Butcher Babies – Heavy Metal’s Leading Ladies Talk Life & Legacy

It’s a sweltering afternoon at the Jones Beach Theater, and Butcher Babies are performing a rapid fire set of blistering heavy metal in the blistering heat of the Long Island sun. 

Sweating, and shredding, the band is in the midst of a US tour on a five band bill that’s headlined by Mudvayne, and includes Coal Chamber, GWAR, and Nonpoint. When the tour wraps up on August 26th, Butcher Babies will take a month off before embarking on an overseas tour that will run from October 27th through December 1st.

All the dates, both US and international, are in support of the band’s recently released double album, Eye for an Eye… / …’Til the World’s Blind.

After they wrapped up their set at Jones Beach, I caught up with Butcher Babies co-frontwomen Carla Harvey and Heidi Shepherd (photo: L to R), and they discussed everything from catharsis through music, to the band’s legacy. We started, however, by talking about the passing of legendary artists.

Sinead O’Connor just recently passed away, and there’s been a real outpouring of love for her. Which artist’s passing had a truly profound effect on each of you? 

Carla: For me it was really sad when Neil Peart died. I was pretty heartbroken.

I was a huge huge Rush fan when I was a kid.

When your heroes start to die it’s pretty tough, and he had such a hard life, so I felt a real sadness about that one for sure.

Heidi: I’m not really one to post about “what this artist meant to me,” it’s more of a personal thing for me, so I never did get into this publicly, but when Chester Bennington died I think what happened for me, I’d never felt like that before. It wasn’t because I knew him, I didn’t know him at all, but what it did was it put me back into the headspace when his voice was first affecting me – I was in college, I had just gotten a divorce, and I remember going to the track at my college, and I had like a burned disc of all their albums at that point, and just turning that on, and running around the track over and over again. It was my therapy through my divorce.

I was on a cruise when he passed, and I remember going to the gym, and I was like – I’m gonna listen to that album. It just put me back in that headspace.

I’ve never cried over a celebrity death before, but it definitely made me super emotional in that moment, just running, and feeling how I felt 20-something years ago.

And when we hear his lyrics now it’s like oh, maybe we should’ve known something was going on. 

Heidi: I think you can always, in retrospect, look at things.

So many artists are so incredibly open in their lyrics, and some people just … it’s our therapy, and that was his therapy, too.

Carla: It actually probably helped him, for years, to be so open, and cathartic, and sing those songs out loud every night, and feel those emotions. It’s a very important thing that we do. It’s kind of why we do this.

Did you have a song that you performed tonight that was especially cathartic? 

Heidi: “Last December.”

That song, the first time that we played it live in front of a crowd I got teary eyed.

We were just in Europe, and saw people that are headlining shows, and people who are in the pit, also have tears in their eyes. So that song, for us, it’s one of those cathartic songs that really … it turns those negative energies into positives.

Now, we all know the internet’s never wrong, and according to a tour database I found online, before this tour started you had performed over 720 shows. Now that the tour is in full swing you’ve spent 2+ years worth of nights on stage. With that in mind, have you given much thought to the concept of legacy, and your place in music history? 

Carla: I think that we’ve worked so hard to do what we’ve done, and I feel like we’ve really beat a lot of odds to play those 720+ shows that we’ve played.

I think that when you’ve been a band for like 15 years you can start considering yourselves part of a legacy. It’s our own legacy for sure.

Heidi: Yeah, and to be quite honest, when we first started there weren’t nearly as many females in this industry as there are today.

Since we’ve been performing together … we have watched the doors open wider and wider for more women to jump in, and show their worth. That is something we’re super proud to be a part of.

The last 15 years it’s been pretty incredible how many women are running things here, and I don’t just mean on stage, I mean backstage, and everywhere. There are women tour managers, there are women everywhere, and it’s cool to see.

As women who are veterans of the scene, have you had opportunities to take other women under your wing, and help them along? 

Carla: I think that we get that a lot. Every night at a show there’s a young girl that says, “What can I do to do what you’re doing?”

Heidi: It’s weird, it’s the same girl.

Carla: It’s the same girl every night. She follows us around. It’s getting kind of weird. {laughs}

But when I was a kid I had a conversation with a musician that changed my life, and it gave me the positive affirmations that made me actually do what I needed to do to play music.

Who was it? 

Carla: Art from Everclear.

He is such a great guy! 

Carla: He’s such a cool person.

Heidi: That’s what everyone says.

Carla: He spent the time … I was just a dumb kid, a high school kid, and I said, “I want to be a rock star, what do I have to do?” He spent a few minutes talking to me about it, and that changed the course of my life, I like to think, because he gave me some pointers, so if we can do that for someone, I think that’s incredible, absolutely.

Is there any piece of advice you’re glad you didn’t take? 

Carla: Yes. Don’t quit your day job. {laughs}

That, for me, is a real story. My dad said don’t quit your day job, and actually I did quit my day job to go on my first Butcher Babies tour. I was an embalmer. I got an amazing job at Forest Lawn, which is the biggest, coolest cemetery in Hollywood, and I had to choose between one life and the other, so in essence I quit the day job to tour, and the rest is literally history.

Heidi: Along those same lines, when we first started the number one thing that everyone said to us was have a backup plan, and I always said I’m not gonna have a fucking backup plan, because if I have a backup plan then there’s something to fall back on, and I can’t have that.

Carla, for the record, how many Butcher Babies shows has your dad been to since you quit your day job? 

Carla: Every time we go to Detroit he’ll usually come to a show. He’s very proud, and he wears the t-shirts, but back then it was a little scary, I think, and we were just starting out, so I might’ve said the same thing myself, but my dad is super proud, and he comes to the shows in a Butcher Babies shirt, and tells all of his friends. All of our parents are huge supporters of us.

Speaking of shows, recently both Bebe Rexha, and Harry Styles were hit in the face with objects thrown at them while performing. Have you ever had to dodge inanimate objects while on stage? 

Carla: Well, we played the Juggalo fest twice, so … {laughs}

The very first time we played the Juggalo fest, it’s something that they do, they throw things, they throw weird shit at you. The second time we played they didn’t throw one thing at us.

Heidi: Here’s the thing, when you first play it’s like a right of passage. If they like you, you get certain things thrown at you. If they DON’T like you, then it’s bottles of piss.

Carla: There were no bottles of piss.

Heidi: We got like bouncy balls, and stuff, thrown on stage, which we were totally cool with, and we went back the next year, and played again. We love playing the Gathering (of the Juggalos). It’s so much fun.

Other than that, I remember one of our first shows in Europe, this was in 2012, we were opening up for Anthrax in Cardiff. Our drummer stepped up, and he hit the cymbals, someone threw full beer at him, and (our drummer) bent down, and he licked the cymbal, and we started the show. I think from then on people were like oh, OK, cool. 

Let’s talk covers, because you recently covered the Saweetie / Doja Cat collaboration “Best Friend” (the video is age-restricted, and therefore can’t be embedded, so click the above image to watch). I know you’re no stranger to covers, having released an EP of covers, so give me three songs, or artists, that you haven’t covered that you’d really love to. 

Carla: I would love to do a cover of Pantera’s “This Love.” I love that song. I think it would be so cool to see girls do that.

I (also) love Type O Negative. I’ve always wanted to cover a Type O Negative song.

Heidi: I’m more like … “Lady Marmalade,” with a bunch of girls. In fact, we’ve been in talks with so many friends about doing that.

(Also) silly ‘80s songs. Something that doesn’t really belong in metal, that’s my favorite thing to do, turn it into metal.

You’re currently on tour, and you’ve basically toured in the age of GPS, but in your 720+ shows all over this country, and this world, have you ever been hopelessly lost on the road? 

Carla: Our very first tour that we ever did, our first real tour, with Otep, we had a security guard / driver / do-it-all kinda guy with us, he refused to use GPS, he used paper maps.

Heidi: I don’t remember that!

Carla: You don’t remember that?

Heidi: I don’t remember the paper maps. {laughs} It just adds to the craziness.

Carla: Oh my God, he only had a paper map, and he would spread it out, and he would get so mad, and yes we did go the wrong way, or a shitty way sometimes. GPS takes you the best way, but this man insisted upon paper maps.

Heidi: There’s one time when a GPS did lead us astray. This was in Canada, in the middle of winter, and I believe that our bass player was driving. We had an RV with a trailer attached, and we went the wrong way on the freeway. We got on the off-ramp, and we were going into oncoming traffic.

Oh God! 

Carla: It gets worse.

Heidi: So here comes, all of a sudden – and I was asleep in my bunk – in the distance he saw headlights coming at us, and he realized what he had done. The in-between (of the freeway) is covered in snow, and he just decides to turn into it. This is one that went down, and it was covered with snow, so we just sunk. We had to have a big crane come and get us out of it, but at least we didn’t die.

It’s always good when the story ends “at least we didn’t die.” 

Heidi: Yeah.

Carla: The other tour buses drove by us, too. They saw us.

Moving to the present, the new album, Eye for an Eye… / …’Til the World’s Blind, just came out, and it’s a double album. How did you come to the decision to release a double album, and how did you split up the tracks? 

Heidi: The albums were recorded in different years, and in different climates, and by different producers.

The first part, Eye for an Eye…, was recorded in 2019 with Matt Good in Arizona. It was in the middle of the summer, and a lot of those songs were written in that environment, and have a little bit of that feel to it, more of a brighter feel.

The world was in a much better place in 2019. 

Heidi: We weren’t. We took the year off to write and record figuring that in 2020 we’d be back at it (on tour). Once that didn’t happen, and we weren’t able to release it as an album, we decided to do singles, and write more. That’s when we started writing …’Til the World’s Blind.

We went to Midland, Michigan, which is, in Wikipedia, known as the most boring city in Michigan. It was in the middle of winter, and we stayed at a desolate farm in an Airbnb for six weeks. We recorded almost every day, taking one day off a week. So it needed to be separate.

For the record, how hard is it to book an Airbnb at a desolate farm in the most boring city in Michigan? 

Carla: We found an awesome place. They even had a dry sauna in there.

Heidi: It was just the city, everything closed at like 8pm.

Carla: There’s a big chemical plant there. People go and visit. True story.

And come back with an extra limb. 

Carla: Yeah. Who couldn’t use an extra limb?

For more Butcher Babies, check out butcherbabies.com.