Myles Kennedy may be a PRS signature artist today, but he says there was a time when the guitar maker's wares were “unattainable" for him.
In a bizarre twist, the 54-year-old singer for Alter Bridge and Slash — who has just released his third solo album, The Art of Letting Go — says his first time playing a PRS guitar went horribly wrong. As he tells Ultimate Guitar, the incident happened in 1998 while he was performing with the Mayfield Four, the band he played in before joining Mark Tremonti in Alter Bridge.
“I used to work in a music store, and occasionally, one would come to the store, and all those guitar nerds would just drool,” he recalls. “But it seemed kind of unattainable. It was just such a nice instrument. And at the time, I could barely rub two pennies together. So that seemed totally out of reach.”
That changed in 1996, when the Mayfield Four signed a major-label deal, which led to them releasing two albums. To mark the occasion, Kennedy says, their manager decided to treat himself to a brand-new PRS guitar with "a beautiful red top."
“We were playing at CBGBs in New York, and our manager went down the street and bought a PRS McCarty,” Kennedy explains. “He was just over the moon, and he was, like, 'Hey, do want to play it tonight for the show?' And I was, like, 'Absolutely.’"
Unfortunately, Kennedy was wearing a ring on his strumming hand. “And at the end of the night, I did the Pete Townshend windmill and dinged up the entire top," he says. "It was never the same. It was a mess after that one show."
The guitarist was wracked with guilt and knew of only one way to make amends.
"I ended up writing him a check the next day with my hard-earned advance that I got from the record label and bought that guitar.
"I still have that guitar to this day," he adds. "I still use it."
Kennedy went on to play the guitar in Alter Bridge on their 2004 album, Open Your Eyes, alongside Tremonti, who was by then a PRS signature artist. In 2007, Kennedy became enamored of the PRS SC 245 while recording Blackbird with Alter Bridge, and it became his go-to PRS guitar, until 2023, when he himself became a PRS signature artist.
Kennedy hailed his “six-string Swiss army knife” signature PRS when telling Guitar Player about the instrument last year. Featuring some choice tweaks, and the injection of elements from some of his favorite vintage guitars, the guitar has tonal diversity courtesy of its two PRS Narrowfield MK humbuckers. The firm's next-generation pickup system — which is now available in its SE line in the triple humbucker-equipped, Strat-style SE NF3— marries single-coil tones with full-bodied and hum-free humbucker characteristics.
As Kennedy recalls, he was overjoyed upon receiving his signature model and hearing the Narrowfield pickups for the first time. "I was doing cartwheels in the living room," he says, "because, to me, it was like a great-sounding vintage single-coil, but it also had elements of a P-90, and this midrange and cut that I didn’t expect them to achieve initially. They just hit it out of the park."
And considering how his journey with PRS guitars began, that sounds like quite a happy ending.
In other PRS-related news, Tremonti recently recalled setting his eyes on his PRS signature guitar for the first time and being gifted a guitar by Eddie Van Halen.
