Mixi

Nothing about 25-year-old Mixi is ordinary — from her name to her off-the-color-wheel hair to that “where's-the-party” cheer she carries so effortlessly. It's what made her stand out to casting executives on Fuse TV's reality series, Redemption Song, in which 11 girls competed for a second chance at life and a music career. Well, that and the bottle of booze she brought to the audition, which earned her the title, "Blackout Drunk." "I wasn't smashed or anything," Mixi defends weeks after her win. "It was Smirnoff Ice, who can get drunk off of that?!" But it wasn't just a casting stunt that caught the producers' eyes, there was also her distinct jazzy voice and a good story. Mixi, an alias she started using in her pre-TV life, moved to Los Angeles from her hometown of Orlando, Florida with a boyfriend who dumped her as soon as they arrived in Hollywood. "I was pretty much homeless for a good year," she says. To make ends meet, she got a job in insurance, but as a life-long music fan and natural-born adventurer, once rock 'n' roll beckoned, Mixi answered the call promptly and went on the road with a little known band called Anti-Product. "I cleared, like, 40 dollars in a month," she recounts of her touring experience. "Before, I was making a f**k-load of money, but I didn't move to LA to sell insurance." Not long after returning from the road and finding work as a bartender, she happened upon an ad on Craigslist looking for female singers who rock to compete in a new reality show. "I had no idea what would come of it, but figured I'd go check it out and see what happens," says Mixi. Equally unexpected was her smooth and purry singing style, a mix, if you will, of Marilyn Monroe and Gwen Stefani. Mixi grew up on albums her dad listened to — The Beatles, Beach Boys — but fell in love with sounds that were popular even well before his time. "Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, Nancy Sinatra… I totally dig it," she says without a hint of irony. "But I also had my rebellion teen-angst phase, where I listened to a lot of Nirvana, Tool and Metallica. Then I got into punk rock and hip hop." Among her most lasting influences, adds Mixi, who also DJ'd regularly, was the reggae-flavored SoCal outfit Sublime: "I would mimic the way Bradley Nowell was singing, it came kind of naturally to me." That versatility helped Mixi throughout the ten-week competition, where she was expected to sing in multiple genres, including pop, rock, country and hip-hop, though not all came as naturally. "On the seventh episode, they made me do a country version of The Police's 'Roxanne,' and I bombed," she recalls of one of the show's darker moments. "It was way out of my comfort zone, but from the very beginning, I knew it was going to be a challenge." Winning, Mixi contends, wasn't on her mind — at least not at first. "I thought, 'There's no way,' but as it got closer to the end, it was really surprising and weird to me. Like, I could win this!" Of course, now that she's scored a recording contract with Geffen Records, the hard work, pressure and daily demands will only intensify. But Mixi is as ready as she'll ever be to record her debut album, and, true to her risk-taking nature, is going for something wildly out there. "In my first meeting with Ron Fair after the show, I told him I wanted to do a big band thing with a hip-hop beat, and it didn't seem like he was getting it," she says. "So I thought, 'I need to show him what I hear in my mind,' and I put a song together." Co-produced by Jack Joseph Puig, that song, "I Miss Those Days (Ghost)," about growing up and looking back, ended up being the first single. "All the songs I've written in the last few years have been inspirational," says Mixi. "They're meant to get people in a better mood and feeling positive." As far as the music business is concerned, Mixi's feeling pretty optimistic about her own future, thanks to the success of singers like Amy Winehouse and Duffy. "When they came out, I thought, 'Thank God,' because by that point, I'd played plenty of bathroom stall-sized shows in LA and was starting to think that it wasn't gonna happen. But Amy Winehouse really captivated me, and I hoped the industry was realizing that people want to bring that old style back. I tried selling out to the industry by doing the girl punk thing, but in my heart was jazz. I'd run from it, and come back, run again, and come back. It's like a bad relationship." To that end, Mixi's debut truly is redemption realized. "This is just a real record," she says. "I could do any type of music, but I want to mix it up, be unique and make it mine." A creation of her own unrelenting ambition and dreams, much like the name she chose for herself some three years ago: "I kind of view everybody as a canvas. You're put into this world and painted all over, so whatever colors you use — your makeup, your clothes, your style — you color yourself. In a way, I've created this painting and I call it Mixi."