The waifish teenager sitting balled up in the wicker chair doesn’t look much like a revolutionary. Wearing a cream-colored, short-sleeve sweater over a white camisole top, with loose-fitting, high-water pants and white platform sneakers, she appears pretty much like almost any 17-year-old girl, especially one who loves hitting vintage clothing stores for retro-cool threads.
But Grace Bowers is not an ordinary teen.
If you haven’t already heard, she’s a bona fide, certified guitar-shredding prodigy garnering national buzz, who was featured in a segment on "CBS This Morning," getting press in USA Today, Guitar World and Hollywood Life, playing major music festivals, sharing the stage with superstars, performing with her own band and making records.
At press time, her debut single, “Tell Me Why U Do That,” was set for release in April.
Grace finds herself on the vanguard of a musical movement, if not an outright revolution: young girls who rock, slowly but surely upending the instrument’s longstanding gender dominance by males, one guitar at a time. Following in the wake of such guitar-slinging trailblazers as Joan Jett, Lita Ford and Bonnie Raitt, a new, more recent wave of other rock-guitar females includes H.E.R. (on this year’s Superbowl halftime show with Usher), L.A.’s all-girl punk rock band The Linda Lindas, the all-girl beehive-hairdo band The Surfragettes, and Anne Erin Clark, who performs as St. Vincent and has been ranked by Guitar World magazine as one of the best guitarists of the 21st century.
And the way it’s looking, Grace Bowers might be next on that list. “She’s going to inspire the next generation,” says Alex Haddad, guitarist for the Nashville-based band Them Vibes, which has welcomed Grace onstage to perform with them several times.
“I’ve never met anybody her age as mature and developed on guitar. She’s a first. I can’t wait to see what she does next. She’s got everything she needs, and she’s still developing. The sky’s the limit.”
Sky-high isn’t too bad for someone barely old enough to drive.
In March, Grace headed to Austin’s South by Southwest, one of the largest entertainment festivals in the world, to perform and rep for Gibson Guitars, with which she already has a sponsorship and equipment deal. In February, she played guitar for Dolly Parton’s "Pet Gala," a celebrity-spangled CBS television special.
“I’ve gotten a lot of really cool opportunities recently,” she says, noting that she played with Lainey Wilson on New Year’s Eve in downtown Nashville to a crowd of 215,000. She smiles. “That’s pretty big.”
Pretty big indeed, especially for someone who started so small, as a wee-lass preteen growing up on the West Coast, not knowing exactly what she wanted to do, or be. “We tried pretty much everything,” says her mom, Lisa. “Girl Scouts, soccer, softball, gymnastics, ballet, karate. A few of them, she got kicked out of.”
“A lot of them,” adds Grace with a mischievous grin.
But then, when she was nine, she stumbled across a music video of Slash, the hairy, top-hatted axe-slinger for the ‘90s metal band Guns ‘N’ Roses, cigarette dangling precipitously from his lips, dressed in black head to toe, and totally slaying on his guitar. And Grace instantly knew what she wanted to do. “I thought he looked so cool,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Mom, I gotta get a guitar.'”
Honing her skills with guitar teachers and YouTube tutorials, Grace says she was soon digging deep into the instrument’s deep roots in the blues, watching YouTube videos of yesteryear’s legends. “Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mississippi John Hurt,” she says, “Almost all music comes from the blues. Like, it’s the roots of everything.”
She absorbed the musical mojo of solo superstars and maestros, such as Chuck Berry and B.B. King, the guitar-dominated blues rock of the Allman Brothers Band and the dazzling purple wizardry of Prince.
After coming from California to visit friends three years ago, Grace and her family made the move to Music City, settling into a new home in the Oak Hill area. “We just knew she needed to be someplace with creative minds,” says Lisa, “where she could find her people.” And Grace did, indeed, find her people, playing locally in clubs, sitting in with other artists and posting videos on her Instagram page, building a massive fan following and attracting the attention of more established acts.
Grace says she knew exactly what she wanted when she put together her band, Hodge Podge, modeling it on other groups where the lead guitarist isn’t the standout star but part of the greater, organic whole. “Like Sly and the Family Stone,” she says, noting the ‘70s band’s fluidly eclectic mix of styles, from R&B and blues to funk and rock. Her own music with Hodge Podge is “a lot of funk and soul, and we have others that are more on the psychedelic side.”
She’s ready to take her show on the road this summer for a string of festival dates, including Telluride, the Bottlerock Festival in Napa Valley and Louisville’s Americana-centric Bourbon and Beyond. She’ll be on the bill with artists such as Lizzo, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Strings and Sheryl Crow.
That’s some pretty high-falootin’ company she’s keeping. But when she comes home, Grace says she comes down-to-earth fast with schoolwork (she’s a junior) and chores. “Set the table, clean the counters, normal stuff,” she says. “Feed the dogs.” She has two goldendoodles, George and Lenny.
She also has two younger brothers, 14 and 16, who aren’t particularly impressed with their big sister’s rising star. “They’re really into sports,” she says. “I know deep down they’re proud, but would they ever tell me that to my face?” She smiles. “No, no, no!”
Sometimes she even shuttles her brothers around since they’re too young to drive. “I’m always dropping them off at football games and plays and stuff,” she says. On a recent sibling errand, she had one of those you-are-so-Nashville moments, spotting a country star. “Chris Stapleton was at my little brother’s baseball game. I think his son’s on the same team.”
She’s making more Nashville connections all the time. In May of last year, she organized a benefit concert after the shooting at the Covenant School, the fateful event that took six lives; her brother Sam (uninjured) was a student at a nearby school.
She says she loves seeing the seasons change in Middle Tennessee, noshing at Creve Hall Bagel Company, combing through vinyl at Grimey’s and shopping with her mom for stage outfits at some of Nashville’s vintage clothing stores. “We can also do serious damage at Nordstrom’s,” Grace adds.
When her family first moved here, Grace went to Nashville Christian School, but now she’s learning online. “There’s a social aspect of [being in school] that I really miss,” she says. “But at the same time, I’m getting to do what I love every night instead of going to school. So, while I do miss it, I wouldn’t go back.”
She says she loves a lot about her new life in Nashville, where music is everywhere, places to play are plentiful, people are helpful and friendly, and the stars go ballgames, shop at Kroger, and sometimes invite you, and your guitar, to share their stage. But there’s one thing she misses about her old home state: “You don’t need a car to get around in California,” she says, noting Nashville’s infamous traffic snarls, the city’s lack of public transportation and shortage of bike lanes.
“Where I was from, I could get anywhere I wanted on a bike or on the BART [the San Francisco Bay area’s elevated high-speed rail transportation system]. Nashville needs something like that badly.”
And Grace needs just a bit more academics before she completes her senior year in 2025; she’s mulling college, if she wants to go and where. “If I do, I will probably want to go to Belmont and stay in Nashville. But I don’t know if I can handle another four years of school. So, we’ll see.”
Everyone else also will get to see where this gifted guitar girl goes on her musical journey, living a dream that began in California and ultimately brought her to Music City. Wherever the road (or the high-speed railway) takes her, one thing is sure: Grace knows what she wants.
“I just want to be happy,” she says, “and playing music.”
"If you haven’t already heard, Grace Bowers is a bona fide, certified guitar-shredding prodigy garnering national buzz."
And Grace instantly knew what she wanted to do... “I’m like, ‘Mom, I gotta get a guitar.'”
