Mickie James

Born Mickie Laree James on August 31, 1979, Mickie James has worked as a professional wrestler while also pursuing paths as a singer and songwriter. Her childhood unfolded in Montpelier, Virginia, where her parents’ divorce at an early age placed her frequently on her grandmother’s horse farm, igniting a lasting passion for horses that was soon matched by an interest in music. She devoted five years to studying violin and completed high school in 1997. Two years afterward she launched her wrestling career on the independent circuit under the ring name Alexis Laree, later attaining WWE status in 2005 through prominent story lines that positioned her among the leading female competitors in the profitable national professional wrestling entertainment circuit. Her debut album, Strangers & Angels, arrived independently in 2010, as did the single “Hardcore Country,” which served as her TNA theme song and cemented her standing as a country singer. To fund her second album, Somebody’s Gonna Pay, she relied on Kickstarter; the project reached listeners through Entertainment One in the spring of 2013.