THE NEW WRECKING CREW
ARIANNA POWELL
In Los Angeles, capable guitarists are a dime a dozen. Oftentimes, the most capable are also the least gainfully employed. To stand out in this business, you’ve got to be reliable, versatile, and most of all, persistent. Find your niche and make a decent noise. Some may cite luck as a key factor, but for Arianna Powell, luck has little to do with it. In her mind, it’s all about making connections and showing up.
“I have always involved myself in many different scenes, so I’ve been able to build up a good reputation with a large network of people,” she tells us. “Of course, it’s imperative to be the best musician you can be, but in order to work, you really need to be a reliable person that people what to spend time around.”
Since arriving on the LA scene, she’s worked hard to make herself a known quantity to prospective employers. She took every chance she could to play with any artist who would have her–and some of her biggest breaks have come from simply being in the right place at the right time. “Someone told me, ‘It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you,’ and it’s true. I met the guy who helped put me on my first tour with Nick Jonas sitting in at [famed LA Jazz Club] The Baked Potato playing a John Scofield tune with the house band.”
Powell hails from Pen Argyl, a Pennsylvania Slate Belt borough just a stone’s throw north of Allentown, the real-world setting for Billy Joel’s famous tune about blue-collar hardship and the decline of American industry. She comes to LA by way of Pittsburgh, where she played in a wedding band that happened to have an LA-based counterpart. It was through this chapter that she made her first connections out west, booking corporate and club gigs by reputation alone. “It was just a lot of making friends and connections by being out in the scene as much as possible and taking every chance to play that I could.”
Like so many, Arianna got her start with the guitar through her family. Her father, who was a folk fingerpicker, introduced her to the likes of Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. As she grew up, her taste in music naturally extended outward to metal, ska and even jazz. “My tastes have always been varied,
