Ally Venable

The Texas triple-threat on the importance of women's rights, magenta Les Pauls and "facing your own blues"

- BILL DeMAIN

LAST YEAR, IN the middle of a solo on stage, Ally Venable had a revelation.

“I was playing so many shows that it started to become kind of a monotonous blur,” she says. “I noticed I was playing to my ego and just looking for applause. It was like I knew when people were gonna clap when I did certain things. After I caught myself, I started to get very intentional about playing for connection over playing for praise. And that really changed the energy for me and my band on stage and opened up a whole new world.”

"Connection" is a word the fiery 25-year-old guitarist-singer-songwriter returns to often during our conversation. “I connect to the guitar on a very emotive level,” she says. “I connect with blues music, and I think it's one in the same — blues music and guitar music.”

Venable first felt that connection when she was 12 and heard her dad playing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Texas Flood in the car. “When I looked him up on YouTube, it changed my world,” she says. “I wanted to play like Stevie and wanted to see if I could break my guitar in half like he tried to do. Through him, I found Albert King, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. My goal for my music became to introduce other people that don't know a whole lot about blues or guitar music to this genre — like Stevie did for me.”

On her sixth album,