Long before Heidi, 38, co-founded the L.A.-based Butcher Babies with Harvey in 2010, she was in the running for an entirely different career.
Heidi Shepherd — Heavy Metal’s Rebel
With explosive energy and aggressive vocals, Heidi Shepherd brings the heavy metal thunder to Butcher Babies with equally fierce co-frontwoman Carla Harvey. Take this incendiary pair, add the brutal riffs and hard-pounding beats of their fellow band members — bassist Ricky Bonazza, drummer Chase Brickenden and guitarist Henry Flury, Heidi’s longtime partner — and you have a formula for vicious perfection.
Born and raised in Utah as one of six kids in a musical Mormon family, Heidi forged her own path. The budding track and field star was an avid athlete in high school and college — and even competed in the 2003 Junior Olympics in Moscow — before breaking her back while training for the pole vault.
Heidi persevered through her long recovery, was briefly a Utah Jazz cheerleader and worked in radio. But she truly flourished after diving into the L.A. music scene.
She and Harvey were two of the sexy snarling hellcats in the successful cover band Switchblade Kitty, which played up and down the Sunset Strip. Heidi says the “crazy” group was “like Spice Girls on crack.”
Upon meeting Harvey, Heidi recalls thinking, “We were either going to be best friends or mortal enemies.”
She adds, “Luckily, we became best friends and created Butcher Babies. And it’s really just been a whirlwind ever since.”
For Heidi, her passion for the job entails more than the music.
She explains, “It’s about the performance, too, and the way it makes me feel. There was always just something inside of me that screams [onstage is] where I am supposed to be. I feel like a lot of people have that when they find their calling in life. It’s the aha moment.”
After self-releasing their first EP in 2011, Butcher Babies signed a worldwide record deal, toured with Marilyn Manson and recorded their raw and remarkably powerful debut album Goliath.
However, the band still faced criticism from small-minded naysayers who refused to accept a heavy metal band fronted by two gorgeous women.
“It was something that was really, really difficult at the time. A lot of people didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” Heidi admits.
She recalls having two female vocalists was “definitely a barrier” and confides, “We weren’t going out there with the intention of let’s break down barriers. We just decided to do what we wanted to do.”
Butcher Babies forged ahead, sensing the time was right for boundary-pushing acts.
“It was totally natural for us to feel like, OK, this is something that will be unique. This is something that will be different because everything was about being unique and different. I feel in different times in the past, they wanted you to fit in tight to this tiny little box. Being different was so exciting and so fun, and I’d always been kind of different.”
As Butcher Babies found their fame soaring, they were socked by some shockingly vile reactions.
“I was not prepared as an early 20-something for the backlash we got,” admits Heidi, who recalls people wishing her ill and hurling “death threats.”
She says, “It was so weird to me. That people would look at someone living their dream and want them to fail.”
But Heidi and her bandmates didn’t back down.
“I’ve always been driven by people telling me no. It’s just more of a reason for me to push back and say, Oh yeah? In a way it’s been a blessing in disguise the way we weren’t so easily accepted right away. We had to prove ourselves over and over again. That’s really what’s pushed us to become veterans in this genre.”
As far as creating Butcher Babies records, Heidi says she has a “creative bond” with Flury and the pair often works together in their studio and collaborates with bandmates.
Though Heidi doesn’t play an instrument, she has a keen ear for the kind of music the group is aiming for.
“Henry really, really does have the majority of the hand in the musical side of everything,” she says.
“I love being able to sit there and watch him be creative and be like, yeah, a little bit more of this. What if you change the key here? It’s something that we bonded over almost 15 years ago.”
However, Heidi is quick to add, “Everyone is welcome to express their creativity.”
She points out bassist Bonazza, who four years ago replaced Jason Klein after the musician took his leave to spend more time with family, wrote songs for Butcher Babies’ recently released dual-titled double album — Eye for an Eye… and …Til the World’s Blind — the group’s first full-length records since 2017’s Lilith.
“He brought such a fresh look into it. And so, we really love to open ourselves up to writing with everybody,” Heidi says. “It’s really an open-door policy for us, and it’s served us well.”
Diving into the visual aspects of the band’s creative endeavors is especially fulfilling for Heidi. She filmed most of the video for “Red Thunder” — a hard-driving track from …Til the World’s Blind,which features Evanescence-like pop elements — with Flury taking the camera to record her parts.
“It’s just kind of a something that I love. It’s another form of expression for me,” she shares. “It’s not just about the sound. There has to be really cool and unique visuals, too. [Creating videos] is something I love, love, love to do.”
Heidi says the band’s name was taken from The Plasmatics’ single “Butcher Baby” and reveals she and Harvey were inspired by the in-your-face attitude and barely there costumes of the late Wendy O. Williams, the punk group’s brash lead singer.
The women have since toned down their audacious stage looks and left their nipple tape shields behind. But it’s all part of their evolution into heavy metal’s leading ladies.
“I realized this band has taken on a life of its own, and I noticed there were young kids coming to shows and we were becoming role models,” Heidi says.
“I realized if I’m going to be a role model, I could still have that attitude. I just need to do it in a more positive way. The way I spoke became different, the language I use became different, and everything kind of became different. And I just wanted to be a positive influence to young girls and young women, [saying] you know, this is a boys’ club. But we can go in there and we can shake it up — and we can do it wearing stilettos.”
The famous Hollywood actress and dancer Ginger Rogers famously said, “I do everything the man does, only backwards and in high heels!” … Having said that, Ginger probably had a slightly different style than Heidi Shepherd, but that does not minimize the pro-woman power of each entertainer. Heidi, though, has Instagram and even a website for Butcher Babies. Ginger never did that, now did she?
