ROXY PETRUCCI Says A 'Classic VIXEN Record' Will Surface In 2019

VIXEN and MADAM X drummer Roxy Petrucci was recently interviewed by Bay Ragni of Totally Driven Radio. The full conversation can be streamed below. A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On performing with both VIXEN and MADAM X at this year's Sweden Rock Festival:

Roxy: "We play Friday, and I'm playing [at] noon with VIXEN and then [at] 2:45 with MADAM X the same day. I've got 90 minutes between shows, but I'll be ready for it. I'm just really excited about it. How cool is that — just to play Sweden Rock, and then, I'm playing twice. How cool is that?"

On VIXEN's new live album, "Live Fire":

Roxy: "That has two bonus tracks on it — two studio tracks. One of them is 'Edge Of A Broken Heart' acoustic, and it's really stripped-down and bare and heavenly. The vocals are just incredible. It's just incredible, the vocals that Janet [Gardner did] and the backgrounds. Then the other studio track is 'You Ought To Know By Now', which is a song that we played back in the day with [late guitarist] Jan [Kuehnemund], and we resurrected that and just brought it a little bit up to date. I don't know why we ever didn't record that because it's a great song — very VIXEN, very classic VIXEN with the big harmonies. It's killing. We're going to throw that in our live set. When I first joined VIXEN, we were playing that song, and then once we recorded the album, we didn't play it anymore. I don't know why — I guess because we had so many other songs to play, but it's a real standout track. I don't know why we didn't do that, but we're doing it now. We're really excited about that."

On Gardner's condition following brain surgery:

Roxy: "Luckily, she is going to be fine. She got her last CT scan, and she is 100 percent. She's all healed. She was rocking with her solo project just last week in Europe; she's back now and getting ready to hit the road with VIXEN. She is back to Janet. Thank god, because that was scary."

On VIXEN's set during this year's Monsters Of Rock cruise, which featured a number of guest vocalists filling in for Gardner:

Roxy: "They all pulled together for us, which was really, really cool. The rock n' roll community came together to help us out, and to help Janet out too. All these guys, like Terry [Ilous] from GREAT WHITE and Danny Vaughn from TYKETTO, Chad [Stewart] and Taime [Downe] from FASTER PUSSYCAT, Bret [Kaiser] from MADAM X... they all just knocked it out of the park. It was fantastic. We had a great time, too. We weren't sure we'd be able to pull it off, because a lot of these songs, Janet sings high — she sings in the heavens — so to have them be able to sing these songs and do a fantastic job, it was just very, very cool. We couldn't thank them enough for coming through for us. The show must go on — we wanted to play, and we wanted Janet to rest. She needed to be home. We were surprised it came together so well with no rehearsals. And Todd La Torre from QUEENSRŸCHE — the way he sang 'Edge Of A Broken Heart' [see video below], it was like, 'Wow!' It was very cool. It was just so much fun, and you could feel the love in that room."

On whether the group plans to record a new studio album:

Roxy: "That's next. We want to do that next. Now that we have the live record under our belt, I think it's time. I think we're going to be ready to release something in 2019. We'll take this year to start writing it. This is pretty much like, 'We're back.' Before we were even thinking about releasing something, we had so many fans writing, saying, 'It's time — come on. Can you release one song? Something.' They wanted something from VIXEN, so we thought, 'Let's give them an album, but let's give them the live stuff, a reminder of all the songs, and then having the two studio tracks, so that's just a little taste of what's to come. It's all about timing, and we're going to make sure and release something we're very proud of and that the fans will dig — a classic VIXEN record."

"Live Fire" will be released July 6 via Rat Pak Records. Mixed by Michael Wagener, the disc features 12 live tracks and was recorded at Chicago's legendary Arcada Theater during the group's successful 2017 tour. In addition to the classic VIXEN songs, the effort also includes a newly recorded studio version of "You Ought to Know By Now", an all-new studio acoustic version of the hit song "Edge Of A Broken Heart" and a live version of a previously unreleased track called "Big Brother".