LIMITLESS

Zepparella guitarist Gretchen Menn on balancing her classical chops with rock, the challenges of navigating the light and shade of Jimmy Page's playing - and winning the recent Martin Guitar/GW No Limits Challenge

- Adam Kovac

MENN AT WORK

Gretchen Menn has released two full-length solo albums -2011's Hale Souls and 2016's Abandon All Hope. For more information (and more music), check out gretchenmenn.com.

WHEN MARTIN GUITAR and Guitar World first came to Gretchen Menn, asking her to face off against seven of her contemporaries in the No Limits Challenge, a performance contest that blazed its way across GuitarWorld.com this spring, her first instinct was to pass. It wasn't just because the idea was presented to her as "March Madness with acoustic guitars," although Menn's lack of basket-ball acumen meant she had to have the bracket format explained to her. Rather, Menn had a hard time looking at music as a competition, especially when going up against people like Nili Brosh, who she counts as a close friend. It was only once she began thinking of the challenge less as a competition and more as a way for talented musicians to inspire each other that she threw her proverbial hat into the ring.

So her victory, which came after a series of head-to-head battles put to audience vote between April 1 and May 27, has come as such a shock that she's still processing it several days later.

"I hadn't prepared myself for even the possibility of getting past the first round," she says. "So I'm feeling the stress of participating and doing well in a competition when I'm such a non-competitive person. But I'm excited that it was interesting or enjoyable to people, and, honestly, the other people who were part of the challenge are people I know and love and respect musically. And so feeling that camaraderie all along the process was something that was really special."