There’s nary a regular in the Memphis music scene who couldn’t spot Miz Stefani in a crowd. She’s an inveterate clubgoer and clearly thrives in that domain with aplomb, sure to be among those playful partiers who, with a boldness, get decked out for any occasion. To be sure, she’s directly responsible for some of those occasions, such as the erstwhile monthly Women in Memphis Music (WiMM) series that she founded with Liz Lane and Fa Bahloul, which cast a much-needed spotlight on local women and femme-identifying musicians. Though WiMM is now on hiatus, it’s but one example of Miz Stefani’s ubiquity in the music ecosystem.
Yet because she’s so often behind the scenes, few realize that she’s a powerful performer in her own right, with that rare ability to kick ass fronting an A-list rock combo. That’s how she’ll appear at 7 p.m. this Saturday, May 16th, at Bar DKDC, when she and her “fully loaded band” celebrate the release of her new EP, Threads. Though her performances have been relatively rare since she moved here from New York, now she’s ramping up her schedule, having already clocked in appearances at Crosstown Brewery and Radio Memphis this month.
Celebrating the new release will lend the DKDC show an extra charge, as a record several years in the making will come to life over the course of the night — and the veterans in Stefani’s band are guaranteed to rock. “My band is so great, and they’re so fun,” Stefani says. The group includes drummer James Cunningham, in whose studio the album was cut, guitarist Lee Holiday, and multi-instrumentalist Khari Wynn. “And introducing Khari Wynn on guitar!” Stefani exclaims about her partner Wynn, laughing. “We say that as a joke, because, you know, he loves to play bass, and we have to beg him to play guitar.” Indeed, it was as a guitarist that Wynn distinguished himself as the onetime musical director for Public Enemy, as fans were reminded of when he opened Public Enemy’s 2025 RiverBeat set with a solo guitar rendition, à la Hendrix, of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” As Stefani puts it, “My secret sauce is, I write my songs on guitar and then I give them to Khari to make them better.”
The chance to play with such talent is but one thing the recent transplant appreciates about Memphis, yet the road leading her here has been circuitous. “I grew up in Fairfax, Virginia, right outside of D.C.,” she says. “Then I went to school in southwestern Virginia, where I worked three jobs, saving all my money. In February of 2000 I was off to New York, and I never looked back.”
Indeed, she thrived in the Big Apple for two decades, working in the music business (for Blue Note, EMI, and others) and finding her own voice as a performer. Singing in bands was only one facet of the talent she nurtured there. “I did small parts and indie films, I walked the runway in modeling shows, I did a lot of Off Broadway stuff, and I love comedy, so I had a small all-female comedy troupe. I had my own band for many years, and then I joined this band called Dear Comrade.”
But Stefani’s most profound experience was in the world of performance art. “I sang with Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping from 2005 till about 2017,” she says, “and that’s probably the most meaningful work I did in my career in New York. It was very anti-consumerist, anti-corporation.” During that time, Stefani appeared in the film, What Would Jesus Buy?, a documentary about Reverend Billy and his exploits.
A chance to work with David Porter at Made In Memphis Entertainment (MIME) lured Stefani to Memphis in 2019, and, despite some back-and-forth moving when Covid lockdown reared its head, she settled here for good in 2021. Yet even today, those years of New York performance art still resonate through Stefani’s Memphis appearances.
“I’m 100 percent a singer, more than an actor,” she says, “I’m a trained vocalist, and my degree is in opera and classical music. But even my music gigs here are almost like one-woman shows. I talk between songs, and I’m always finding fun little things to add.”
Furthermore, she’s very particular about her wardrobe. And, appropriately enough for her imminent debut of Threads, she’s lately been most inspired by the threads of Elvis Presley, as seen in Baz Luhrmann’s recent documentary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. “I was blown away, because I’ve never seen any of the movies Elvis has been in. This Baz Luhrmann movie was all footage taken from rehearsals, and behind the scenes type stuff. And I can say that I walked out of that theater a changed person, in my views of Elvis. I was like, ‘I get it.’ And there was a scene where he’s prepping for his shows in Vegas, and he’s wearing this floral shirt and these black pants with this amazing silver-turquoise belt. I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s the look! That’s the look I want. I’ve gotta recreate that look somehow.’”
After many weeks of searching — a tale too serendipitous to relate here — her outfit was complete, and a photograph of her sporting it graces the EP’s cover. It’s a mighty tough look, entirely appropriate for those about to rock. And that’s what Miz Stefani fully intends to do.
If you need any further proof, consider that Miz Stefani has yet another, harder-rocking persona in the Bluff City. “I front an Ozzy Osbourne tribute band here in Memphis as well, Planet Oz. Obviously, it’s much more heavy rock. And it’s a whole other outlet for me that was quite unexpected, that I never really knew I needed until I did it. I was like, ‘This is on a whole other level!’
“There’s not a lot of straight rock girls here,” she adds. “I’m sitting here wondering, what am I? Am I rock? Am I Americana? Am I folk? Am I hard folk rock? I couldn’t define it. Then Khari said, ‘You’ve got that perfect rock voice.’ Well, I’m not gonna argue. I mean, I’ve got the pipes.”
