Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the premiere of “Love Like Summertime,” the new single from Stephen Doster. The song, and New Black Suit—the album from which its taken—are extra significant for Doster, because they were mostly composed on a custom guitar designed by the recently deceased Bill Collings, of Collings Guitars.
“Bill Collings recently passed away, but thankfully I got to spend some time with him before he passed when I bought one of his ‘artist’ guitars,” Doster said. “This was when Collings would sell a guitar at a discounted rate in support of guitarist they knew of or appreciated. Most of the songs on my new record, New Black Suit, were written on the Collings guitar.”
Doster remembers, “When I went to Collings Guitars I was pleasantly surprised to see Bill Collings come in to say hello. He began to hand me 1930’s Martin guitars, several of them. He brought in his top luthiers and asked me to keep playing as I went back and forth between a 1936 Martin D-18 and his D-2, and a 1938 D-18 and his guitar. He was talking to his team about the tone the general sound quality.”
“Eventually I asked ‘Are you trying to talk me out of buying your guitar?,’ and Bill laughed and said ‘No, you can have my guitar and buy a house!,'” referring to the $100,000-plus cost of the Martins I was playing. For me, what I saw was that he was still ‘chasing the dragon,’ even with all of his success.”
“On ‘Love Like Summertime,’ we tried to create a sonic space like floating on air or diving in a pool of water,” Doster says of the tune. “I hope there is a sensualness in the sounds and voicings. The instrumentation is deceptively sparse.”
New Black Suit arrives on August 25, via Atticus Records. You can preorder it here.
For more on Stephen Doster, stop by his website.
