“I heard Eruption by Van Halen and I was like, ‘What is that?!’ I love to push the boundaries, and I love when it sounds crazy”: Meet Emi Grace, the Trashy Tone Thursday pioneer tearing up the shred rulebook and taking on the haters

“I love to push the boundaries, and I love when it sounds crazy!” begins Emi Grace, the self-branded pioneer of Trashy Tone Thursday. What began as a challenge to be more present on social media has become a weekly ritual to showcase frenetic fragments of the 21-year-old wunderkind’s yet-to-be-released material.

“I came up with the name because the sound is so dirty and crunchy, like a trashy junk hi-hat,” she says. Originally dubbed Sidechain Saturday thanks to her penchant for a certain plugin, it was the solo for her track Mystery Man that acted as the real tipping point into a recurring Thursday slot.

Last year’s #FenderFeature clip of Grace slashing on her Stratocaster boasts 10 million views on TikTok. Since her first Sidechain Saturday post, her short-form releases have repeatedly racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

She grew up two hours north of LA in a small beach town where the pace of life was a little more languid, with offbeat reggae rhythms ringing out across the wine country.

Grace recalls her parents encouraging her to pick up violin – she’s now classically trained in it – but she always wanted to practice guitar instead. Her introduction was a white Squire with a rosewood neck that she kept for six years. “I didn't want to get a nicer guitar until I was good enough to play it.”

Another pastime that fast-tracked her. “Skating introduced me to the punk scene, bands like NOFX and also classic rock,” she says. “I heard Eruption by Van Halen and I was like, ‘What is that?!’”

She’d sit with her headphones on for hours, figuring out the chord shapes by ear, building up her finger dexterity for lead lines. “I had a Boss loop pedal. I’d lay down four power chords, find the root, and solo for hours and hours.”

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♬ original sound - Fender

Seven years in, she finally deemed her playing worthy of an upgrade, making the transition to a Mexican-made, single-coil HSS Strat. She believes the difference in sound was immediately noticeable. “It was a Player series, nothing that crazy – but even just the neck alone, my mind was blown.” 

Since moving to LA she’s also been fortunate enough to land a few discounts with Fender, and now owns a Professional II and an Ultra Stratocaster HSS.

Trashy Tone Thursday might find her wigging out with her whammy on a metro station platform, but Grace hasn’t always been quite so keen to share her sound. She was painfully shy at school and reluctant to share her music-making – quite different from the persona we see today.

She spent most of high school on her skateboard or holed up under her bedroom desk, recording music while her parents were at work. “They'd take my brother to practice, and that would be time to put up the volume and play as loud as I wanted,” she remembers. “At school I’d get prepared, so I could have my 40 minutes to kill the take!”

The pandemic, which hit when she was a senior, forced Grace out from under her desk and into the online sphere. “With the disconnection of everyone going their separate ways, something came over me,” she remembers. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna throw a song out!’”

She posted an early demo onto DistroKid, much to her family’s bafflement – ‘Who’s playing guitar?’ ‘I’m playing guitar!’ – and then a friend shared her playing on TikTok.

For Grace, the reaction was evidence that someone was listening – but also that something more was right at her fingertips. “It wasn't a very good song; no mix, no master, but people were connecting with it,” she says. “It showed me that there was an industry out there.” 

While many have praised her fresh take on tone and technique, it’s also roused some haters. “Having so many people be so upset by what I was doing, I was like, ‘Damn, this is crazy!’ My mom said, ‘This means it’s working. Sure enough, it started boosting my algorithm.”

For Grace, it’s all about knowing what she can and can’t control, “accepting that it’s something different and people will get used to it or they won’t. If I could have the world my way, this is the music that I would make”.

When pressed about the intricacies of the setup she uses to achieve her signature sound, she’s a little reserved. “I can’t give away the full secret,” she says, “but I will say the RAT pedal has been influential to my live setup and sound.” 

Then there’s her creative tunings. A far cry from nu-metal’s deep affection for drop C# or the Goo Goo Dolls’ self-styled string arrangements, Grace is manipulating her settings during the take. “I love to take the tune down either right when the song starts or right at the end. It’s a challenge!” 

Other online comments have picked up on the seemingly unorthodox placement of her fret wrap – but as she explains, the dampening accessory isn’t there to mute her strings. It’s actually a totem of how far her sound has been amplified to date.

“I had my social media moment and Ernie Ball sent me a care package,” she says proudly. “One of the things in there was a fret wrap. I keep it on my guitar because it reminds me of what it felt like to be so excited about something.”

Fresh from multiple performances at NAMM, Grace also appeared with her band at SXSW. Loading up the Kemper, she took to the stage knowing that, just like the pioneers of the fretboard before her (Van Halen, Morello), her reimagining of the instrument is inspiration for a whole new generation.

“I love playing live more than anything on this earth,” she says. “It’s what I was born to do. When I’m up there, I’m convinced it’s my destiny.”

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