Guitarist, singer and songwriter Kelley Deal has had an enviable career since she started playing in the Breeders with her twin sister Kim (formerly of the Pixies) in 1992. The elder Deal sister – she was born 11 minutes before Kim – played a key part in the band’s groundbreaking 1993 album Last Splash, a platinum-selling alt-rock blueprint that has been named one of the greatest albums of all time by Rolling Stone, NME and others, as well as the rest of the group’s output since. She has also fronted a solo project, the Kelley Deal 6000, and is returning with the first album in six years by R Ring, her long-running experimental project with Mike Montgomery.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Deal started playing music in her youth, singing Hank Williams covers in local bars with Kim. In 1992 she joined the Breeders, Kim’s Pixies side-project turned main project, becoming the band’s lead guitarist after the departure of founding member Tanya Donelly. Last Splash was a chart success, peaking at No 5 on the UK charts and No 33 on the Billboard 200 and becoming platinum-certified in the US. In addition to guitar, Deal layed a variety of instruments on the record, including lap steel and mandolin, sang lead on I Just Wanna Get Along, and co-wrote two of the album’s 15 songs.
After the Breeders went on hiatus in 1995, Deal focused on the Kelley Deal 6000, recording two albums – 1996’s Go to the Sugar Altar and 1997’s Boom! Boom! Boom!, both of which found acclaim and cult followings – and joined the Last Hard Men with members of Skid Row, Smashing Pumpkins and the Frogs. In the late 90s, Deal rejoined the Breeders and they recorded Title TK, their Steve Albini-engineered third album, which marked a pivot for the band towards more experimental and dissonant textures. Since then, the band have continued to release albums, the most recent of which was 2018’s All Nerve.
In 2012, Deal began releasing music as R Ring with Montgomery, describing it as something to do while her sister was “real busy doing stuff with the Pixies”. R Ring have developed a following for their raw, stripped-back sound; their debut album, Ignite the Rest, was released in 2017, and the follow-up, War Poems, We Rested, is due out at the end of January.
Now is your chance to ask Deal about any and all matters of rock-star life. Do you want to know if she has any fun stories from supporting Nirvana on tour, or about how she gets a certain guitar tone? Maybe you’re a fan because of her 2008 book of knitting patterns and need advice on the perfect purl stitch; maybe you want to pick her brain about why it took so long for R Ring to get back together for a second round. Whatever your question, Deal is here to answer – post your queries by 6pm GMT on 20 January, and we’ll pick the best ones to ask her.
