Fake Fruit’s Hannah D’Amato takes flight, while the band’s drummer, Miles MacDiarmid, lurks in the background.
Fake Fruit bandleader Hannah D’Amato tells a tale of two Neils as she, PG staff, and reader Kevin Ramsay dig into their songbooks.
Question: Which artist have you learned the most songs by?
Guest Picker: Hannah D’Amato – Fake Fruit
A: Neil Young. I think he’s an incredible human archivist who knows exactly how to distill the highs and lows of being an alive person better than almost anyone. Playing his songs is about as cathartic as it gets. His straight-down-the-barrel soloing is a huge inspiration, too.
The one and only Neil Young.
Obsession: My current obsession is a Karina cover of Neil Sedaka’s “Oh! Carol.” Originally written from the male “Don’t leave me” perspective, the Spanish translation very sneakily urges Carol not to bend to the man’s will and to chase her own happiness without looking back—badass.
Reader of the Month: Kevin Ramsay
Kevin Ramsay, welcome to our pages!
A: I’ve learned the most songs by John Lee Hooker. His raw, hypnotic blues style captivates me. His mastery of the guitar and distinctive voice make his songs unforgettable. Learning his repertoire taught me about blues rhythms, storytelling in music, and the emotional depth that can be conveyed through powerful lyrics.
This album is classic solo Hooker—a live jewel in his catalog.
Obsession: My latest music-related obsession is Maryanne Amacher and otoacoustic emissions. Amacher’s pioneering work with sound and perception, particularly exploring otoacoustic emissions, fascinates me. Her innovative approach to sonic art challenges conventional boundaries, inspiring me to delve deeper into the intersection of science, sound, and human perception in music.
Assistant Editor: Luke Ottenhof
Our man in Montreal, assistant editor Luke Ottenhof.
A: I think it would have to be Weezer. I went through an all-consuming Weezer phase after my older cousins introduced me to them, then binged Blue Album, Pinkerton, and Green Album. I forced my poor, brilliant guitar teacher to show me how to play those songs instead of teaching me stuff that surely would have made me a better player today. Thanks for indulging me, Scott!
Weezer’s 1994 debut album.
Obsession: Creating different types of sonic mayhem through pedals. I always think it’s funny when you get a crazy new pedal that makes your signal virtually unrecognizable and someone says, “That doesn’t sound very useful.” I’m thankful for the imaginative builders who don’t just make what sounds “useful,” and to artists who create sounds beyond the call of capital.
Chief Videographer: Perry Bean
Don’t mess with Perry Bean!
A: If you’re gonna riff, riff with me! At the risk of sounding boring or rudimentary, I probably know the most songs by the Misfits. I discovered them as I was learning guitar, and while not complicated or hard, those barre chords set me up with a foundation to build from. More importantly, learning those songs made guitar an interesting and fun hobby for me. I hated lessons at first because I was forced to learn and play music I had no desire to listen to, let alone play. (Sorry, Elvis!) Besides, guitar is supposed to be fun, right? Long live the Misfits!
The Misfit’s ultra-recognizable logo.
Obsession: Introducing my son to a vast world of good music. Last thing I’d ever want for him is the embarrassment of saying something like, “Dave Matthews is awesome!” in a public setting, for lack of knowing better.
- On the Road with Clapton ›
- Hooked: Bahamas' Afie Jurvanen on Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" ›
- Rig Rundown: Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein ›
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Grace Bowers has quickly won a reputation for high-energy guitar heroics.
While she appreciates the sentiment, Bowers doesn’t love being called a guitar prodigy, saying it dismisses the eight years she’s put into studying the instrument.
Photo by Cedric Jones
“I was living in California at the time, in a small town outside of San Francisco,” she reflects. “And there’s absolutely no live music there, whatsoever. I didn’t even know any people my age who played an instrument. So, I pretty much had no hope. And I would always dream that I’d be playing on a stage, or just anywhere, honestly. It always felt super unrealistic and like, ‘Oh, that would never happen.’”
When the pandemic hit, the now 18-year-old Bowers was finishing the seventh grade, and the abrupt separation from her peers didn’t exactly help to improve her sense of belonging. Pretty soon, however, things took a major, positive turn: “I started posting videos online, and it got some momentum,” she shares. Gibson took notice, and offered her an endorsement when she was just 14. Then,“We moved to Nashville, and I was playing onstage almost every night.”
The sudden wealth of opportunity that came with the move changed everything. “It was the biggest motivation ever,” she continues. “Made me want to do it more than I ever have [laughs].”
Grace Bower's Gear
One of Bowers’ main guitars is this 1961 Gibson SG Special. She also plays a Murphy Lab version of the model.
Effects
- Analog Man King of Tone
- Wah
- Boost
- Gain
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball .010s
- Dunlop 2.0 mm
By now, Bowers’ résumé has gathered more than just moss. Earlier this year, she was recruited by Dolly Parton to perform on Dolly Parton’s Pet Gala; she’s played with Devon Allman, Tyler Childers, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Susan Tedeschi; and in August, shared a bill with her first guitar hero, Slash. And, on the tails of all this success, she’s just released her debut album, Wine on Venus.
Produced by John Osborne of the Brothers Osborne, the album is a collection of eight original tracks, written by Bowers in collaboration with her band the Hodge Podge, and one cover—Sly & the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music.” Although she has been playing for nine years, the grasp Bowers has on her instrument at 18 is rare. She knows just what notes to play and when to play them, saying very much with very little. She also wields a tone that’s just fuzzy enough, just singing enough, and just wailing enough—when she feels like it. Wine on Venus is the perfect showcase of her wisdom on guitar, antecedent to her being even a quarter century of age. It was recorded live in the studio over the span of one week, and Bowers knew going in just which shots she was going to call.
The eight original songs on Wine on Venus were written by Bowers in collaboration with Esther Okai-Tetteh and the rest of her band, the Hodge Podge.
She shares that she’s highly averse to recording in an isolated booth, unable to see the rest of the band—something she’s done a lot as a session guitarist. “Before we went into the studio, I told John, if I’m wearing headphones, it’s over,” she says. “And when we’re playing live, eye contact is one of the most important things. So, the band was live in the room, and then I was outside looking through a window in the control room with John. We put my amp upstairs on this balcony—it’s like a house, the studio—and turned it to 10, and for the entire record, my guitar was recorded in the control room. It was very loud; I’ll tell you that.”
Carving out your own voice as an individual artist in improv-based genres can be a significant challenge, and Bowers kept that in mind. “I’d say [that difficulty comes from] oversaturation. There’s a lot of jam bands out there right now. And don’t get me wrong; I love that kind of music, but what a lot of them lack is songs. When we went into the studio, I wanted to make sure that we wrote songs and didn’t just jam. I was very intentional in the writing process with Esther [Okai-Tetteh, vocalist]—to write catchy hooks and make sure that the lyrics meant something.”
Okai-Tetteh, whose first name is pronounced “Acey,” was Bowers’ primary writing partner in the development of the album’s material. “A lot of it [came together] sitting on my bedroom floor, writing songs every night. She wrote a lot of the [vocal] melody, which is where I struggle. Whereas I wrote all of the music, and then we both collaborated on the lyrics.” The other members of the Hodge Podge, who include keyboardist Joshua Blaylock, drummer Brandon Combs, bassist Eric Fortaleza, and co-guitarist Prince Parker, each fleshed out the arrangements with their own contributions.
Bowers picked up guitar at age 9 after discovering Slash, and fully fell in love with it at 13, after hearing B.B. King for the first time.
Photo by David McClister
Blues guitarists are typically working with the starkest templates (three or four chords) and the most concise vocabulary (the minor pentatonic scale), which, in many albeit honest, dedicated hands, often sound commonplace. But in the best hands, the blues can be some of the most powerful music out there. As Bowers puts it, “The blues comes from your heart, and you’re not just playing it, if that makes sense. I’m not the best at expressing emotions.... It comes out better for me on guitar.”
“As long as I have a very clean-toned amp and my pedalboard, I’m pretty much good to go.”
Bowers owns three different SGs, and her two main choices are her ’61 model with P-90s—“That’s like my baby”—and a newer model with humbuckers. Her pedalboard is a “basic setup,” and she doesn’t know all the names of her pedals off the top of her head. But in classic funk fashion, she does like to employ her wah while playing rhythm parts. As for amps for live shows, she doesn’t yet have her own tour bus, so she’s been relying on backlines. “As long as I have a very clean-toned amp and my pedalboard, I’m pretty much good to go,” she says. Her greatest inspirations on guitar, aside from Slash, are Leslie West, Eddie Hazel, Carlos Santana, and Marc Bolan. “I have a huge Electric Warrior poster above my bed right now,” she tells me.
As for the future, Bowers says she doesn’t really have long-term goals, exactly. “I don’t like to set expectations for myself, because I just want to see where things are going to bring me naturally. I love doing what feels right in the moment.
“Before, I was super shy and didn’t have a lot of confidence,” she continues. “Guitar really helped me build that up, and now I’m doing things that I would have been horrified to do three years ago. It’s definitely helped me come out of my shell.”
YouTube It
In this brief live clip, Grace Bowers breaks down the blues and builds it back up with incredible tone, feel, and taste.
This vintage Tele’s neck and frets show lots of road wear, but it’s straight and dry.
This was not something that could be seen at the point of purchase. But at some point, that company wasn’t drying the wood, because my experience with instruments built around 1964 is that they didn’t have this problem. I’ve never seen a vintage Fender built before 1964 where the frets were sticking out the side of the neck because they hadn’t dried the fretboard well enough, and it shrank.
For the most part, there’s an extraordinary amount of trust when you’re buying an instrument. For example, customers trust that the frets are installed in the correct positions without checking each fret position with a tuner. This trust is mostly deserved, as most frets are generally installed in the right places. What’s sometimes not installed in the correct place is the nut. This controls how open chords play in tune down in the first position. I’m going to make a list of the things I believe you cansee when you buy a guitar, and the things you can’t. My hope is that it helps you make your next purchase with confidence.
Tuning pegs are among the easy-to-inspect items when shopping for a guitar. The peg at far left has clearly seen better days.
In general, here’s a list of what you can see:
- Tuning pegs and how they operate
- If the nut was cut well in terms of string height over the frets
- The neck shape as regarding how it is comfortable in your hand
- How the truss rod adjusts
- How well the instrument was inlaid in the fretboard
- How the side dots look
- How professional the binding is
- If the neck angle is generally acceptable
- If you like the shape and comfort of the body
- The beauty of the finish
- Overall aesthetic quality
- The sound of the pickups
- The electronic controllability
- Comfort of the bridge
- If the guitar intonates at the 12th fret
- How well is the guitar set up
The “skunk stripe” on this old Tele’s neck remains well-seated.
In general, here’s a list of what you can’t see:
- Are the woods wet under the finish
- How well are the woods dried?
- Will the fretboard shrink so the frets stick out of the neck over time?
- Are the tuning pegs deadening the tone?
- What’s the nut made of and how well it is glued on?
- Are the nut slots too narrow, creating tuning problems?
- Are the frets level?
- Is the truss rod deadening the neck?
- Do the pickups squeal at really high volume? (You may not know this until testing the guitar in a live setting.)
- How thick and how soft is the finish?
- Will the finish last a lifetime?
- Will all the glue joints hold up over time?
- How well does the instrument record?
- Will the frets move over time from reactions to things like sweat?
So, it comes down to trust. Did the guitar-making company tend to all the things that you can’t see when you buy the instrument?
“My goal, as a guitar maker, is that you can take the guitar out of the case and play a gig or a recording session without a repairman working on it first.”
The best way to tell if you want to buy a guitar is to play it! If an instrument is built really well, your experience of playing it will give you a good indication of how well the things you can’t see were done. If the instrument is really trebly and has no bass or midrange, maybe you should walk away from that purchase. If you strum the instrument and go, “Oh my god, that sounds great,” and then you plug it in, and it sounds beautiful—buy it. By the way, online shopping has made this process fairly painless as well, so you can play guitars in stores as well as shop as on the internet.
My goal, as a guitar maker, is that you can take the guitar out of the case and play a gig or a recording session without a repairman working on it first. That said, my personal guitars are often in our PTC (tech center) because of little tweaks that I want done. To tinker, in my mind, is normal. To have to pay for a setup on a brand-new guitar is not. Happy shopping.
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Squier Affinity Telecaster Thinline
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