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Kurt Vile – the “slacker poet of modern indie rock” – has just released an album that's a love letter to the scene that made him, Philadelphia's been good to me.
And, much like his music – which has been guitar through and through since the beginning – Vile is also sticking to his belief that dead strings sound better than new ones.
“We had a new guitar tech, and the first thing he did on the first day – I wasn’t thinking about it – was cut all the strings off. It was devastating,” he laughs.
“[Noted record producer and Vile collaborator] Rob Schnapf is all about that too; I sort of learned that about him. New strings take a while to break in, especially when you’re playing live. When you’ve got to change the acoustic strings, you’re gonna have a weird show at first. They just sound so different, like bells or something.”
A steady companion throughout this record has been a Gretsch Tennessean – specifically, one that he picked up from Travis Good of the Sadies, Canada’s cult rock/alt-country band.
“If you ever see him play, he just shreds so hard,” gushes Vile. “If you look at the fretboard of this guitar, it’s just so worn in from his playing. He sat in when we played Toronto and lent me the guitar to see if I wanted to buy it.”
Vile immediately took to it and “laid down something with the band.” As he explains, some guitars “just sound and feel great and play themselves,” so much so that he decided to take the Gretsch on the road with him.
“It sounds so good in the studio. It’s got really hot pickups. It’s the lead guitar on Zoom 97, 99th Song, and Every Time I Look at You. It really cuts through.”
In a 2020 interview with Guitar World, Vile spoke about the guitars he’s loved and lost – and why he believes that a guitar's cool factor is as important as its sound.
