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Butcher Babies headed to Altar Bar in Pittsburgh’s Strip District

By Scott Tady for The 6 min read
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The Butcher Babies will perform Friday night at Altar Bar in the Strip District.

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The Butcher Babies will perform Friday night at Altar Bar in the Strip District.

Donny Osmond digs a new song by the Butcher Babies, whose two frontwomen no longer go on stage topless except for nipple tape.

Sounds as if the Butcher Babies are charting a course a bit more toward the mainstream. That journey brings one of metal’s most unusual bands to Altar Bar in the Strip District tonight.

“Pittsburgh always stands out in my mind, especially Altar Bar, where we played our first national tour three years ago with Otep,” Butcher Babies singer Heidi Shepherd said. “To go back there as a headliner will be really dear to our hearts.”

The Butcher Babies made a bigger splash locally in summer 2013, with a matinee set at the Rob Zombie-led Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival at First Niagara Pavilion. After the Butcher Babies had pummeled the crowd with sledgehammer riffs, cathartic screams and in-your-face attitude, Shepherd and co-vocalist Carla Harvey made a beeline for the band’s merchandise tent, where a long line of brand-new fans waited for an autograph and photo opp.

“That was one of the most important tours we’ve done as a band,” Shepherd said recently in a warm and cheery phone chat. “That tour is a staple of any metal band’s career, and to get that out of the way so early was really incredible. We learned a lot and made a lot of friends. It was like metal summer camp.”

Butcher Babies are back on the road supporting “Uncovered,” an album released Tuesday composed of five cover songs. Each band member picked one song, with the most obvious choice being ZZ Top’s “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers.”

The band got more adventurous by metal-izing the 1966 novelty smash and Halloween favorite “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha” by Napoleon XIV.

“That’s our favorite, hand’s down, for a lot of reasons,” Shepherd said. “It didn’t really come with a musical base, so we got to write the music for it. It just came with a beat, if you’ve heard the original.

“And we wrote music that’s so incredibly emotional and crazy. Just two psychotic b—–s screaming at each other. I’m really excited for everyone to hear it.”

It took a lot of lobbying, but Shepherd persuaded her bandmates to cover “Crazy Horses,” an overlooked song by sugary ’70s pop act the Osmonds. She discovered that song as a young girl scrolling through her mom’s 8-track collection.

“I grew up in Provo, Utah, and the Osmonds were our hometown heroes, of course, and I was trying to find something cool that sparked my interest,” Shepherd said. “That song’s opening riff really stuck with me into my teen years. I remember baby-sitting my siblings and playing that song as loud as I could. The neighbors got so mad. That song has been a huge part of my life as long as I can remember.”

Imagine her delight when she found out the famously clean-cut Donny Osmond had praised the Butcher Babies’ version of “Crazy Horses.”

“I was in the shower, and one of my friends popped into the bathroom and said, ‘OMG, you have to hear this.'”

The smartphone-wielding friend read aloud Osmond’s quote:

“When we released ‘Crazy Horses,’ we were pushing against what the Osmonds were known for, but it became a greatest hit.

“The Butcher Babies have reinvented this song in a creative and innovative way — and that’s what music is about. Now what if I had recorded ‘Puppy Love’ like this?”

Shepherd’s gut reaction to Osmond’s statement?

“I was in the shower screaming,” she said. “I just thought that was the coolest thing.”

Like the Osmonds, Shepherd was raised in a faithful Mormon household.

“I’m glad I grew up in that environment. I learned a lot of good morals and ethics,” she said.

That’s served her well since moving to Los Angeles, where she co-founded a metal band known for provocative stage tactics, such as when Shepherd and Harvey would go on stage with two small strips of electrical tape covering their otherwise bare breasts.

The nipple tape was an homage to Shepherd’s musical heroine, the late-Wendy O. Williams, whose fearless stage antics, involving near-nudity, chain-sawing TVs and blowing up cars, were groundbreaking punk-rock theatrics.

Believing they’d made their point and that they needed to evolve, Shepherd and Harvey ditched that look.

Also dropped from the live shows was bandmate Jason Klein’s blood-spurting bass guitar.

“Obviously, that didn’t fly with most of the places we played,” Shepherd said.

Shepherd and Harvey still prowl the stage with a confidence they hope inspires more young women to become musicians.

in the male-dominated metal realm.

“I hope we’re helping to create some sort of movement,” the 29-year-old Shepherd said.

, recalling her days as a kid “who grew up in the pit, sneaking out to go to concerts because I wasn’t allowed to. That’s where I got my aggression out.”

When she sees girls in the crowd at a Butcher Babies show, “I remember that was me once, and I want to talk to them and encourage them to be part of this.”

Altar Bar spectators can expect a setlist with the Butcher Babies’ first single, 2012’s “Mr. Slowdeath”; songs from last year’s debut full-length; the new cover songs and maybe an unreleased cut from the band’s next full-sized album arriving in 2015.

The merch table will push the “Uncovered” EP, with its cover resembling a tabloid newspaper with bizarre and amusing stories about the band. One of the faux articles talks about Shepherd being born without a bellybutton.

“That’s a true story actually,” said Shepherd, who describes herself as “dorky” and “normal.”

Those words wouldn’t leap to mind for music bloggers and magazines that routinely save a prominent spot for Shepherd on their lists of “hottest” and “sexiest” women in hard rock.

A veteran of TV commercials and one-time guest roles, such as Peach Pit Waitress on “90210” and Go-Go Dancer on “CSI: New York,” Shepherd recently changed her hair from blond to blood red. People treat her with more respect as a redhead, she said.

With the new ‘do, she might be harder to recognize if the Butcher Babies spend Thursday’s day-off, or tonight’s post-show hours, visiting their favorite Pittsburgh bars, Devils & Dolls and Casey’s Draft House, both on the South Side.

“We have a couple good friends in Pittsburgh, so each time we come through town, we party with them there, staying up all night drinking and having fun,” Shepherd said. “People there are great. Your malls are great, too.”

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