“Met my guitar hero last night”: Grace Bowers finally meets Slash – whose Welcome to the Jungle solo inspired her to pick up guitar

Grace Bowers can cross another thing off her bucket list after meeting Slash last Sunday (June 30). The two met at downtown Nashville's Gibson Garage, where Slash was promoting his new solo album, Orgy of the Damned, 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 latter guitarist's S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival.

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 Welcome to the Jungle music video by Guns N' Roses. You know, Slash in that, with his Les Paul 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 Broken Record podcast. 

“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 Total Guitar 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 come, but it doesn’t stick until there’s a conversation going on.”

Susan Tedeschi also pointed out that Bowers is on her way to becoming a “household name.”

“She’s got this crazy blonde curly hair and she’s very pretty and very sweet – but she can rip it and she has a nice understanding of chords. I think, because she’s so young, she could really get somewhere in the next 10 years,” said Tedeschi in a Guitar World interview. 

In addition to Slash's S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival, Bowers has a busy couple of months ahead. She will release her first album, Wine on Venus, in August and has a packed touring schedule, which includes a support slot with Brothers Osborne.