Meet Lisa Marie Maestas of Praise the Dead in Arcadia

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Marie Maestas.

Lisa Marie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Born on New Year’s Day, I grew up in Delta Colorado, in a loving and supportive family where I was introduced to music and the drums at a very early age. I vividly remember holding Janis Joplin’s album in my lap and being amazed. I distinctly remember my older cousins playing Thin Lizzy, ACDC and Nazareth records and all of us dancing and rocking out. I started drumming at the age of ten and discovered my singing voice early on, as well. I continued my drumming and musical studies throughout my elementary and middle-school years. My family moved to our neighboring town of Montrose, where I played drums in the concert, marching and jazz bands.

My parents were very supportive and would let my rock band play in our living room for family fiestas! After graduating high school, my parents gifted me a new drum set and for the next couple of years, I traveled and lived in Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, playing in as many bands as I could before I set my sights on going to college for music in Denver, CO. I eventually settled in Denver, was the lead singer, drummer, and percussionist in successful regional touring bands, taught vocal and drum lessons, recorded the first album of my original music, garnered airplay, was a regular on local radio stations, playing local festivals and the Denver rock-circuit. Alas, after a shocking break-up and a constant pull from the west, the bio-rhythms of life shifted once again and after a decade, plus or minus a few years, I heard the winds cry change. I often spoke of my dream of moving to L.A. and meeting my rock-star heroes, becoming friends with them and eventually sharing the stage.

Around this time, I met Tracey Spacey T Singleton who played in Fishbone, at the time and was co-headlining a concert with King’s X, where we struck up an intense friendship and I got to play drums with the band at the after-party. This gave me more confidence in my upcoming plans of working my way towards the west coast. Soon after, I took a job in Seattle, playing drums in a working rock band where I lived for the next year, all the while sending out demo tapes of my original music. My friendship with Spacey T. grew into us dating, resulting in me moving to Los Angeles in 2005, subsequently signing a three-song production deal with Peter Distefano of Porno for Pyros through the now-defunct Sanctuary Records. Peter co-produced, added his guitar to “Haunting Me ” and recorded my original songs with Spacey T., who is also known for co-founding and playing lead guitar in the band Sound Barrier who were the first All-Black Metal band to be signed to a major label in the ’80s.

To my surprise, I found out that Sound Barrier was the band I was looking for, whose album I couldn’t find in my small town since I saw them on Headbanger’s Ball on MTV in the 8th grade! While working on our original music for PTD, an opportunity came for Spacey T. to play guitar and for me to sing back vocals and play percussion for Mallia Franklin, The Queen of Funk and the Funk Disciples, until her untimely passing. She is best known for her time in Parliament-Funkadelic and Parlet. At that time, I also taught choir and percussion classes to elementary schools, in the south bay and downtown L.A., while Spacey T and I continued to work on our original sound, eventually forming our current hard rock duo Praise the Dead, in which I sing lead and play drums, while he plays eight string-guitar. Praise the Dead’s digital EP, The Heavy was co-produced and recorded by Carl Restivo, music director for Tom Morello with additional recording and engineering by Adrian Villanueva at his Dungeon Studio in Highland Park. The Heavy is available on all digital platforms.

At one time, we had our own school in Highland Park called The Rock Ship, where we taught students drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, and vocals, who are now members of The Cheesbergens, Diabology and Oscura Luna, among others. After teaching for a few different rock schools, where some of our students have gone on to play in signed bands, such as The Regrettes and Liily as well as have successful solo careers, we eventually developed a teaching team and The Rock Band Project was created in 2007 through THE LACER AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAMS. For the past ten years, we have been awarded the Artist Resident Grant from the California Arts Council and have been co-teaching our rock band classes in Hollywood and surrounding areas for the past 12 years. This year is our ten year anniversary of the CAC grant and we will be culminating with our 10th annual LACER CAC ROCK SHOW at LeConte Middle School, where I create and produce a 45-minute concert performed by our students for over 1000 of their peers, family, and friends of THE LACER AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAMS.

I am grateful to have been able to open up for, or share the stage with bands such as Megadeth, Disturbed, members of Fishbone, Ozomatli, Satellite Party, Tom Morello and dUg Pinnick of King’s X, as well as provide music classes to hundreds of inner-city youth of Los Angeles. We are endorsed by Schecter Guitars, SIT Strings, ZT Amps, Graphtech Tuners, Soul Tone Cymbals and have been donated recording equipment from JBL Harmon/Kardon to incorporate in our rock band classes. I was most recently featured in a documentary about female drummers called Beat Keepers, Women with Rhythm and it is available digitally on Vimeo and Amazon Prime Video. I am hoping to continue teaching music classes, private lessons and finish recording our new music, as well as continue to record and produce new artists.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I knew that I wanted to be a musician at a young age. Music chose me. Words and melodies came easy to me in my songwriting and the drums were something that I gravitated to. It has been difficult as a female drummer in a male-dominated industry and category. Once I realized music was something that made me happy and allowed me to express myself in a creative way, I was hooked. I was always told that when you find something you are passionate about and you can make a living at it, then do it because life is too short to not be happy. It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles that I decided to do strictly music for a living. I figured if I was going to go for it, I had to do it 100%. In the past, I always had jobs in the natural food industry, too repping herbal products or organic foods, eventually, them becoming more and more corporate and stuffy. It was a nice living but it took away from my music.

When I made the decision to move to LA and to seriously pursue music, I slept on couches, slept in my car for three weeks and lived in weekly hotels in the beginning so I could save enough money to afford a place to live in such an expensive city. Teaching music helped me stay afloat in between sessions and gigs but I eventually fell in love with teaching and have been doing it ever since. In previous musical projects, I wanted to play the drums and sing lead at the same time but the male members of the band didn’t want me hidden behind the drums, as they put it I should be upfront, even though I knew the drum parts better than the hired drummers and I could sing at the same time. This was something that came naturally to me, so I created Praise the Dead, around that, going with my gut, performing my songs the way I heard them in my head.

Please tell us more about your work. What should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
It’s not that we praise death, only those who’ve influenced us beyond their last breath. Praise the Dead is a hard rock duo, incorporating loop stations, eight-string guitars and drums with melodic vocals. We play original thought-provoking music as well as diverse cover songs. We love to perform and have many years of experience between us. We are a teaching team who can coach your band or give you personal individual lessons in many different styles of music. We can teach you in your home, our studio or a local rehearsal studio. We also produce artists and can accompany you on your track, if needed. We are available for drum, vocal, guitar and bass sessions individually, or as a duo. I personally specialize in teaching drums and vocals. I have taught four-year-old drummers and 60-year-old heavy metal singers. It is never too late to learn how to play music.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Sharing the stage with my musical heroes has been pretty great but the best feeling is when I see our young students bloom into amazing musicians and people. We are so proud of our students who have gone on to sign recording contracts with major labels and tour the world or the ones who are continuing their studies at a performing arts school. Knowing we helped ignite their musical spark is very rewarding.

However, it is a special feeling knowing that even though many music programs have been cut in schools, we can use our experience in the industry as artists, to be awarded the California Arts Council Artist Resident Grant for ten years in a row, allowing us to teach music in LAUSD schools to hundreds of our Los Angeles youth, changing their lives and creating more musicians.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://praisethedead.bandcamp.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/praisethedead555/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/praisethedead555
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/praisethedead
• Yelp: https://www.lacerafterschool.org
• Other: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/praise-the-dead/535795850

Image Credit:
Emanuel Giella, Tracey Spacey T. Singleton, Lisa Marie Maestas, Wicked Goddess Photography; Kathy Flynn

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