Meet Madame Reaper
Somewhere along an unsettling highway lay a strip club. There, you’ll find a woman who melds 80s pop, classical music training, and the best of glam rock. She also allows her employees to *eliminate* misbehaving male patrons of her club. This is, of course, a fictional story, but the music and message are real.
Meet Madame Reaper and the Gentlemen's Club, the brainchild of Kira Leadholm, a Chicago-based and classically trained musician with an unbounded creativity across art. As a former theater kid, performance through words, music, and visuals is in her nature. Now, Madame Reaper & The Gentleman’s Club has become one of the main ways she communicates her vivid storytelling and ear for the eccentric. One conversation with her solidifies that this is natural to her, painting stories full of wit and depth that dismantle what it means to be a woman, both in the everyday and as an entertainer.
When you hit play on Madame Reaper’s Gentlemen’s Club, you’re transported to right where Kira wants you, an unsettling highway, in a strip club, as Kate Bush and Prince take turns belting through the speakers. We sat down with Kira to talk about how the nine-track album came to be, her growth as an artist, and more.
Photography by Patricia Aquino
Who is Madame and Reaper, and when was the project born?
When I started the project, I knew I wanted to differentiate my stage persona from my personal life just because I'm a pretty private person and I don't like putting my name out there. So, with that, I developed this character. Madame Reaper is a strip club owner—I envision her existing at some point in the latter half of the 20th century—a nebulous time in the past. Her club is in the middle of nowhere, and she lets her employees murder customers who are acting out.
I got that idea and started writing the music that eventually comprised the record in the summer of 2021. Obviously, there have been many, many iterations since then. But I didn't start playing with my band until last January; we debuted at Tomorrow Never Knows last year, so we've been playing for almost a year live. I've been working on the music for a little over two years.
And was this your first go at music? How long has it been part of your life?
No, I've been doing music like my whole life. When I was a kid, I would just compose little songs in GarageBand. I went through a phase where I was really obsessed with covering popular songs using the chipmunk voice. I would pitch my voice up—and this had nothing to do with Alvin and the Chipmunks; it pre-dated that. I also took voice lessons as a kid, and when I was in high school, I started taking more classical and opera voice lessons. So I'm classically trained in singing, and I was definitely a musical theater kid. Then, once I actually had an adult job to fund my music, it made it a lot more possible to pursue it more seriously because before, everything was too expensive. It was more of a hobby.
When you started writing the music back in 2021, did you know that it would turn into an album? The whole project, to me, is truly one cohesive story. Did you know that that's what it was going to be when you were writing it, or did that kind of come after you wrote a few songs?
I think so. “Bang Bang” was one of the first songs that I wrote off the album, and I think that really set the mood for how I approached writing the rest of it and how the story unfolded. So, I guess the answer is yes and no. Yes, in the sense of 'I have this aesthetic and this story in my mind.' But each song also unfolds as it does. I feel like sometimes I don't have control over how my songs actually come out, and each one is definitely its own story.
My favorite part is the lyrics. I love a good veiled lyric. Considering how unique your music is, do you feel like you've found a niche?
I think I'm definitely finding a niche. I know that the music I make is on the weirder end, but I don't think I'm entirely capable of writing music that would be considered mainstream. I probably wouldn't really enjoy it either. Some of my lyrics are more veiled, but some of them are really blunt about my political and societal views. And if people aren't on board with that, then I don't need them listening to my music, you know? So, yeah, I definitely don't feel the need to compromise who I am for potential listeners because then there are people like you who are down with it, which is the point of everything I do.
What inspirations would you cite for the album?
MR: Inspiration-wise, I’m all over the map. Obviously, there's a really heavy eighties influence. I was listening to a lot of New Order, I was listening to a lot of Prince, and both of those artists inspired a lot of the drum sounds that I use. There's a French band called La Femme that I really love, and I definitely was heavily influenced by them on some of those spookier songs because they're really good at creating a mood with their music and building these really interesting synth landscapes. I really like the way early Marina and The Diamonds does vocal delivery, so I took some influence from that. And then other random artists that pop in here and there throughout the album are the B-52's, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and LCD Soundsystem.
I'm interested to hear about the strip club where customers can die. How did this idea come about?
It was definitely a thing where it was just like, boom, it was there. I was probably driving or I was at the gym or something, and the idea of the whole backstory came to me out of nowhere. I was like, Oh my God, I have to go home and write this. I did creative writing in undergrad, specifically fiction, and a lot of my writing had very strong feminist undertones. Just because I'm a woman, that's something that I'm interested in, something that I experience. So I think when I was coming up with a character, it was important for me that it reflected my experience. A lot of the songs on the record are about gender dynamics in society, in the music industry, and in romantic relationships. I think it was a little bit subconscious, but then when I had the idea for Madame Reaper, I was like, 'Yes, this is it. This is what I've been looking for.'
And those are always the best ones, like the ones that just, like, pop into your brain, like it was like, meant to find you. How does it feel to keep it alive now and perform it live?
Yeah, it's interesting you ask that because the day that the album came out, I was actually really sad. I’d been working so hard on it for so long, and I just got in my head about ‘Oh, is anyone going to listen to this? Is anyone going to care?’ But once I got over that, it was really exciting because before the album, I didn't have a ton to show for my project. It's exciting to have something on my Spotify page to show people when I'm like, Hey, I make music. And live, we definitely are ready to start learning new music that I've been working on because we've been playing these songs for almost a year. But even with the same tunes, our live shows are always different. We used to play with a keyboard player, and now we don't. Sometimes I have my drummer there, sometimes I don't, and sometimes I have my bass player there, sometimes I don't. We're always figuring out different iterations of the band, and I think in that, we're able to keep things fresh. But I think more than anything, I'm honestly just really excited about what I'm working on next. It’s funny because I should be really excited about this album that I just released, but I'm always thinking about the next thing. I'm more into the new iteration of music, but that's not to say that I don't love the album and that I'm not excited about it.
Well, that's a good mindset to be in because I think sometimes, like, people can tend to get stuck on one thing, you know? Do you feel yourself creating another full body of work, or are you looking to explore just singles?
That's something I'm struggling with because I love the album as an art form. My car only plays CDs because it's really old, so I always listen to albums in my car, and I think that there's something really special about listening to an album from start to finish. Each song is a story and a creative work, but put together, it's like going to an exhibition. It's curated, and it tells a bigger story. That's the long way of saying that I really like albums, and I really like writing albums. But we live in an age when releasing singles is what you're supposed to do. So, I'm not quite sure yet how I'm going to navigate that. Maybe it'll take the form of an EP, or maybe I'll release some singles and an album, because my instinct is that I want to keep releasing albums, but I also don't want to dig myself into a hole because of streaming.
It's a shame because albums are such transformational experiences, and I wish everybody had older cars where they could only listen to albums because I think that would solve a lot of problems. We have a genetic curiosity. Do you have any favorite albums now or go-to albums in the car to listen to?
I have 1999 (Prince) on CD, and I love that album front-to-back. LCD Soundsystem’s American Dream is beautiful front-to-back. I am a very big fan of The Strokes, which is maybe surprising, and I love Is This It?, their first album. I always listen to that one in the car. Carole King's Tapestry is another one that I just love. There are some albums that I really just listen to a couple songs and skip the rest, but the ones I mentioned are some that I love every single song, you know?
Absolutely. So, in terms of the creative process, how does that look for you?
I generally start alone with a small idea of a melody or a chord progression. And then I build the song out in my DAW using midi. I should preface this by saying I am not a very good guitar player, so I don't write any guitar parts into my songs at first. Once I have an idea of what I want it to sound like, I then will usually go to my bass player and my guitar player and be like, Hey, this is what I think it could be, but let me know if you have something better. My guitar player, Kev, is also my partner and we live together, which makes it really easy. He usually writes the guitar parts. But also, when we were tracking the album, there were a lot of little improvised things. There's this keys run at the end of Forest Fire that my old keys player came up with on the spot, and it was just so perfect. I make the skeleton of the song, but my bandmates… they're all so talented, and they come with their own ideas and their own unique expertise. So it's a little bit of both.
If listeners could leave feeling or thinking one thing, what would you want them to leave with?
When I write music, I definitely have a meaning or a story in my mind, but like I said earlier, it’s often veiled or not super obvious. I do that because I want people to take away what they take away from the songs. I don't think there's any one message I necessarily want people to take away. This is maybe more surface level, but I just want people to be excited about this new artist they listened to. Or if the lyricism spurs any sort of critical thinking, that's really cool, and that's what I'm aiming for. But there's not a single message. I definitely don't want someone listening to it and leaving and being like, 'Yeah, men's power!'
I like that being your one guardrail. Is there anything specific in the next few weeks or months that people should keep an eye out for?
Our record release show was rescheduled for November 16th at GMan, so that'll be the most important thing coming up. And then besides that, like, we're doing a few video sessions and maybe a music video. People can just follow me on Instagram, and they'll find out about all the important things!
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Catch Madame Reaper and The Gentleman’s Club at GMan Tavern on November 16th
Stream her debut project, Madame Reaper’s Gentlemen’s Club