Dumont’s guitars, Snowed Out
• From Entertainment Weekly.com:
No Doubt on Gossip Girl spin-off, album & tour - an exclusive Q&A
On March 12, inside a damp, musty warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, No Doubt did one of their first gigs in years. Well actually, “Snowed Out” performed. That’s the name of the punk band No Doubt is playing in the Gossip Girl spin-off that’s due to air May 11th. Set in LA in the early ’80s and focusing on young Lily Van Der Woodsen (played by Hairspray’s Brittany Snow), the special episode features Gwen Stefani, Tony Kanal, Adrian Young, and Tom Dumont rocking a cover of Adam and the Ants’ “Stand and Deliver.” EW got an exclusive sit down with band, whose reunion tour kicks off May 2 in Atlantic City, before they took the stage.
EW: Why the Adam and the Ants song?
Adrian: Because that song rules!
Tony: We just went through a bunch of songs and that was one that we all agreed on. We all loved it.
Gwen: It took us like five minutes to pick that.
Tony: Because we’re quick like that now! As you get older, you’re just smarter.
Gwen: We normally just email, but we got on the phone for that one.
Tom: It’s like, should we do “Stairway to Heaven” or” Stand and Deliver”?
Tony: Or “I’m Too Sexy”?
EW: Tell me about your tour. Are you guys in rehearsal right now?
Gwen: We haven’t even gone into rehearsals yet.
Tony: We kind of have.
Gwen: Those guys went to the mountains together!
Tony: Idyllwild [in California]. The three of us. We rented a cabin. Three men. One van. Lots of equipment. One cabin. Five days and Five crazy nights!
EW: Did you bring eyeliner?
Tony: We didn’t. But we had a good time up there. And we played some music. We got our calluses ready again.
Tom: And we dusted off the cobwebs.
EW: What about an album? Are you thinking that?
Gwen: We were making an album and I was pregnant for a super long time. I kept trying to write the record when I was pregnant and it didn’t work. We did a lot of work, though. We did a lot of talking and hanging out and eating which was really fun. I was like, “You guys, let’s go. Let’s just go tour.” I think that’s going to point me personally in the right direction for what I need. I mean, these guys are already writing, like, so much music. I take the blame. It’s all my fault! I think the chemistry up there is going to really make us feel like able to make modern music.
Tony: The interesting thing is that as soon as Gwen said, “Let’s go on the road,” we were all like, “Let’s go on the road!” Four adults turned into four giggly children.
EW: Fans who purchase a ticket for the tour are getting your entire back catalog of songs for free. What was the thinking behind doing that?
Gwen: Was that your idea? [Points to Tom]
Tom: Yeah. We have a lot of music and we just wanted everybody to hear it. And technology is such that it’s just very easy to do. Let everybody download everything we’ve recorded and throw it in with a ticket.
• From Dumont’s Guitars:
The folks at Hamer are building me two new guitars for the upcoming No Doubt tour. One is a “Vector” (sometimes referred to as a flying v). The other is a Special Korina.
Both will share the same paint scheme of a transparent Acrtic white, where the grain of the Korina can be readily seen beneath the finish. This color will tie in to the design of the stage-set we’re building for the tour.
Both guitars will have transparent white headstocks as well, and the Vector will be fully bound. (You’ll get a chance to see how that looks in a few weeks.) The Vector will be outfitted with two Duncan Fatcat pickups, and the Special with to Duncan ’59’s.
Above here you see the body of the Vector being cut out by hand. And below, both necks are shown in the process of being hand carved. Notice how the wood grain is angled and glued into a “chevron” pattern on both halves of the Vector body. This way the grain runs parallel to the outer edges
of the V’s body. Sweet!
• On a quick note, I just wanted to mention No Doubters.com, which has been recently set up by Christina from NxD Scrapbook. It’s a great site that I guess you could say is basically like a Myspace specifically for No Doubt fans to network. You can blog, start and join groups, add friends and share your stories about the band (or anything!). I highly recommend everyone has a look, because she put alot of work into it.
Great job Christina!
Yay! Just seen your weekly digest mentioning me. Thanks Bec!!
Posted by Christina | 22 Mar 09 @ 10:49 am