Women Get the Blues Too!
Jennifer Batten, Nili Brosh, and Gretchen Menn: “Brush With The Blues”
In my previous post on Jennifer Batten, I featured three clips heavy on pyrotechnics, including part of her solo on “Beat It.”
The Queen Bee
It’s not strictly accurate to call Jennifer Batten “underrated.” She is just not that well known to the broader music-listening public. But professional musicians know who she is and are the audience that counts for her. In that regard, she is like some of the other superstars hiding in plain sight: she is …
Now it’s time to turn down the shred-o-meter and check out some gorgeous ensemble playing, featuring Batten and two younger stars playing the blues.
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Israeli guitarist Nili Brosh was educated at the Berklee College of Music. She has performed with Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Tony MacAlpine, Andy Timmons, Guthrie Govan/The Aristocrats, Stu Hamm, Batten, Gretchen Menn, DragonForce, Jeff Loomis, Alphonso Johnson, and The Iron Maidens. She is touring regularly with Danny Elfman, Cirque du Soleil, and Dethklok, and has her own band. She has released three solo albums (Through The Looking Glass, 2010, A Matter of Perception, 2014, and Spectrum, 2019).
Brosh personifies the eclectic, genre-breaking sensibility of many guitarists of her generation. She can shred with the best but loves the blues, perhaps most of all. She has performed everything from classical and blues to jazz-rock and death metal. I will be featuring her in a future article.
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Gretchen Menn grew up around music — her father was editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine. She lists among her inspirations Mozart, Beethoven, Steve Morse, Frank Zappa, and Jimmy Page. She attended Smith College, where she convinced a professor to allow her to do her senior thesis on the music of Frank Zappa.
After college, Menn was trying to figure out how to support her music habit, so she did the obvious thing: She went to flight school. Two years later, she had her commercial rating and flew regional jets for the airlines. But she took her guitar everywhere and eventually gave up flying to focus on music. She has composed and released two mostly instrumental solo albums that fuse classical, jazz, rock, and metal.
Menn is perhaps best known as the lead guitarist in Zepparella, the Led Zeppelin tribute band she co-founded in 2004. I’ll be featuring her in a future article as well.
Batten-Menn-Brosh “Brush with the Blues” (Live, 2019; Original by Jeff Beck)
Batten, of course, spent several years touring with her hero, Jeff Beck. She’s now passing the torch to the young guns, but arthritis be damned, she can still bring it.
The video I originally linked here was taken down some time ago. I have pleaded with the owner to re-post it, so we’ll just have to see if that happens. In the meantime, here is a trailer for the concert in question. Not as satisfying as the concert clip itself, but still pretty face-melting:
Sources:
Official websites of Nili Brosh, Gretchen Menn, and Jennifer Batten
See my previous post for other sources on Batten:
https://medium.com/the-riff/the-queen-bee-of-guitar-6219029799cd
When I was little I used to watch Micheal Jackson's Dirty Diana video on repeat because of Jennifer Batten's stage presence and guitar playing...queen bee indeed.
Also, Zepperella is legit! Mind-blowing performance.