Stand back! There’s a Hurricane coming through.
Hurricane Nita, that is. Or, more precisely, Nita Strauss – the rock goddess who wrestling fans will remember from her many appearances in WWE and NXT over the past few years. She and her band are indeed coming through, as they tour various cities in Canada and the United States over the next few weeks.
SlamWrestling.net had a chance to chat with Strauss just days before her band’s first two Canadian dates – Montreal on February 12, and Toronto on February 13 – to talk about her rock and wrestling connection.
“(Working with WWE) has been an amazing experience,” she said about her many appearances with the company. “Performing on pay-per-views and NXT. I got to perform at WrestleMania and (the) Evolution (PPV event). And having my song used (as the official theme for NXT Takeover: Wargames II). It’s just been one of the greatest honors of my professional career to get to collaborate with them.”
As the guitarist in Alice Cooper’s touring band, one might think that Strauss might have had a built-in connection with WWE – Cooper, of course, is no stranger to the company either, having made a memorable appearance at WrestleMania III. But that wasn’t the case. Indeed, Strauss was never really exposed to wrestling until shortly before she got involved in it.
“I never watched wrestling growing up,” she said. “When I grew up, I didn’t even have a TV in the house. So it’s not that I wasn’t into wrestling, but I didn’t have that frame of reference for any of the stuff that kids my age were watching – including wrestling.”
“It was when I started dating my husband, Josh, that I started watching it. Anytime you start dating someone new, you find out about their interests and hobbies. And he was the one who got me watching pro wrestling.”
It didn’t take long before she made her first wrestling-related performance, accompanying Rob Van Dam to the ring at a PCW Ultra show while playing his ECW theme, Pantera’s “Walk”.
“Pretty shortly after that,” she noted, “I performed at WrestleMania (34, where she played a solo guitar version of Shinsuke Nakamura’s theme song).”
“I went from the indies to WrestleMania pretty fast,” she laughed.
With that and her subsequent appearances on WWE, NXT, and online WWE programming, Strauss said that she been welcomed with open arms by the entire locker room.
“I definitely feel like I’ve been treated with a lot of respect,” she confirmed. “I’m excited to be there, everyone seems excited for me to be there. I never got a sense of being an outsider or feeling out of place. It was more like ‘Oh, I heard you were going to be here. Welcome!’”
Photo: courtesy Nita Strauss
In that way, Strauss said that being in the back at a wrestling show has a different vibe than being at some rock shows.
“In the rock world,” she explained, “people are a little more standoffish. I think part of the culture in the wrestling locker room is to make sure that you’re polite. You go up to people, look them in the eye, and shake their hand. And for somebody new coming in, that’s appreciated.”
Indeed, Strauss has bonded with many of the roster members, often sharing experiences of life on the road – a lifestyle, she noted, that few people can understand because few actually live that way.
“It’s interesting to see the parallels between wrestling and touring,” she agreed. “Being in different cities all the time. You fall into different routines that most people don’t get to experience. It’s finding routine in things that are not routine.”
But it’s a life that Strauss loves, and she is thrilled to be touring right now with her band, supporting the Finnish symphonic metal band Apocalyptica, who are showcasing their symphonic metal interpretations of the Metallica songbook. While their setlist is pretty fixed, Strauss and her band have a little more flexibility in planning their show. Strauss noted that designing a setlist is not unlike putting together a wrestling card.
“We want to take the audience on a roller-coaster ride,” she explained. “That’s very important. In that way, it’s very much like a wrestling card. Or even the storytelling in a wrestling match. We put it together in a way that takes the audience on a journey.”
Whether her journey will see her back in WWE remains to be seen, though given the fans’ response to her over the years, it’s likely to happen. In the meantime, her immediate journey on this tour will see Strauss and her band playing in Winnipeg, in February. Which, she acknowledged with a laugh, is a “terrible idea.”
“No, not really,” she clarified. “We’ve got warm clothes and boots, so we’re as ready as we can be for some kids from California. But for my band, no matter what, we’re happy to be on the road.”
RELATED LINKS
- Nita Strauss’ official website (with tour dates and ticket information)
- Nita Strauss’ socials: Instagram: * Twitter * Facebook
- SlamWrestling’s Music for Cauliflower Ears section
