While the list of Welsh pop-punk bands over the last decade isn’t impressively long, Neck Deep is almost certainly atop it.
Since breaking onto the scene back in 2014, the quintet has become not only one of the biggest names in pop-punk throughout the UK but also one of the most unique and identifiable bands in the entire genre. While every member of the band contributes to that success, there’s no doubt that Neck Deep is a guitar-driven act, and lead guitarist Sam Bowden is a major part of their sound.
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So when Bowden walks out on stage with his favorite PRS instead of one of the genre’s “standard” brands, it can turn heads sometimes. But there’s a reason he prefers the brand — or multiple reasons, really — and he sat down with SPIN to talk about it.
SPIN: How were you first introduced to PRS guitars?
Sam Bowden: The guitars themselves first came on the radar for me when I was like 16. I had a friend back home where I grew up who was a big Alter Bridge fan, and he was also really big on John Mayer. He and his dad had a big collection of PRS guitars, and that was my first time seeing them because no one really used PRS in the music that I listened to. They all sounded amazing, but I knew I could never afford one. Years later we were at the Alternative Press Music Awards and we won for best live band. One of the sponsors was PRS, so after receiving the award, we did a little interview and there was a PRS on a stand. I remember saying ‘Is there any chance I can exchange this award for this guitar?’ Then when I came out of that room, Rich from PRS approached me and said ‘Were you serious in there about the PRS?’ I was like ‘Honestly, I love these guitars. I’ve never been fortunate enough to have one, and I’ve only ever come across one in my life that was left-handed.’ He gave me his card and I emailed him almost immediately.
What is it that sold you on PRS when so few of your peers were using them?
Before PRS, I was playing like ESP LTDs and a Gibson SG, but I always struggled with the intonation and harmonics. I never got on with them like I do with my PRS. Plus, I barely need to tune the thing. I can fly it somewhere, open it up and it’s somehow still in tune. It’s ridiculous. I was super fortunate where I could pick a few colors for some guitars, and they were kind enough to put ‘ND’ for the band on the 12th fret. I also use them pretty much exclusively in the studio now because the versatility of the guitars are just enormous. I’ve never really needed to go outside of them live or in the studio. I do have other guitars, and on some big shows, I’ve said ‘You know what? I might use this other guitar for this song.’ I hated it, and I’ve never even toyed with the idea of changing again. They’ve also been super nice to me, because I’m certainly not a shredder by any means. It feels like imposter syndrome to be using their guitars, because everyone else who uses them is a master of craft, whereas I play in a pop-punk band running around the stage trying to make people laugh and have a good time.
Is there anything that’s surprised you about your PRS guitars?
Well, some people are completely unaware of the company and have never even heard of it, but we go to Asia quite a bit — somehow the band got quite a bit of traction over there — and I didn’t realize that PRS is really popular over there. I also never noticed how having certain pieces of gear that are really, really reliable and responsive takes so much pressure off of you. Early on, I was having tuning and intonation issues, and not really knowing all that much about guitars or set up truss rods and all of that created some difficulties for me. But with PRS, I went against everyone’s advice and tuned the guitars a whole thing down and then up again — which you should never do, because it’s not good for the guitar — but when I’m in a pickle, I can do it with the PRS and it still sounds amazing.
As a left-handed guitarist, what goes into your guitar-finding journey that righties don’t have to deal with?
It’s super challenging. I’m right-handed in a lot of things, but growing up, I used to noodle on my granddad’s guitars and it would feel natural/unnatural both ways. My grandma said ‘Well you should be left-handed. That’s different. No one’s left-handed.’ So I went left-handed, and it led to years of challenges, which I didn’t know at the time. [Laughs.] I wish someone else was there to say ‘You should think about that long and hard.’ The town I’m from — Lincoln in the East Midlands of the UK — is not popular for music. There’s not really a scene there, and there are only one or two music shops that have like one left-handed guitar. My first guitar I ever bought was a vintage Hamer or something that was an Ibanez ripoff. It was the most metal guitar, but it was all that I had until I found another guitar years later on eBay. When I got into touring, I just got a bunch of LTD Eclipses to keep me going for some time before I got a PRS. I’d only ever played my friend’s PRS guitars upside-down until I was on the outskirts of Houston where there’s a shop called Southpaw Guitars where every guitar is left-handed. When traveling, we always have to separate my guitars between everyone’s cases just in case one case goes missing, then I still have a guitar to play — since I can’t borrow from any of the other bands at most shows. Now I just have enough PRS Custom 24s with different pickups for any situation, and I’m just waiting very patiently hoping that they’ll make the S2 left-handed, because they don’t really do that at this minute. I also want to see how the Silver Sky translates for me, because we have a lot of guitar parts that sound very Blink-182, and so much of that is the Strat sound with a bridge humbucker.
It feels like this year’s self-titled album really saw Neck Deep find their own sound instead of being just another pop-punk band. What was that album like to make?
This record was really fun to put together. It was really stressful, but it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done as a band. The album before it was like a classic ‘Let’s go to a big studio, live there for six weeks and create a record’ bucket list kind of thing, whereas this one was quite different. Every album has had different songwriters, but one running theme from the very beginning is that Ben’s [Barlow, Neck Deep’s vocalist] older brother Seb — who now is in the band and plays bass — has produced everything since the first EPs. He was always the sixth member, but he would just write at home and do things with Ben. Fast-forward to this record and everyone in the band felt so good, so aligned, and so collectively clear on what we want to do, whereas usually we go into the studio with X amount of songs figured out and see what happens with the rest of the album. This time, we ended up going back to the UK and starting to record with Seb producing it, and then we sent it all off for mixing — except we were three months behind on our deadlines with a tour already announced. But it really had us come together and put everything into it to get that vision out of ‘This is where the band is right now.’
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