The latest innovation in guitar technology is for the ladies. Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, has worked with Ernie Ball to create, from scratch, the St. Vincent signature model. The guitar isn’t cosmetically feminine, but the lightweight instrument is just over 7 lbs and is designed with a woman’s chest and slighter frame in mind. With so few female signature guitars in existence, Clark is hoping her design and experience will serve as inspiration for the conception of other models sympathetic to the female form. The Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent model will be released next month.
New music is bubbling up from veteran musicians who have been working just under the surface. LCD Soundsystem, who called it quits back in 2011, are not only headlining this year’s Coachella festival, but have signed to Colombia records and are set to release a new album later this year. Also planning a grand tour and new album release are the Monkees. The tracklist of the new LP, Good Times!, will be mixed with never-before-released Monkees tunes written by Carole King, Neil Diamond, and others, as well as new tunes penned by musicians like Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard. The tour will take place without original member Mike Nesmith, and Good Times! is set to be released on June 10th. And finally, Iggy Pop said last week he has a “gut instinct” that his next album, Post Pop Depression, will be his last. He says making a real album requires a certain amount of energy, and his is now more limited. He also teased that he has no plans for a complete departure from music.
Back on the home front, Austin City Limits has announced that the documentary A Song for You: The Austin City Limits Story will appropriately premiere at the SXSW 2016 Film Festival. The documentary weaves the award-winning show’s 40 years of incredible performances with the inside backstory of Austin City Limits’s creation, evolution, and influence through interviews and archival footage of performances not seen in decades. An exact date for the film’s premiere has not been set. See the trailer below:
–Taylor Wallace