos or guest singers. It’s in a good place, so it’s looking like new music by the end of this year or next year.”
She’ll resume her regular gameday duties with the Los Angeles Rams during the upcoming NFL season as well, and Strauss plans to be back in the Cooper camp for its next tour. (Anna Cara took her place during maternity leave.) Cooper is currently touring Europe with the Hollywood Vampires and will be promoting a new memoir, Devil on My Shoulder, this fall.
“Bringing a stroller and all the baby stuff on the road is gonna present a new challenge,” she acknowledges. But Max may well earn his keep as well.
“Oh, I guarantee he’s gonna make his way into the show when we go out with Coop,” Strauss says. “There’ll be some Billion Dollar Babies gag or something that they want to do.
“One fun thing about the Coop tour is everybody’s put to work onstage, everybody from the merch girl to the stagehands to anybody and everybody. My guitar tech is out in a black jumpsuit killing Alice at one point or another in the show. So if Max is out on tour, they’re gonna make him work.”
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