Over the span of 17 years since she first saw her idol, Santana play live in Australia with her dad,  Orianthi has gone from a girl with a guitar and a dream to a full blown Rock Goddess with major street cred in the guy’s world of Rock N Roll. She’s had the opportunity to tour with everyone from Micheal Bolton to Alice Cooper and was set to go on the ill fated “This Is It” tour with Michael Jackson , prior to his death. She’s shared the stage with several artists, including Aerosmith, Carrie Underwood, Marilyn Manson, James Durbin, Mary J Blidge and John Mayer, proving that she can mesh with any genre.

She’s shown time and time again that she’s not just a pretty face with a guitar. She has enough grit and tenacity to match any of the guys out there with added soul and passion that leaves people in awe at the end of every show. Most importantly, Orianthi has inspired other girls that want to rock to pick up a guitar and go for it , to do what feels right to them, no matter how society sees it.

The “Queen Of Shred”,who’s been inspired by the likes of guitar legends , Jimi Hendrix, Steve Vai and Santana has recently released the Deluxe Edition of her 3rd album, Heaven In This Hell, produced by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame which features the duet “Sex E Bizarre”, with Steven Tyler.

 You can purchase Heaven In This Hell (Deluxe Version) here: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/heaven-in-this-hell-deluxe/id691025575

Fresh from playing a New Years Eve concert in Maui with Richie Sambora, Weird Al, Sammy Hagar, Alice Cooper & Steven Tyler and on a break from touring, talented rock goddess, Orianthi, took the time for a phone interview to talk everything from working with Steven Tyler and playing for Santana to her love of coffee ,  favorite albums and her advice for aspiring female musicians.

Orianthi : Where are you calling from?

Jessica: Ohio

Orianthi: Cool !

Jessica: You just got back to LA , how’s that going?

Orianthi: Yeah, I just got back in LA from playing New Years in Maui. That was a blast and prior to that, touring around with Alice Cooper for the last few months. I mean, that’s been a real blast. I’ve been touring with Alice for about 3 years now and I always love doing that. I’m actually heading out again with Alice in March and now I’m recording new material and doing various things with my fans. Which is recently what I’m doing is auditioning players from around the world to play a show with me here in LA this February, so I’m going through a lot of auditions on YouTube and there’s some incredible players coming from Russia, Japan and Australia and I’m going to fly them out here to play a show with me.

Jessica: Awesome! We saw you in Cincy when you were on tour with Alice this past summer.

Orianthi: Oh cool! Yeah, I mean getting out there and celebrating Halloween every night and celebrating it with all of you is a lot of fun.

Jessica: What’s your favorite song to play live on tour with Alice?

Orianthi: There’s so many, I mean his whole set list. I love doing “Billion Dollar Babies”. That’s just a good song , just the guitar parts and everything, I love and then “Go To Hell” I love too. There’s just so many good songs.”Poison” of course, is good. He doesn’t have a bad song. There all so good, you know?

Jessica: Yeah. We recently interviewed Ryan Roxie & he told us about some of his most memorable & funniest moments on tour with Alice. Do you have any that stand out as the most memorable for you?

Orianthi:  Yeah I mean there’s just so many all the time you know? When I first joined in the band, I had to sort of become aware of everything that was going on onstage and I’d be jumping off of the speakers and not aware of confetti cannons behind me that were about to go off in front of my butt and they get shot across the audience, so I remember it was the first week or two and I was like doing my solo in front of the cannons and the sound guy had to run around & start yelling at me and I moved, thank God, because that would have been a bad injury and hard to explain in the hospital. So, yeah, that was one of them. I’ve been stuck in elevators for hours actually when we went to Paris I got stuck in an elevator , which was scary. I think it was 3 stories and they had to bring the electricians through and had to get oxygen in & I thought I was going to die. Those were the early days and you know , nearly getting stabbed by Alice using knives and stuff. It’s always madness. With the whole rock n roll family of Alice Cooper there’s just always crazy stuff going on. I’ve been chased in parking lots and then falling over and spraining my ankle and it being twice the size and trying to get a boot on and play an entire show like that is quite painful. That happened in Russia , I think. There’s always something going on. The guys are like brothers to me, you know. Alice is hilarious. They’re always having fun when we’re off – stage and I think that shows when they’re onstage. They’re like a bunch of kids or something. They all love music and jamming out.

Jessica: What was your favorite venue to play on this last leg of the tour?

Orianthi: We played a couple of haunted venues, which were interesting because I’m actually really scared of ghosts. I’m scared we’ll get possessed by them. So we took a tour around, I think one was actually in , I think Chicago, somewhere around there & it was super haunted and it had just a lot of character too and any venue that’s really old and has just amazing artwork and the way it’s constructed, you know, is always cool to play. There’s a lot of history there and always the energy from the crowd , too. We played Wacken Fest in Germany , which was about 90,000 people and that was insane. You look out and you can’t see the end of the people and it’s just, it’s just madness and you go out there and you fly and you let go of everything and you just have fun and celebrate music and feeling that energy is just powerful. That many people together & just having a good time, it’s addictive. Once you’ve done that you just stay on a high for quite some time. So we did that in Germany and that was a blast.

Jessica: You just played at the Kennedy Center Honors for Santana. I know he is one of your biggest influences musically. What was that experience like?

Orianthi: Oh yeah, I mean Santana is the reason why I play electric guitar. He’s been such an inspiration to me. He’s an incredible guitar player and the way he plays is almost like, like a voice, you know? He doesn’t play guitar like a guitar and it really affected me when I first heard him and getting to go out there and preform for him and celebrate his music and to be there and to be part of that was just crazy. It was a really surreal moment. You’re up there with Santana and Obama looking at you and you’re playing Santana’s solo with all of these great people and an incredible band and a great crowd. It was just a really surreal, awesome night.

Jessica: You recently released the deluxe edition of Heaven In This Hell, which features Sex E Bizzarre , a duet with Steven Tyler. What was it like working with him?

Orianthi: I love Steven Tyler, he’s great. I’ve known him for some time and we’ve done quite a few shows together and I just thought his voice would be perfect for that song and he heard it and he liked it. We were at his house and cranked it up and said I wanna sing on this and I met up with him in LA and we talked about it more and then he called me because Marti Fredrikson produced his record and that song and we wrote it together and he sang on it and I heard it and I was like wow , this is awesome! So that was pretty crazy, I mean, you know the fact that he wanted to do it and did it and I loved it, I mean , he killed it on it.

Jessica: You’ve maintained a level of class, despite the “LA” environment. What advice can you give to young female artists that want to follow the path that you, Joan Jett and others have blazed & not lose their focus on the music?

Orianthi: I don’t party a lot. I don’t really do that. Well , I do, but to me it’s all about creating and I’m here on this Earth to write music and to perform and to inspire. That’s my path, you know. That’s my duty to do that and the entertainment aspect of it all is a bunch of different things as far as being creative and trying different things and what not and I’m a fan as well as an artist. Everyone’s so different as to how the put themselves out there and how they entertain people and play their music. I think it’s just important to be true to yourself and whatever feels right at that time is what you should be doing and you know whatever’s right for you may not be right for someone else or maybe it’s right for someone else and not for you. So that’s the way I look at it. Everyone’s so different and I don’t judge because I think it’s great when everyone is so different. It’s colorful. No one’s the same. If everyone was doing the same thing, it would be boring. As I said, whatever feels right to you.

Jessica: Awesome. We know you are a huge coffee fan. What kind of coffee do you prefer?

Orianthi: Oh gosh, yeah! I drink so much coffee, it’s actually ridiculous and it’s something I’ve been doing since I was really young because my grandma, she’s Greek, but I used to drink Turkish coffee when I was really young, about 7 or 8. For some reason , the smell of it, wanting it and there’s just something about it which I love and if I go without it, I’ll get headaches. It just gets me going and I love the organic coffees from Whole Foods , which I get here. I have an espresso machine as well. At one point , it was really pretty ridiculous. I had about 7 coffee machines, no joke. I’m not joking. My mom came over from Australia and was like your kitchen is just like an issue, you need to put them away. So, we packed up quite a few of them. I didn’t need them all. Obviously, it’s not necessary. It’s nice to change it up every now and then , because I love my espressos and I also love brewed coffee and I had the Keurig machine at one point and I also like the drip coffee maker and the french press.  There’s so many different ways and I’m pretty much a coffee snob too because if you make coffee wrong, it’s just not right. You’ve got to have it right and I make it on the tour bus too, um, but I’ve been told that my coffee is kind of like tar. It’s very , very strong, so the guys in the band, they’re always diluting it. They’re always boiling the kettle to add a bunch of water t it and I’m like whatever… Bunch of pansies!

*laughs*

Jessica: I have one last question for you. What are the 5 albums you cant live without?

Orianthi: My top 5 albums? Let me get my iPod, because I have a very eclectic music collection here. Um, well definitely Jimi Hendrix, I’m going to go with Santana, Live in Mexico, um, oh gosh , what else do I listen to? It always changes. Oh what was I listening to the other day? I love Kings of Leon, um Jack White and any artists, because I have so many records that I listen to and there’s so many playlists.. INXS Greatest Hits, I have to put them in there because I love them. That’s more than 5 , right? *laughs*

Jessica: Yeah, I think so. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us!

Orianthi: Thank you! See you at a show soon.

You can find out more information about Orianthi & upcoming Alice Cooper tour dates here:

Photos Courtesy of: Karen Webb.

Photos Credit : Dave Stewart.

A special thanks to Orianthi for taking the time to talk to us!