HEIDI SHEPHERD On Becoming Sole Singer Of BUTCHER BABIES After CARLA HARVEY's Departure: 'I Feel Comfortable'

During an appearance on the latest episode of Knotfest's "She's With The Band", the show hosted by Tori Kravitz aiming to amplify the voices of women on stage, backstage and in the business, BUTCHER BABIES frontwoman Heidi Shepherd spoke about what it was like becoming the sole singer of the band following the 2024 departure of Carla Harvey. Heidi said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Being a co-lead vocalist, I think that each of us had our own identities in this as well. I think that I learned so much in all the years of the give-and-take. I've run this band, this business out of my living room for the last almost 20 years. And so it kind of really was just the next step, taking all those lessons that I had learned in the past and just kind of like putting it all in. But it's been fine. And I feel comfortable. And I'm so lucky that I have my team.

"This isn't just me," Heidi explained. "[BUTCHER BABIES guitarist] Henry [Flury] has been in this band from the beginning, and my team has been here forever. My lawyer has been my lawyer for almost 17 years now. And so this is so much bigger than just two singers in a band. This is so much bigger than that. There are people that feed their families off of what we do. There are people who, their jobs are coming on tour with us and helping our show be as successful as it can be day in and day out. So when it came to moving into the shoes of just the sole lead in this, there's a responsibility to keep it going for these people. And I think that I am also grateful for them for wanting to keep going as well. So this has been a group effort. And here we are three years later, feeling good, [with a] new album coming out, and it's just, to us, the next step."

After Kravitz noted that a lot of the comments below the video for the BUTCHER BABIES song "Sincerity" — the band's first single since Harvey's departure — have been extremely positive, Heidi said: "Oh, really? I didn't read them. [Laughs] I don't read comments … but I can tell from people's reaction live that it's been a good reaction.

"The shows have been really fun," Heidi continued. "It has been so fun. There's just such a fire in this band right now. And it's not [just] me — it's our drummer, it's our bass player, it's Henry, our guitar player, our tour manager, our manager, agents, everybody. Our lawyer — our lawyer's fired up… He's been the backbone of this band from the beginning… Our whole team has just this incredible fire right now. And so I feel, when I am a little overwhelmed or I feel a little bit of doubt or anything, I have my whole team to back us up. So it's been a ride. But that roller coaster's fun."

Shepherd was also asked about how the experience of becoming the sole lead singer of the BUTCHER BABIES affected how she sees "public perception versus reality". She responded: "Well, that is actually something I had to tackle in therapy. That was the initial thing, is, 'People, are they even gonna believe in me? I've been the lead vocalist of this band for 20 years, but are they gonna think that I can still do it?' I've been doing this, but now I just do a couple extra lines, lyrics on stage — I sing a couple extra lines on stage. And that was something that I'm, like, 'What if people think that I can't do this? What if people think that, 'Oh, it's gonna be horrible,'' and blah, blah, blah. And [my therapist] told me, she's, like, 'But that's a story you're making up in your head. That's something you are making up in your head. And then you're gonna believe it.' And I'm sure that there are those people out there, and that's totally fine. I don't mind having something to prove. In fact, that's how this band became successful in the first place. So that's how I've always lived my life. I've lived my life by the 'no'. When people tell me 'no', I say, 'Actually yes.' So, doubt me. I want to feel like I've got something to prove, so that's fine. But [my therapist was], like, 'This is something that you are portraying yourself. This is something that you are telling yourself. So why don't you tell yourself that people are gonna rally for you, that people are gonna be excited for you, and that people are gonna love what you come up with next? Why don't you think that people are going to look forward to this new chapter instead of closing the book?' And I was, like, 'Oh, okay. You know what? That's how I need to think.' And granted, that's an everyday — that's a process every day. I still have to tell myself, 'I need to think this way, I need to think this way, I need to think this way.' Of course, every once in a while I'm gonna run across a shitty comment or someone's gonna say something to me, but I have to not let my day be ruined by those little things."

This past December, Carla spoke to Matt Wake of AL.com about her split with BUTCHER BABIES nearly a year and a half earlier after a decade-and-a-half run. She said: "I couldn't do a tour [in the fall of 2023] because I had a serious eye injury and they went and did a tour without me. Then it was, like, 'Well, we'll just do the band by ourselves.' When you have put your heart and soul into something for so long and you do get kind of squeezed out of it, there's a moment when you're, like, 'I can either lay down and not do anything else, or I'm not gonna let someone else tell me when I'm fucking done doing what I do.'"

In October 2024, Harvey told "The Ward Bond Show" about her exit from BUTCHER BABIES: "So there's so much that goes into being in a band, especially as you get older and your life changes, you have relationships, you have a partner. I have a stepdaughter, and the idea, all of a sudden, of being on the road 10, 12 months out of the year became just a lot to handle. And in a band there's five people, and half of those people may feel like they want to be on the road constantly all the time and then some people are, like, 'Maybe it's halftime.' So it doesn't always work out for the greater good of everybody."

Earlier this month, Heidi told Radioactive MikeZ, host of the 96.7 KCAL-FM program "Wired In The Empire", that BUTCHER BABIES will release a new full-length album later this year, following the arrival of two new singles, "Lost In Your Touch" and "Sincerity", via Judge & Jury Records. "It is dunzo, it is finished," she said about the LP. "And we've been working on it for a while.

Judge & Jury Records is a powerhouse record label and production company founded by multi-platinum producer Howard Benson (MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, SEETHER, SKILLET, OF MICE & MEN) and Neil Sanderson of THREE DAYS GRACE.

The instrumentation for BUTCHER BABIES' new LP was meticulously crafted by Benson and Sanderson at West Valley Recording Studios, Benson's studio in Woodland Hills, California.