Plans for a major overhaul of NoDepression.com — the website of the former bimonthly alternative/roots-music magazine No Depression — are well under way this summer, with the new site set to be launched in late September. NoDepression.com, which will be edited by the magazine’s founding co-editor Peter Blackstock, will include regular blogs by many of the magazine’s most frequent contributors, including Blackstock and fellow founding co-editor Grant Alden. The new site will also include record reviews and live reviews, features on emerging artists, news updates, the current website’s popular upcoming-releases list, reader-participant discussion forums — and, perhaps most significantly, a vast and cross-referenced archive featuring almost all the content from No Depression magazine’s 75 issues published from 1995 to 2008. [more after the jump]
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In preparation for the September relaunch, the website is promoting the No Depression Founders Circle, a way for fans and supporters of the magazine to assist with its continued presence on the internet. In addition, those who sign up for the website’s mailing list at NoDepression.com will be eligible to win an Epiphone DR-100 Vintage Sunburst acoustic guitar which has been provided by Epiphone.
New York-based web consulting firm Familiar is designing the site, with longtime No Depression co-publisher Kyla Fairchild helming the business operations. Plans are also in the works for a series of launch events in several American cities this fall. A new No Depression “bookazine” (to be designated No Depression #76) also will be available in print-form on the shelves of bookstores nationwide in October. The publication, a joint venture between ND and the University of Texas Press, will be issued twice annually (every fall and spring). Blackstock and Alden will serve as co-editors, with Alden also reprising his magazine role as art director. A handful of book-release events at bookstores and record stores nationwide are also in the works.