By Jacob Uitti, Guitar World | The Velveteers’ Demi Demitro: “I like cheaper guitars: not having everything be perfect forces you to work and be creative with what you have” The garage-rock trio’s leader on woodshedding as a teenager, opening for Guns N’ Roses and working with The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach on their latest LP, Nightmare Daydream.
Demi Demitro, frontwoman for Boulder, Colorado-born rock band The Velveteers, has a unique voice on the guitar. She has a power with the instrument. It’s as if it becomes dancing fire in her hands when she wields it on the band’s new record, Nightmare Daydream.
The new 12-track album rattles and shakes, and was produced by none other than Dan Auerbach, frontman, of course, for the blues-rock band, The Black Keys. Lately, Auerbach has been discovering and producing a number of acclaimed acts from his Nashville studio, from Yola to Robert Finley to now The Velveteers.
We caught up with Demitro to ask her about her relationship to the six-string, developing her skills as a teen, and how she and her band began to collaborate with Auerbach in Music City.
When did you first find guitar as an instrument, or even as a concept, and once you got your first one, what did holding the instrument inspire in you?
“There were always guitars laying around my house growing up. I come from a very musical family. I always just looked at them; I would never pick them up. And then one day, I think I was probably 13 or 14, and I just picked it up and started strumming it. Then my dad taught me how to play E minor.
“So, he taught me how to do that and I started writing songs with literally just E minor. Tons and tons of songs. Then a couple years later, I picked up the electric guitar and I feel like that was when everything really clicked for me. Because all of a sudden, I was able to have my own voice. And it was the first time in my life where I genuinely felt it was my voice coming through.
“I think the first guitar I played that was an electric guitar was a Danelectro, or something, and I don’t know, just being able to have it be loud and have a fuzzy sound and being able to choose what effects I wanted, it was a really cool moment for me. And it’s what made me want to be in a band.”
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Read the whole story here:
https://www.guitarworld.com/features/the-velveteers-demi-demitro-nightmare-daydream
REPORTS: Interview with The Velveteers’ Guitarist Demi Demitro
