Formed way back in 2001 The Iron Maidens have established themselves as one of the finest tribute bands in the world. The all-female group have travelled the world paying tribute to the mighty Iron Maiden and along the way have also been joined by elite musicians such as Nita Strauss as they dominate stages everywhere.
Now it is Australia’s turn and HEAVY Mag recently caught up with Nikki ‘Davina Murray’ Stringfield to chat about what Australian audiences can expect as the band hits our shores.
It was Stringfield who replaced Strauss in the band and she is quick to tell us how she went from being a touring member to a fully-fledged Iron Maiden. “I moved to Los Angeles in 2012,” she explains. “And I got into a band called Before The Morning and they were good friends with Courtney and Nita so I got asked within a few short months to do a fill-in show for the Maidens in April 2012 so I crammed all the songs in and so I played my first show with them then and then it just kinda went from there. I started filling in a lot for Nita and then because she had her own original band and I had my own band so it was just me and her trading off shows for a long time and then it turned into a full-time thing and it has been amazing… I am super happy with the way things turned out.”
So that leads to the question of where did Stringfield’s love affair with Iron Maiden start? “Well as far as I can remember back my Dad was in a band and his band would play ‘Wasted Years’ so I vividly remember that and I remember going into where music was first downloaded when the internet had first started up and I would go in and just go through the music that my parents had downloaded on there and there was always lots of Maiden there, so that kind of got me started there and then I got one of their Greatest Hits CDS when i was about 13 or 14 and then I started doing Youtube videos when I was about 17 or 18 and you could see that I had a Killers poster on my wall and I put up some videos of ‘Two Minutes To Midnight’ and I was totally into Eddie’s Killers band and I just loved all the duel harmonies and things like that and the guitar solos, it changed my guitar playing a lot.
Iron Maidens kick off their Australian tour today… all information below and you can check out our Iron Maidens interview above.
