NIKKI STRINGFIELD – “PEOPLE STILL DON’T KNOW THAT I SING”

“A lot of people still don’t know that I sing. I like surprising people; I wanted to try to do that with some of these songs,” begins Nikki Stringfield, promoting her debut solo album, Apocrypha, available now. Best known as one of the guitarists in all-female Iron Maiden tribute band, The Iron Maidens, Stringfield also plays with Heaven Below, alongside her husband, guitarist Patrick Kennison.

However, Nikki doesn’t sing lead vocals in either of those bands. She discusses adding the role of vocalist to her current position of six-string shredder. “I always loved singing. One thing my family always used to do was have game nights and do karaoke. But nobody was ever like, ‘Gosh, you’re a great singer.’ So, I was like, I must not be very good. So, I’ve just kind of kept it to myself. I would always sing when I was by myself. But I finally decided I want to do my original stuff. It’s hard to get a singer and then tell them what to do; especially when I have my own lyrics. So, it was like, I’m just going to do this myself. I’m going to break out of my shyness, out of my comfort zone, and just give it a shot. At least for me, to make myself happy. If people like it – cool, great. If not, at least I can say I did it for me. I started doing acoustic material over the pandemic. I had never played acoustic before, so I recently started doing a lot of acoustic shows as well. Sometimes, three hour-long solo sets, where I’m doing a lot of covers. That really helped push me as a vocalist as well. When you’re just acoustic and vocals, there’s nothing more raw than that. There’s nothing to hide behind. I feel like doing those shows really helped set me up to take the stage as a frontwoman, and really get in front of a solo band and rock!”

Nikki’s first solo release, a five-song EP titled Harmonies For The Haunted, came out in 2019. On that release, she was responsible for all vocals, guitars, and bass; Jesse Billson played drums. This time around on Apocrypha, she has a full band. In addition to Nikki singing and playing guitar, Patrick is on guitar, Jesse Davidson on bass, and Shad Wilhelm on drums. That’s a totally different approach, and experience in the recording studio. “Absolutely! This time, I did all the demos. We got into the studio first with Shad; Patrick actually recorded the bass on the album. We have Jesse stepping in to do all the live stuff, and he’s adding his own bad-ass flair to it, of course. But when we got into the studio to do drums, it was such an awesome experience because I played along with Shad, and so did Patrick on bass. It was really organic having the band together in the room. It was really awesome!”