I think my best advice for young guitar players is that it's not an easy road - definitely not; female guitar player or male guitar player, it's not an easy road at all.
So, really, I just try to be the best guitar player I can be - not the best female guitar player, not the best 'X amount of years' guitar player, or whatever - just the best guitar player.
Pushing myself against my own will really, because some of this stuff is hard. I don't consider myself to be a great guitar player, so pushing myself as a guitar player or pushing myself as a singer, as a performer, and just riding that fine line between being so hard on yourself that it's counter-productive and being so hard on yourself that nothing is ever good enough is what drives me.
In my own musical existence I don't feel that being a guitar player is like the best thing on earth to be. I would rather be a balanced musician. Playing in a group, I'm tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That's just me getting older. I'm not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.
Being a female guitar player back in school wasn't great, and I had to change schools so many times. The male drummers and bass players thought it was cool, but male guitar players said, 'It's a guy's thing. You should be doing something else, like playing the harp.'
I used to aspire to being more of a traditional bass player, to be honest. People say I play it like a guitar - and I was a guitar player when I was growing up. I started learning when I was eight, and that's what I was fascinated with in my teen years.
Being a female hard rocker and guitar player, I felt the need to put out a memoir. Almost like a rock 'n' roll women manual for women.
A lot of guitar players get stuck on a person ... before they find out who they really are ... every guitar player should remember be yourself - just let it rip.
Besides being a guitar player, I'm a big fan of the guitar. I love that damn instrument.
When you're up on stage, especially being a female guitar player in a male-dominated field, if they just see you're into it, and it's your passion, and you're just giving it your all - it's not, like, an accessory - then it's all cool.
The gut-strung guitar, the classical guitar, that is a whole different world on its own. When you think what the guitar can do and what every individual player does with a guitar, everyone has their own identity coming through the guitar.
My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player. One of my earliest memories is him kind of forcing a guitar on all my brothers and me. You know, "You have to practice three hours a day!" I hated guitar at the time. I kind of picked up trumpet to spite him.
For me, the guitar was just a tool to make songs. I started when I was 10 - I learned what I had to learn to get my ideas across. I always felt I was a weak guitar player, but now I realize with the finger-picking stuff, I actually know how to do what I do with my songs, but I couldn't step in and be an overall guitar player. But my guitar playing has always been driven by the need to write songs.
My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player.
I was learning guitar as the band was beginning, at least in terms of being a lead guitar player. I could write songs, but I couldn't really play solos.
When it came time to hire a guitar player ... I didn't even have to think about it ... Mike Bloomfield was the best guitar player I'd ever heard.