Grace Bowers became a celebrated guitar prodigy at just 16 thanks to Wine on Venus, the funk-, soul- and blues-tinged album she recorded with her band the Hodge Podge.
Within months of its release, she was sharing stages with artists like Peter Frampton, Dolly Parton, Slash, Vince Gill and Trey Anastasio.
But today the 19-year-old guitarist says she can barely listen to the album that launched her career.
Article continues below 
“I can’t go back and listen to it,” she tells Guitar.com of Wine on Venus. “I had never written a song before and my agent was like, ‘I’m having trouble booking you because you don’t have music out.’ I’m super glad that I did it. It was an incredible experience, and there are songs on it that will always be near and dear to my heart because of what they were written about.”
At the time, Bowers — whose main electric is a Gibson Murphy Lab SG she plays through a modest pedalboard — said she was deeply influenced by Maggot Brain, the 1971 psychedelic-funk landmark by Funkadelic.
I can’t go back and listen to it. I had never written a song before and my agent was like, ‘I’m having trouble booking you because you don’t have music out.’”
— Grace Bowers
“This is probably one of — if not my favorite album of all time,” she told Guitar Player last year. “I still remember hearing ‘Hit It and Quit It’ the first time and just being absolutely blown away. Because I was getting booked to play shows and was doing covers, I was trying to figure out what my sound was going to be. I didn’t really have an answer to that until I heard Maggot Brain.”
But Bowers now says the album represents a moment in time rather than the direction she wants to pursue going forward.
“It’s not the kind of music I want to make anymore.”
For that matter, she no longer tours with the band that recorded it.
As she began writing music for her second album, Bowers realized the jam-band world she had briefly embraced wasn’t where she wanted to stay.
“I’m leaning very heavily on rock and punk, while also combining some pop elements. It’s more me. The stuff I was doing before, I got really into funk and was in this jam band world. I realized very quickly, ‘Oh, I do not fuck with this,’” she says with a laugh.
“I feel like there’s such a movement right now with hardcore and punk. Rock bands are coming back. You have Geese and Yungblud — it’s super inspiring to me. I’m like, ‘What can I add to this?’ What I have is not straight-ahead rock; it’s very modern sounding.”
Bowers says her youth — and being a young woman in the guitar world — shaped how people initially viewed her.
“I get disrespected before I even play,” she said in late 2024, as her career was taking off. “People take one look at me and immediately get a thought in their head of what I am.”
If anything, the experience has only strengthened her determination to define herself on her own terms.
“Nothing pisses me off more than someone throwing a label on me,” she says. “I’m 19! The music I play now versus the music I played when I was 16 or 17 is vastly different.
“I’m gonna do what I want to do.”
