At just 22, Clementine Creevy has been releasing albums for seven years and fronting Cherry Glazerr since 2013. Along the way, she’s created a distinctive band sound and a guitar approach that relies on spare phrasing, backbone riffs, dynamic shifts, and sonic contrast.
Before Cherry Glazerr’s June 11 show at Nashville’s Exit/In, the guitarist took some time to hang with PG’s Chris Kies. Creevy strapped on her Fender American Professional Strat HSS Shawbucker and showed why she’s now rocking a Roland solid-state combo (instead of her trusted Mesa/Boogie) and how she dirties up the amp’s classic-clean platform with a handful of signal disruptors.
Clem Creevy brings one, and only one, guitar on the road. It’s a tried-and-true Fender American Performer Stratocaster HSS Shawbucker (also featured on her 2019 album cover for Stuffed & Ready) that has all its wiring (aside from the bridge humbucker) removed for a purer, stronger tone. In a May 2019 article in PG, Creevy explained the mod: “I ripped out the guts, basically, and all that’s left is a volume knob. To me, it sounds much better, as well as being lighter, which is nice when you tour as much as I do. But mostly, I did it because I don’t use the tone knobs. I was always keeping the guitar on my humbucker pickup. So, I just have one humbucker and a volume knob. It sounds very cool. It sounds a little bit louder and a little bit tougher and clearer to me.” The lone axe stays loaded with Ernie Ball Power Slinky (.011–.048) strings and she hammers away with Dunlop Tortex .73 mm (yellow) picks.
Creevy was a longtime user of a Mesa/Boogie Mark IV, but this run of summertime U.S. dates saw her turn to a Roland JC-120 that she’s been enjoying for its crystal-clear clean tones and pedal-friendly temperament.
Being the lone 6-stringer in the power trio, Creevy has a lot of room to get loud and funky. And she does so in varying degrees with the help of a board that is home to eight stomps: a Strymon blueSky, a Keeley Bubble Tron, an Empress Compressor, a Loe Sounds Crush the Patriarchy (fuzz), a Boss DM-2 Delay, a Strymon Ola dBucket Chorus & Vibrato, and two EarthQuaker noisemakers—a Westwood Translucent Drive Manipulator and an Acapulco Gold. A TC Electronic PolyTune keeps everything in check.
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Chris Kies has degrees in Journalism and History from the University of Iowa and has been with PG dating back to his days as an intern in 2007. He's now the multimedia manager maintaining the website and social media accounts, coordinating Rig Rundown shoots (also hosting and/or filming them) and product demos, and occasionally writing an artist feature, all while still shooting/editing video for NAMM-show coverage. Other than that, he spends time with his pitbull and enjoys non-guitar-related hobbies.
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