As a supporting guitarist for acts like the Mannish Boys, Lara Price and the late Candye Kane, Laura Chavez has always deliberately avoided outshining the musicians she backs.
That hasn’t stopped aficionados from taking notice of her skills, though: Guitar Player magazine counted her as one of “50 Sensational Female Guitarists,” and in 2023, she became the first-ever female winner in the Instrumentalist – Guitar category at the Blues Music Awards.
Chavez’s debut solo album, the all-instrumental My Voice, finds the California native taking a variety of styles to the fitting room. While there’s plenty of her stock-in-trade Texas and Chicago blues to be found, she and her band also tackle genres like funk, soul and R&B.
Thrown into the mix are reimaginations of tunes like CCR’s Born on the Bayou, Booker T. and the M.G.s’ Chinese Checkers and the Mexican folk songs El Cascabel and La Llorona.
“Stylistically, I feel like there’s something on the album for everyone,” the guitarist notes. “It’s kind of all-over-the-place, because I am also.”
Chavez hopes My Voice’s musical diversity might influence young guitarists to stay open to different genres.
“When I was young, if I didn’t think [certain music] was ‘blues’ enough, [I decided,] ‘I’m not going to listen to that.’” She adds that perhaps the new album’s array of styles will encourage listeners “not to do the same thing I did back then.”
As for the title My Voice, Chavez explains, “The idea of singing absolutely freaks me out. I hate speaking in public or speaking on the microphone. For my whole life, in so many ways, the guitar has been how I express myself.”
A key element of Chavez’s voice as a guitarist is her hybrid picking technique, which she says is “partly how I’m able to get certain melody lines and keep the rhythm and the chords going at the same time.”
Another defining characteristic of her sound is her use of the bridge pickup on her go-to instrument, a Fiesta Red 1960 Stratocaster Relic issued in 1996.
“It’s the one guitar that I pick up, and I don’t have to think when I play. I can always dial it in somehow to make it sound appropriate to whatever gig I’m doing, even if it’s a jazz gig. It’s very distressed at this point. All of the relic-ing is authentic for me!”
- My Voice is out now via Ruf.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
