VOICE OVER: When all drums lead to demolition...

[KEVIN SHEA PERFORMING]

VOICE OVER: ...and the guitars are played by bleeding fingers.

[MARY HALVORSON PERFORMING]

MARY HALVORSON: My name is Mary Halvorson, and I'm a guitar player from Brooklyn, New York, and tonight I'm going to be playing with my band, People, which is sort of unusual. Normally, I play a big hollow body Guild and sort of run it through some effects, but this is a really stripped down setup. I play this Epiphone, and it's sort of an experimental rock project and yeah. It's no effects and just straight into the amp.

It's an Epiphone Dot. I mean it's not that nice of an Epiphone. It's sort of something I've had forever. My other guitar is my real -- you know, I love that guitar. This guitar I like because it's semi-hollow. For more when I'm playing like jazz stuff, I tend to play that guitar, but this guitar, if I play in really loud rock bands, I can't play that guitar; it just feeds back too much. So, I like to use this because it's semi-hollow so it gets some sort of nice sustain without the feedback being a real problem.

It's just guitar and drums, and it's pretty loud. He's pretty loud, and it's sort of just I play mostly chords, just some lines but pretty much just weird, dissonant chords the whole time, so you know this guitar is good for that because it has a nice sustain and it's just -- but again it's a pretty simple setup and I use like fairly thick strings on it like 11's.

I like it on my Guild. I have 12's because I really like having like a -- to me it just gives it like a fuller sound, and for my guild it's pretty much I can play it acoustically. It's so loud even though it's an electric guitar. I really thick strings on it and I can play it and it's super loud and I like that it kind of getting like a woody sound like I feel like the think strings help sort of get the natural woody sound of the instrument. I just don't really like thin strings, so this has 11's which you know it doesn't really need 12's because it's more of an electric thing but.

GRETCHEN HASSE: How long have you been playing?

MARY HALVORSON: Since the eighth grade I guess.

GRETCHEN HASSE: What did you start with?

MARY HALVORSON: I started with violin. I played violin as a kid and I hated it and I was terrible at it [LAUGHS], and I thought it was boring.

GRETCHEN HASSE: [SOUNDS LIKE] [LAUGHING] But you still like music? [OVERLAPPING]

MARY HALVORSON: Yeah. I love music but then I like Jimi Hendrix and I didn't want to be playing in classical orchestras, so then I switched to guitar which was much better. Well I had definitely other challenges being a woman. I actually have pretty big hand so I don't think that was a problem, but I had some like, you know, just dealing with people not taking me seriously and stuff like that was a huge -- Especially when I was younger, that was a huge thing because I was really insecure so I couldn't really stand up for myself. I was also like deafly shy as a kid so that didn't help either, so when I was learning that was sort of an issue but.

Well I guess because I studied jazz, and there really, sadly, aren’t that many female jazz guitarists so I'll be at some jazz camp and it's me and like six guys and I'm used to it and I don't really care but people will be just be like, "Oh, you play jazz? Do you sing?" and or like, "Oh, that's so cute," you know, kind of this patronizing thing, but I remember this once specific instance where there were like six of us and I was probably, I don't know, 15, 16, and we're, the instructor, it's the first day, he doesn’t know any of us, he knows nothing about anyone, he's teaching us chords and he comes around and he's like, "This is a C7," he's like and he's showing us like some C7 chord voicing and then he comes right up to me for no reason and he's like [IMITATING A GUITAR INSTRUCTOR TALKING IN A SLOW, DUMBED DOWN TONE], "This is a C7, Mary. Can you play a C7?" And you know if it happened now, I'd be like "[EXPLETIVE] you," but at the time, you know I'm like 15, so I just like go back to my room and cry. I mean that was kind of like how I dealt with it. I mean it's stupid, you know, but it kind of like at the same time made me want to like practice more so I could like, "I'll show that guy," you know, but stuff like that was really annoying. I mean it doesn't happen anymore. You know, it's sort of over. I don't really have those issues anymore but it definitely affected me a lot when I was learning just because there was no woman doing it, and it's weird, you know. But I think it's because of reasons like that that more women don't start or continue with it, which is sort of too bad, because the other reaction you could have is for me to just quit, you know.