A professional wrestler and sometimes a singer and songwriter, Mickie James was born Mickie Laree James on August 31, 1979. She grew up in Montpelier, Virginia, and since her parents divorced while she was still young, she spent a good deal of time on her grandmother's horse farm, where horses were an early fascination. So was music. James spent five years playing violin. She graduated from high school in 1997. Two years later she got her start in professional wrestling, first working under the name Alexis Laree on the independent circuit, eventually rising to WWE status in 2005 when she was featured in several story lines, emerging as one of the top female wrestlers on the lucrative national professional wrestling entertainment circuit. James' first album, Strangers & Angels, was independently released in 2010, as was the single "Hardcore Country," which became James' TNA theme song and firmly established her image as a country singer. She turned to Kickstarter to finance her second album, Somebody's Gonna Pay, which appeared through Entertainment One in the spring of 2013. ~ Steve Leggett