Not your typical 17-year-old: Guitar virtuoso Grace Bowers rocks out to hair metal, blues

Guitar virtuoso Grace Bowers is a typical 17-year-old who loves kicking around Nashville in her Jeep with her goldendoodles Lenny and George on pretty days. Her freckles and innocent giggles in no way signal what happens when Bowers picks up a guitar.

Her demeanor changes. She's overcome by an impenetrable focus and confidence. She ages by nearly a generation while she noodles on her '61 Gibson SG with the proficiency of someone who has been doing it for 25 years. Just ask Nancy Wilson of the band Heart who commented on one of Bowers' Instagram posts "I HAIL YOU" in all caps flanked by flame emojis.

Devon Allman recently asked her to play with the Allman Betts Family Revival at the Ryman. She's joining Lainey Wilson for Nashville's New Year's Eve bash, and photos on her Instagram show her hanging out with everyone from Billie Eilish to Wynonna Judd to Dave Mustaine from Megadeth.

Grace the guitar player embodies a focus and a command that isn't present when she's just Grace the bubbly teenager. She can dish about '60s and '70s blues guitarists with the same ease and detail she could about what she ate for breakfast.

Sucked in by hair metal. Groomed by the blues.

Bowers first picked up a guitar at age 9 after she watched the music video for "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses "and saw Slash playing his Les Paul" on YouTube. She got really into "cheesy hair metal" from Winger to Ratt to Motley Crue before accidentally discovering the blues.

"I listen to lots of funk and soul, and I obviously have a huge rock influence," Bowers told The Tennessean from her publicist's office in East Nashville. "I listen to a lot of older stuff, but that's not to say I don't like newer stuff. I just got super duper into Buddy Miles, Curtis Mayfield and Jimi Hendrix, obviously."

Her favorite guitar player of all time? Leslie West, the co-founder and guitar player for the '70s rock band Mountain.

So how, exactly does a then 12-year-old get turned on to music from 50 years ago?

"I honestly do not know. No one showed it to me," she said. "One day I was sitting in the car while my mom was running errands and I was flipping through channels and I forgot what station it was, but it was playing B.B. King and that was the first time I ever heard blues. I was probably like 12 or 13. I didn’t even know that you could like, do that with a guitar. I had only heard hair metal before. So hearing that was what really made me want to really dive deeper into guitar playing. From there I got super into the blues and moved to more classic rock stuff."

You wanna learn what?

Bowers is for the most part self-taught. She initially signed up to take lessons, but the church-based guitar teacher wouldn't teach her to play "Hells Bells" or "TNT" by AC/DC — the songs she wanted to learn — because of the lyrical content.

"So because of that, I went home and 'TNT' was the first song that I ever learned how to play that I taught myself from watching the video," Bowers says.

It wasn't until she and her family relocated to Nashville from the Bay Area of California during the pandemic that she got serious about learning and playing. She says she didn't know the pentatonic scale until a few years ago.

"Guitar players will understand that," she says. "It was absolutely crazy that I had been playing guitar that long and nobody showed that to me."

It was during a complete pandemic lockdown in California that Bowers began recording herself playing and posting to YouTube. Those posts evolved into livestreaming her practice sessions.

"People started watching," she says as her eyes light up. "I'd get like 20,000 people watching me at a time, which was crazy. That kind of jump-started me posting on social media, which has been really helpful for me."

Her mom, Lisa Bowers, says her daughter tried everything from ballet to soccer and even football with the boys, but nothing stuck.

"You just want your kid to find their passion," Lisa Bowers says. "She asked for a guitar, so we went and got her one. She will tell you she was awful in the beginning, but I disagree. There was something. People who saw her would tell us she’s got something."

Not-so-typical day in the life

A "typical" day in the life of Grace Bowers is unlike one for any other 17-year-old. After running her younger brothers to school in the mornings, catching a quick nap and doing online school in lieu of full-time high school, Bowers picks up her guitar. She practices. And then most nights, she heads to a dive bar she isn't even old enough to get into.

"She struggled in school," Lisa Bowers says. "She had a lot of anxiety. She really struggled, and guitar has saved her. It completely changed the person she is. The community that she has found playing guitar has lifted her up and supported her and given her a place where she belongs. She never had that before."

Bowers says she spends most nights jamming at gigs. She's a regular onstage at bars such as the Basement East and the Five Spot.

"Honestly, most of the venues out here have been very welcoming," she says. "It's not like I walk in there and do anything stupid. We've built up a trust with the venues here. They've been great."

After the Covenant school shooting, Bowers felt deeply compelled to do something to help.

"I have two little brothers. They are 16 and 13, and the day it happened I had just dropped one of them off at school," she says. "I got a text saying there had been a shooting, but it didn’t say what school it was at. It was such a horrible feeling —even if it’s just for a few seconds — before we knew what school it was at."

She said the shooting made her "mad, sad and frustrated at the same time." In an effort to do whatever she could to help, she organized a show at the Basement East with some fellow local artists. The event raised more than $20,000.

New year, new music

After a show with Lainey Wilson as part of New Year's Eve Live: Nashville's Big Bash, Bowers is slated to go into the studio in February with John Osborne of the Brothers Osborne to record her first EP with her band Grace Bowers and the Hodge Podge.

Osborne says by email that Bowers was in the market for someone to produce her first project and several people mentioned his name to her.

"I’m glad they did because I was already a fan," he says. "To get to make a guitar record with a musician like her will be a dream. She has such a natural ability, but what I love more is her fire and heart. You can’t learn that. She reminds me a lot of myself at her age. Only way better."

Bowers and her bandmates Brandon Combs (drums), Joshua Blaylock (keys), Esther Okai-Tetteh (vocals) and Eric Fortaleza (bass) have been trying to write the record with everyone in the room to elicit a more organic sound.

"We want to get a really live feel on it," she says. "It's not going to be very polished. We are kind of going for like Santana's first album that starts out instrumental and the guitar doesn't even come in for like three minutes, which I think is so cool. We will have a mixture of jams and songs."

Old soul? Maybe. Wise beyond her years? Definitely.

Bowers has been hailed for being so good at such a young age and being, well, a girl; she sees both of those qualities as both advantages and disadvantages. For example, at a recent show, the sound guy approached Bowers and offered to show her how to plug her guitar into the amp.

"Stuff like that happens all the time," she says. "I feel like if I were a dude and I was older, it would never happen. But at the same time it is something that definitely makes me stand out, and it’s a cool thing. Being able to advocate for people like me who are going through the same thing is also very cool."

And did that sound guy see her play? "Oh, he did. I think he was embarrassed," she says.

Bowers' musical influences and guitar heroes are from decades that predate her even being alive, and she gets "old soul" comments all the time, but she doesn't feel like she was born in the wrong generation.

"I feel like I was born in just the right generation," she says. "But I do love all this old music from the '60s and '70s. I love playing it and keeping it alive."

Having achieved so much at such a young age, what does future success look like for Bowers?

"To be happy," she says, confidently. "And probably touring. I don't care who I am touring with as long as we are having fun and making good music."

Melonee Hurt covers music and music business at The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network – Tennessee. Reach Melonee at [email protected] or on X @HurtMelonee.

If you go

What: New Year's Eve Live: Nashville's Big Bash

When: Dec. 31. Gates open at 4:30 p.m.

Where: Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park

Info: visitmusiccity.com/newyearseve

The show will be broadcast live at 6:30 p.m. CST on CBS and for subscribers to Paramount+ with Showtime. Paramount+ Essential subscribers can watch the show on-demand the following day.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Grace Bowers, 17-year-old guitar virtuoso, wins famous fans