Last Day for ND Magazine Pre-orders on Kickstarter
**UPDATE: Today, July 3, is the final day to pre-order your copy of the 2015 No Depression print magazine via Kickstarter. Pre-orders close at 9 p.m. Pacific time. Don’t miss out — order now.
Now for a little story.
Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood was, about a century ago, a city of its own. Though it was incorporated into the City of Seattle in 1907, Ballard has retained an undefinable, independent spirit. Granted, it’s changed remarkably since I lived on the Ballard/Phinney line back in 2003-04, but the grit and rust and salty air that has helped define that part of town for generations, persists. Regardless of the way it’s evolved with the times, Ballard remains one of the most substantive parts of the city that is, perhaps one of the farthest from the beaten path. So, it makes sense that Ballard would house the office where the new No Depression print magazine is being designed.
During a visit to Seattle a little over a week ago, I stopped in to Ballard, to check on things and discuss the production timeline with Jason Verlinde, who some of you may know as the founder and editor of Fretboard Journal. A long-time friend of ND and a gifted magazine man, Jason has been shepherding production of this first issue, working with a designer named Andre Mora. As it turns out, Andre redesigned Seattle’s CityArts magazine back when I was its roots music correspondent, writing features and cover stories about Seattle’s then-burgeoning roots music scene.
(You spend enough time in this ND world, you start to realize everyone’s crossed paths in some way before. Then again, the same is true of the music we cover. It’s all about community.)
The Fretboard Journal office is small, in the basement of a small building, in the heart of Ballard. On the wall, various guitars and other stringed instruments hang, as do drawings of people playing guitars. Books and magazines abound, but there’s really only room for two desks and two computers. There, I sat down with Jason to look over the progress he and Andre have made on designing the new ND print mag.
On our Kickstarter page — where you can pre-order your copy of this issue until this Friday — we’ve shared some excerpts from stories as well as details of a couple of the mag’s original illustrations. We’ve also shared that our printer is Hemlock (one of the only carbon-neutral printers in North America), who will be churning out the new ND on 80# paper that is 100 percent recycled. But, unless you’re an avid magazine collector, those details may not mean a whole lot to you. So, I’d like to show you a litlte about what this magazine actually looks like. Here’s a two-page spread that features a Q&A betweeen Tom Gillam and ND’s co-founders Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock.
Here’s a video of Chris flipping through a blank version of the magazine. Just imagine those pages full of type and images.
And here is where you can go to order your copy. This pre-order campaign ends this Friday, July 3, so you have until the end of that day to pledge $20 on Kickstarter and get yours. Don’t wait — this is a limited run, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.