00:00Greetings, I'm Riley Pinkerton of Castle Rat with Guitars.com.
00:05This is My Guitars and Me.
00:20Guitars started when I was 15.
00:24I'd spent two years trying to play piano.
00:27It wasn't working.
00:29My friend loaned me an acoustic guitar for a weekend,
00:33and it just clicked.
00:36I was like, oh, this is what my hands understand.
00:39From there on out, it was guitar.
00:41But I started out primarily playing folk music
00:45and didn't get an electric guitar until I was, I think, 18.
00:50That SG for Christmas, yeah.
00:53Hearing Black Sabbath for the first time,
00:56I was like, I need an SG.
00:59The riffs are undeniable, but I'm also a huge fan of the breaks in between songs,
01:05like Orchid and Embryo and having that sort of journey through an album.
01:10I think especially because I was mostly playing folk music.
01:13It was like really exciting to listen to something so heavy, but then also have those breaths in between.
01:20I mean, nothing about anything I've ever done has been formal.
01:25Yeah, it was just me at home with the keyboard, like learning what chords are.
01:29And then on guitar, it made more sense to my physical self.
01:36But I haven't ever taken lessons or, you know, I'm linging it.
01:41I was also listening to Sabbath and like still pursuing folk music for years.
01:47There's like an ancient YouTube cover of me playing acoustic guitar, a version of NIV,
01:54that sometimes makes the rounds on the internet, which is very funny.
01:57My eyebrows are crazy.
01:59I put together a band and was like, all right, I want a band.
02:04And there was some like clumsiness figuring out what that was going to be.
02:09I was like, why not just do what I really love, which is Sabbath stuff.
02:15Sabbath worship.
02:24It's a Gibson Guitar of the Week, number 17, from 2007.
02:30And it's kind of got a holographic thing going on.
02:33I bought it used off reverb.
02:36When the pandemic hit, we got a check.
02:38So I was like, I'm going to buy a guitar.
02:39So that's what I did.
02:41And it's well-loved and well-worn.
02:44It had some wear where I was like, oh, the paint, you know, is just there for the moment.
02:53But it's definitely gotten more relic.
02:58Yeah.
02:59Yeah, it's chainmail rash instead of buckle rash.
03:02And everything I own is covered with sparkles because I wear body glitter on stage.
03:10And so that's everywhere.
03:12There's definitely some like fake blood staining as well.
03:17We've got it all going on.
03:19Aesthetics and function together.
03:23I swapped out the tuners, I think.
03:26I definitely did on that one.
03:28I like the plastic ones because they help, helps with the weight distribution.
03:33Other than that, I mean, sometimes I shove paper in there.
03:38That's one of my mods where we've flown in and we're about to play a festival and my low string
03:46is just like sitting on the frets.
03:48So I wad up some paper.
03:51It works.
03:52It works.
03:53It works.
03:53It works.
04:11It works.
04:12It works.
04:13It's a complete accident.
04:14I'm not like a theater kid or I was like, oh, our third show ever is Halloween.
04:21We should dress up.
04:22All the other bands on the bill were dressing up.
04:24So I just like threw it together really fast where I was like, we're castle rat.
04:30I can be the rat queen.
04:32Don't mind if I do.
04:34Someone's got to rule the castle and rats bring the plague.
04:38So I got a plague doctor mask for the bass player, vampire guitarist.
04:42And we just had so much fun.
04:44And it was so liberating to play as a character.
04:46I think I've struggled a lot with, I know I've struggled a lot with feeling like,
04:54I have a right to play this style of music because I'm not like a shredder.
04:59Franco's a shredder, which is great.
05:01Great to have in the arsenal of the band.
05:04But I think like as a woman in music, it's, it can be daunting to even start
05:11because I feel like there's this like pressure to like prove that you can do something as well as,
05:18as a man can.
05:20So you need to like come out of the gate.
05:21I'm technically proficient and, and I, you know, as someone who's never taken lessons,
05:28I really view guitar as a tool for songwriting.
05:32It just doesn't appeal to me.
05:34I think everyone's different.
05:36You know, Franco loves playing guitar.
05:39I love writing songs and need a guitar for it.
05:43It's, it's a, it's an interesting relationship.
05:47But through the costumes, I feel like stepping into a character on stage and embodying that really helps free your
05:56mind from like, I guess, representing yourself on stage.
06:01I feel like sometimes people are like, you know, look at costume bands a certain way.
06:05And I'm like, everyone's in costume on stage.
06:08They're just not being honest about it.
06:11We're, we're self-aware.
06:13The nice thing about the world we've created is it, it has like set parameters.
06:18And we have like a structure to the show of like the things that we want to do every time.
06:24Battle's important.
06:27Spitting blood is important.
06:28That's really all you need.
06:45Yeah, I got it for Christmas when I was, I think 18.
06:52First, first electric guitar.
06:54So, which, you know, that's all that matters.
07:01It's a sixties tribute, which as far as I can tell, just means that the headstock is more like that,
07:08which is cool.
07:09It makes it more breakable, which is nice.
07:11It's, it's great.
07:12It's trustworthy.
07:14I played it on this whole tour.
07:17So it's covered in dust from a lot of festivals that were very dry and very dusty.
07:23It looks similar to the inside of my lungs from all of those festivals.
07:29And my nose.
07:30It also has some chainmail rash.
07:34Less than the other because I don't play it live as, as often.
07:38But it's also the one that I keep at home.
07:42This, the other one lives at our rehearsal space.
07:44I really like a matte finish.
07:47Cause I also tried another SG that was glossy and I've got perpetually clammy hands.
07:54And so when it's like a shiny lacquer finish, I get like stuck.
07:58But the matte, it just glides, glides right over.
08:01It's even better when it just comes off the back entirely.
08:05At this one, I swapped the tuners out and I had a custom mirrored pick card made.
08:14Um, I don't remember.
08:16It was some website that was probably like custompickcards.com or something like that.
08:21So it's very custom.
08:23It's so fancy.
08:24This is all I got.
08:25And I don't like, I don't like trying new things in general, ever.
08:33Thank you so much for checking out my guitars.
08:36Um, you can catch Castle Rat on tour in the U.S. starting mid-September.
08:42And I'll have both my guitars with me.
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