Grace Bowers can cross another thing off her bucket list after meeting Slash last Sunday (June 30). The two met at , where Slash was promoting his new solo album, , with an intimate performance of some classic blues jams. “Met my guitar hero last night @slash,” posted Bowers on Instagram, alongside various photos with Slash.
In early June, Bowers also announced that her band, The Hodge Podge, will open for Slash on August 5 in Pennsylvania as part of the . The encounter served as a full-circle moment for Bowers, who credits Slash as one of the main reasons she decided to pick up the guitar in the first place. “I somehow found the music video by Guns N' Roses.
You know, Slash in that, with his and everything. He looked cool. I wanted to look cool, like Slash, so I asked my mom for a guitar,” she said in an interview with Marty Music.
In addition to being endorsed by Slash, Bowers has received nods of approval from a number of other big-name guitarists. Heart's Nancy Wilson heaped praise on Bowers, calling her a “Clapton-type shredder” on the . “There’s a whole difference in my mind between just shredding, like wanking off, as opposed to melodically conversational-type shredding.
That’s what the great players do, like I think Grace Bowers is already at 17,” Wilson remarked in a recent interview. “She has a significant voice. I would pick her out in a crowd of shredders, like, ‘Oh, I know who that is,’ like David Gilmour.
You could shred ’til kingdom .