The Glam Skanks' Veronica Volume on Crafting Rockin' Riffs

There’s a temptation to slide into cliché-speak, and view the saga of guitarist Veronica Volume and the Glam Skanks as an “L.A. story.” Or perhaps it’s more of a sweet father/daughter tale. In any case, it could only happen in Tinsel Town, as Volume’s father is producer/multi-instrumentalist Bruce Witkin—a member of the Hollywood Vampires, a buddy of actor Johnny Depp, the connection for the Glam Skanks getting a song in the 2016 Kevin Smith film Yoga Hosers, and the bassist/mellotron player for Adam Ant’s 1995 release Wonderful. All of the above certainly didn’t hurt the Glam Skanks big chance of nailing down the opening-act slot for Adam Ant’s sold-out American and U.K. tours last year. Thanks, Dad!

But the Glam Skanks’ tough and glittery guitar-driven music is all their own, and it also fits right into the mythology of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, as the band could have performed at Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco in the ’70s. Of course, the Skanks—vocalist Ali Cat, bassist Millie Chan, drummer Cassie, and Volume—were born one or two decades later. But if time travel were a reality, they could zoom back to the “Me Decade,” and become easy contemporaries of the Runaways, the Sweet, David Bowie, T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, the New York Dolls, and other glam-rock legends.

Your V-style guitar looks awesome and it sounds amazing.

My friend Matty Baratto built that for me as a gift—he calls it the Red Rocket—because I go by “V,” and the Flying V has always been my thing. He designed it for my tiny body and small hands—it’s nice having a luthier who understands you’re not a six-foot tall