Former VIXEN Bassist SHARE ROSS Buys And Sells Homes In South Florida

Former VIXEN bassist Share Ross spoke to CoStar News about her decision to make a career switch from playing sporadic shows with the veteran rock outfit to becoming one of the top-producing real estate agents with eXp Realty in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Ross, who earned her real estate license in 2018, said she averages about $10 million to $12 million in sales a year, with the commission typically being 5-6% of the home's selling price. (The commission is usually split 50/50 between the buyer's and seller's agents.)

Before focusing on her real estate career, Share played music part-time and worked as a life coach.

"For every [musician] you see who made it huge, there are probably 100 or 1,000 of us who didn't make it quite to that level," Ross, who works out of her home in Boynton Beach, told CoStar News. "If I continued to carry on traveling and doing wonderful stuff with the band, I just couldn't have paid the bills."

Share added that even though VIXEN made money during the peak of the group's success in the late 1980s, she and her bandmates didn't manage their business as well as they should have.

"We spent it promoting the band and record sales, instead of buying a house, which would have been nice," she said. "I can't blame somebody else. I can't point fingers. It was us. Gene Simmons from KISS and Rick Nielsen from CHEAP TRICK both told me the same thing: 'The only money you can count on in rock and roll is the money you get up front.' They were right."

When Ross finally left VIXEN in 2022, even with platinum album sales and major tours, she told Rolling Stone she "never made a penny."

Share secured her real estate license after being introduced to the industry through a realtor friend, Avery Carl, the wife of SiriusXM Hair Nation DJ Luc Carl.

In February 2022, Ross announced that she was "taking a hiatus" from VIXEN. Her replacement is Julia Lage, formerly of the Latin Grammy-nominated Brazilian rock group BARRA DE SAIA and wife of Richie Kotzen.

The only remaining member of VIXEN's "classic" lineup is drummer Roxy Petrucci, who is also joined in the group by guitarist Britt Lightning (a.k.a. Brittany Denaro) and singer Rosa Laricchiuta.

Petrucci, Ross and singer Janet Gardner are considered to be part of VIXEN's classic lineup, along with founding guitarist Jan Kuehnemund, who died of cancer in October 2013.

Gardner contributed lead vocals to VIXEN's most commercially successful studio albums — "Vixen" (1988),"Rev It Up" (1990) and "Tangerine" (1998) — as well as the group's latest full-length release, 2018's live album "Live Fire".