Eyes on the Prize

“GUITAR IS KIND of a crazy story for me,” says Celisse Henderson, who nowadays performs and records simply as Celisse. “I’ve only been playing for about six years.”

It’s what Celisse has done with the guitar in just six years that’s so impressive. In her short career on the fretboard, she has already played lead guitar for Lizzo on Saturday Night Live, toured with Melissa Etheridge, performed with Jon Batiste on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and, this past January, shared the bill at Gibson’s all-star NAMM concert with such greats as Slash, Billy Gibbons, Jimmy Vivino, Elliot Easton, Lzzy Hale, Don Felder, Rick Nielsen, Richie Faulkner and Jared James Nichols.

Then again, Celisse’s accomplishments seem less crazy when you consider she’s been performing almost since she could walk. “My mom was a choir director at a pretty big church in Oakland, California, and she