The singer-songwriter St. Vincent has toured with Sufjan Stevens,
made an album with David Byrne,
and won a Grammy as a solo artist.
And now, she's the first woman to design her own line of signature guitars.
Mary H.K. Choi went to Los Angeles
to see what it's like to build an instrument from the ground up.
For an instrument that's been around since before the 15th century,
you'd think the modern guitar would have seen a lot of changes.
Precious few innovations have been made available outside of custom models.
Left-handed players, like Jimi Hendrix,
restrung right-handed guitars to accommodate his style.
And when Kurt Cobain was asked why he seemed to favor inexpensive guitars,
he says that was what he could afford
before offers of personalized guitars came in.
Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent,
is the first woman ever to create her own electric guitar for the mass market.
It's a big step in changing expectations
of the traditionalist canon of guitar:
a bunch of dudes arguing the merits of a Strat versus a Les Paul.
— When we say that this is, like, the first guitar of its kind,
that's been created by a woman,
we're not saying expressly that it's only for women, right?
— No, it's not.
I think I'm partly responsible for the press story that became,
that I made a guitar only for women,
because I was joking on Instagram,
"Check out my new guitar," you know, "there's room for a breast, or two!"
You know, like, I thought I was making an absurdist joke.
— But this guitar went out to people like Dave Grohl,
and Beck and, like, Omar from the Mars Volta.
— Yeah, he's ripping it.
After the initial drawings and a lot of talk,
about pickups, and wood, and color, and ergonomics,
pretty much every week,
there would be a new prototype for me to check out.
So, we kept making adjustments,
and making sure that the balance felt right,
and making sure that it was as comfortable to play sitting
as it was standing up.
— Yeah, get you a guitar that can do both.
— Yeah, exactly!
— Coming of age during a kind of guitar heyday,
St. Vincent cites grunge, metal, and classic rock, like Led Zeppelin, as influences,
but felt marginalized as a young female player.
— There was that kind of explosion of, quote, enquote, "women in music."
There were a couple guitar brands that purported to
cater specifically to women,
and they were, like, pink, or flower-shaped.
As a kid, like, trying to work out Pantera riffs, I was so offended.
— Where do you hope this guitar will live in the sort of pantheon of guitars?
— I wanted people to actually play it,
and not have it be like, "Well, it's this totem of this guitar player I like,"
but actually, like, make their own things with it.
It's really—it's a great player guitar.
I mean, I play it.
It's the only thing I play now.
And not for any other reason than I just—
— Purely for vanity reasons!
— Yeah, exactly!
— Ernie Ball Music Man is the company behind the St. Vincent model.
They've been crafting guitars in California since 1984,
and collaborated directly with St. Vincent.
— This isn't like a white label situation, where someone was like,
"Hey! Would you put your name on this thing?"
— Right, yeah.
— So, soup-to-nuts, you created this thing.
Yeah, no. It's not a celebrity endorsement deal.
Like, stand next to this thing, hold it.
It's like... tabula rasa, you know?
Carte blanche.
Go for it.