Doug Gillard has been an integral part of Guided by Voices — his fleet, aerodynamic, often head-spinning parts in dialogue with Robert Pollard’s vocal melodies — through two major stretches of its history.
Before GBV, the guitarist, arranger, and singer/songwriter spent more than a decade in the Ohio underground, playing in Death of Samantha in the 1980s and Gem — featuring future Pollard collaborators Todd and Tim Tobias — in the early ’90s, and helping form Cobra Verde.
He first connected with Pollard in 1994, when Gem and Cobra Verde separately opened for GBV in Cleveland. Gillard handed Pollard a cassette, from which Pollard pulled “I Am a Tree.”
When Cobra Verde later became Pollard’s backing band for GBV, they recorded the song for 1997’s Mag Earwhig! with Pollard singing lead. It’s remained Gillard’s spotlight onstage with GBV and arguably his signature song.
As Guided by Voices’ lineup continued to shift post-Cobra Verde, Gillard remained through 1999’s Do the Collapse, 2001’s Isolation Drills, 2002’s Universal Truths and Cycles, 2003’s Earthquake Glue, and 2004’s Half Smiles of the Decomposed before the group’s initial dissolution that year. Their farewell concert film, The Electrifying Conclusion, was released in 2005.
On Pollard and Gillard’s 1999 album Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department. Gillard recorded the music at home on a four-track in a Cleveland attic, playing the instruments and building the arrangements; Pollard added vocals on top. The album remains a fan favorite to this day; they’ve continued in that mode in projects like Lifeguards.
In 2016, Pollard fired up GBV again. Gillard returned to the band that year, joining the lineup that recorded 2017’s August by Cake and remains to this day: Pollard, Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr., bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March.
Their new album, Crawlspace of the Pantheon — the 20th album by this lineup — is out May 29 via GBV, Inc.
Outside of Guided by Voices, Gillard records and tours with Nada Surf and releases solo albums. His latest, Parallel Stride, released April 24 via Dromedary Records, is his first since 2014’s Parade On.
Read on for a full interview with Gillard about Crawlspace of the Pantheon, Parallel Stride, his GBV history, his guitar philosophy, and more.
What’s happening, Doug?
I’ve been doing a couple of interviews here and there for the solo record, and working on Cash Rivers stuff.
What’s your day-to-day like? Do you make music a lot of the time?
Sometimes. I just push myself to get some things done, and allow myself a lot of time to have a creative period and work on things.
With Cash Rivers, it’s fun. I do a lot of in-computer stuff with that, finding sound effects or playing a whole bunch of different stuff. I mean, for the songs that I’m working on specifically, because we kind of divide those up, and each person will maybe work on a few things, or sometimes we’ll play on something someone else started. It’s a whole collaborative thing.
Talk about Cash Rivers’ recording methodology.
There are lots of files that we all have access to that are just raw vocals, because it starts with just the vocals on Voice Memos on a phone.
Cash himself will have an idea when out at a bar or restaurant and tell a friend, or the nearest person, to turn their voice recorder on. He’ll sing something into the phone, have a comedic idea and melody, and there it is, you know — it’s up for grabs.
Whoever wants to claim a certain song can do that. Sometimes [GBV producer] Travis [Harrison] puts them on a grid with a tempo for the players of Cash Rivers to work on. But sometimes I’ll just take them and put them on my own structure.
This is just for Cash Rivers and Cub Scout Bowling Pins. When we do Guided by Voices, his demos are on cassette tapes from a boombox, and those get digitized, and we listen to those. He’s playing guitar and singing at the same time. So, that’s a completely different methodology.
Where do you source your sound effects? My mind goes to the paper towel dispenser that kicks off “Space Gun.”
Those are all pretty much real field recordings, personally done or acquired by Travis or a member of the band. Or sometimes there’s things that end up on Bob’s demos from the house, and he’ll say he got so used to hearing it that he’ll tell us to include it.
But for Cash, if I hear a sound effect for a song I want to put in there, I’ll source it somehow online. I found a way to rip YouTube videos, but they’re such small snippets and they’re never actionable.
Which databases do you use?
Oh, I don’t know, whatever comes up. I don’t even know what it is. I see it in a search, click on it, go through some list, and see if I can download it. But there’s nothing I subscribe to. Either it has to be free or I just don’t use it. And it’s not even a requested thing. It’s just something that I feel would be funny to throw in a song.
So, it’s not mandatory. You know, Cash Rivers himself doesn’t expect to hear stuff, so it’s pretty freewheeling — a lot of freedom.
How about string arranging? I know you’ve done that extensively since at least Space Gun. I’m a fan of “Black and White Eyes in a Prism.”
Thanks. Well, I know around that particular album that was on [2021’s It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!], we endeavored to get some real string players to at least add parts on top of some of the arrangements that I did with MIDI.
But mostly, they’re things that I play on MIDI with a keyboard controller — a couple of orchestra programs, or I’ll use Logic’s own base of samples that they have there. So, it’s a mishmash. I mean, I had a friend that played cello on “Spanish Coin” and some other things.
There’s definitely a real trumpet on that song too.
Yes, that’s true. That’s right. There was a lot on Cub Scout Bowling Pins.
Do you mostly follow your ears with orchestral arrangements, or do you have more of a formalized process for harmony colors and stuff like that?
Just ears, I guess. I just get the keyboard in front of me and kind of mess around with melodies. Or maybe there’s something in my head that I’ll realize on a keyboard or something.
Do you check out any classical or other string-powered stuff?
I love that stuff, but I don’t refer to it a lot. I really love Rachmaninoff.
I love Parallel Stride. I hear a ‘60s or ‘70s sensibility, or economy, in these songs. Was that conscious?
I don’t know. I’ve always had the same sort of approach to writing since I started making up songs when I was little. It certainly wasn’t conscious. I just have a song, throw it together, and I just kind of go with what’s in my head, usually. I guess that stuff has always been in my head. I grew up on AM radio in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so I guess it’s all in there.
For this album, there’s no concept or cohesive sort of thread. It’s just a collection of songs. A few things had already been recorded and not really released. One was on Bank Robber/Rough Trade. They had a Spotify compilation of protest songs around the year 2020, so I recorded and donated one for that. So, that was done already, but never really released.
I recorded the song “My Friends” with Travis back in 2014 or ‘15 or something like that. “New Vista” I recorded with [author, journalist, musician, and producer] Tom Beaujour and never did anything with, back around the same time. So, I decided I had to get these on a record, and also complete the record.
So, the rest are newer songs. I just kind of pushed myself to get it done, just because it had been too long since I’d had a solo record out. I just figured it was time for another one. It’s really a collection of stuff.
The last song is called “She Showed Me the Earth.” A friend of mine, Brian Musikoff, had asked his artist friends to contribute songs that had to do with the earth for the theme of one of his podcast/radio shows he was doing a couple years ago. I just did all that at home. That’s some Apple drummer on that. So, that was done, and I figured, Well, maybe I could put that on the record too. I did, and it fits.
You’re known as a ripping guitar player. But these are songs, not guitar showcases. Can you talk about leaning back and being a singer/songwriter first and foremost?
Playing guitar is probably the thing I do the best. It’s probably the thing I’m best at, as far as practical applications go. But really, I just like music. I just like writing songs — chord progressions and songs and melodies, basically. I happen to be able to play guitar, I guess, and apply that to other situations.
But, yeah, I don’t think of it in terms of when I do a song. I kind of have to remind myself; the last thing I think of is, Shoot, maybe this needs a solo, or to put some lead licks or something. And then I have to build that into the song and allow myself a couple bars to play something. But sometimes, it’s natural. Sometimes, when I’m structuring a song, Yeah, OK, this is where a solo can go. That seems to fit.
So it’s a mishmash. Sometimes it’s a conscious, baked-in thing that there’s going to be a solo in a song or not, and other times, it’s sort of, Ah, maybe I should put something in here. Sometimes it’s fine without anything like that.
[When recording] “Until I See You Again,” Tom, the engineer, reminded me, “Why don’t you come up with a lick at the end, during the fade out?” Oh, OK, because otherwise there wasn’t any kind of guitar on top of anything. Playing top lines is sort of Phil Spector-esque — a sort of galloping song that I didn’t think called for any lead guitar at all.
I know GBV songs are fairly locked from the demo stage, and Robert provides detailed notes. Does that affect your lead guitar writing at all?
Not really. It’s really the freedom to do what I want to do or not, or put or not put something on. Unless, sometimes, he does have specific notes to say “Don’t do a solo or guitar line here,” but it’s not often.
Every song either depends on what he hears when he’s writing it, or after he listens back to his demos. There didn’t used to be as many notes on songs. Lately, he’s got pretty specific notes on each song on the record.
Have you ever written without a guitar?
There’s a song on Parallel Stride that I wrote without a guitar, “Lost Alarmists.” For the longest time, it was called “Piano Song.” That’s the one I just wrote on keyboards. I worked in a guitar afterwards.
What was the overall sonic or aesthetic direction with Crawlspace of the Pantheon?
A generally sort of heavy sound. Some of the songs called for not such a heavy sound. Unlike Thick Rich and Delicious, which was decidedly a three-piece live in the studio with no overdubs — there was one song with some guitar overdubs, “Siren” — but everything else was just three people playing together at the time. Musically, not vocally.
This one is kind of back to the other template, where it’s Kevin, Mark and I playing, and then I went back and added some guitar overdubs. Also, this is a pretty diverse record, so that’s always really fun. You take a different approach to every song, and you’re just kind of in the mindset of whatever the mood of that particular song is.
For “(How Would You Like a) Chariot Ride,” there was a note to play a flanged guitar, so we definitely did that. I’m thinking back to Thick Rich and Delicious, which is not this record, but I remember there was possibly jaw harp on the end of one song. It was one of the instrumentalists. So, we actually did that.
I happen to have a collection of jaw harps from when we did the first Cash Rivers record. I added jaw harp to the song “Bobby Bare, Jr..”
Can’t that thing break your front teeth?
I’m definitely not a fan of playing those. I don’t like the concept of a fork scraping on the bottom of a pan, stuff like that. It’s actually not easy to play.
Where are you coming from lyrically on Parallel Stride?
I usually lead with the music of a song: chords, melody. Lyrics are the last thing that I think of — unlike Bob, who mixes it up. Sometimes he’ll think of music first and then lyrics, but he usually has great titles and lyrics in mind, or he can come up with them handily.
For me, I have to really work at getting some lyrics down and making sure the syllables fit the way I want them to. It can be fun to do that as well. You find yourself using words just because they sort of fit the verse or syllables you want, and if they’re not too embarrassing, go ahead and use them.
A lot of the lyrics are just stories that are told imagining yourself in the position of a third person, inventing a narrative. Sometimes it’s a personal way of writing lyrics, sometimes it’s not. I’m primarily musical, for sure.
Even if the lyrics came last, “Saving My Life Every Day” is pretty powerful. As a married man, that sentiment rings true to me.
Yeah, those are things I’m thinking of. I thought about my wife, and just came up with things that bring to mind how they enrich your life every day. That’s definitely where that comes from.
“Until I See You Again” was one of those things I woke up with; I woke up with a melody and almost a whole verse in my head, and I couldn’t not document it. It’s something where it’s like: Well, this came to me, so I’ve got to do something with it. I don’t care if it’s good. I have to get it out there, and it’s up to everyone else to decide if it’s good or not. It’s out of my hands.
Where did the title Parallel Stride come from?
I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and I was listening to a John Cooper Clark poetry book; that was a line in one of his poems. He said, “Farahs, the parallel stride,” and I thought, That’s cool.
What attracts you to his work?
I love the way he reads. I love the poems too. I mean, they’re funny as hell.
Are you a big bookworm in general?
Not completely, no. But I have listened to a lot of rock biographies. I say “listened to” because it’s fun to hear the Audibles. I read them too, but lately, I’ve been through quite a bit.
Budgie from Siouxsie and the Banshees’ [2025] book [The Absence: Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer]. He has a great voice and interesting stories, because I was really a huge Siouxsie and the Banshees fan. Pretty much all the New Order/Joy Division members’ books. Peter Hook has, like, eight of them, but it’s interesting to hear their different takes on things.
Will Sergeant from Echo & the Bunnymen has two out now [2021’s Bunnyman: A Memoir and 2023’s Echoes: A Memoir Continued…] and he’s rolling them out slowly. They’re short books, so he’s not even up to “The Killing Moon” time. So, I’ve gotta get the third one when it comes out. But his books are really funny and great, and they have a lot of Liverpudlian colloquialisms in there.
So, a lot of things like that. I’ve listened to a lot of David Sedaris; I’m reading both books about Ric Ocasek and the Cars. I’m quoted in both of them, but I’m interested. I mean, I love the band, so there’s a lot in there that I didn’t know about their history.
What did you take away from your time with Ric in the ‘90s?
He really wanted to put his stamp on [Do the Collapse], and he did. He added synthesizers, and I personally wasn’t that crazy about that in the beginning. But Bob wanted to see where it was going to go, and he didn’t really want to oppose it. So we just kind of sat back and saw what was happening, and then we toured on the record.
But it was fun, too, in a lot of ways. I mean, to be able to have the experience of recording at Electric Lady, and then recording some at Ric’s house, in his basement. We did some overdubs there too, just Bob and I. I got to use Ric’s guitar arsenal; he took all his guitars out of storage.
Do the Collapse was maybe polarizing when it came out, but I feel like its reputation is rebounding. I think people connect with the songs, and they’re great songs.
We had a great roster of songs we were working on. [Bassist] Greg Demos, myself, Bob, and [drummer] Jim Macpherson — that’s the band that recorded the record, and we practiced it in Dayton. We played them live for almost a year this way.
We went in for pre-production at S.I.R. with Ric and he said, “OK, well, Bob, I really like the prog rock song, so go home and write more prog songs. I want to make this a mind-fuck album. And please lose these songs; these are off the record.”
He excised some of the faster, more punk songs and sort of pop songs. “Fly Into Ashes,” “Underground Initiations,” “Perfect This Time.” Some of these songs ended up on the Hold on Hope EP. “A Crick Uphill” was one we worked on, which was really cool.
I actually finished some of those songs for that EP in Ohio. TVT Records said, “Find a studio with a two-inch tape machine and go finish those songs.” So, I ended up adding some bass and drums on some of these things, filling them out with guitar. We used Bob’s scratch vocals, because he didn’t work on them any further than the Electric Lady scratch vocals, which were great vocal takes.
Anyway, my bigger point was that Bob wrote “Optical Hopscotch,” “Liquid Indian” — I think “Much Better Mr. Buckles,” even, and maybe “Wrecking Now” as well, but which was already an older song — and so we substituted the other songs with those and just forged ahead.
What do you remember about making Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department around the same time?
Bob wanted me to do a record on four-track at home, and gave me a demo of eight or nine songs — acoustic demos. I said, “What style do you want each of these in? Do you have any notes?” He goes, “No, just do them up.” And I had the music bed for four other songs that I sent to him to include. One of those was “Pop Zeus.”
I already had the drums and everything. I was going to give it to a Cleveland punk singer or something — never did. So, I thought maybe this song would be good to include on this and send down to Bob, and he sang it; Bob’s on the record. There are three others — “Port Authority” and a couple other ones.
For instance, “I Get Rid of You” — for some reason, in my mind, I was hearing the treatment as Wall of Voodoo’s version of “Ring of Fire.” So, I went towards that. I didn’t have that much equipment to work with; I didn’t really have much gear.
But it was in this attic in Cleveland. I had a drum set and some mics and a four-track machine, and everything was going through this really cheap Korg multi-effects pedal. It was all going through this amp modeling from 1999. The acoustic and electric guitars and bass were real; it was just going through the amp modeling. So, it was a lot of fun to do that.
All the music’s on four-track; I recorded it all at high speed on four-track on TASCAM Portastudio. Also, I got together with an engineer friend of mine, and before we sent the DAT down to Bob, they ran it through a graphic EQ, and then Bob sang on top of it at Cro-Mag Studios through an ADAT, so his vocals were not four-track.
I was in a big nylon string phase around them. I really liked having that as kind of the basic rhythm guitar on some of those, on Speak Kindly. Especially through the four-track, it’s really great.
What I like to do is record maybe a couple tracks — I did a lot of bouncing on that, of course, because it was a four-track cassette — but bouncing down on the tracks, strumming the nylon string through with the dbx on, and playing it back off, or mixing it with the dbx off. It gives us this really chimey sort of flavor.
Back to Parallel Stride: where did the cover come from?
The front cover is a medical illustration by my father-in-law. He was in medical school in Mexico — this is around 1950 or so — and he had do medical illustrations when he was in school with pen and ink. The family still had a lot of those left over, and saved them and framed them.
I came home with a couple of those, and thought, Well, that might make pretty good album art. Those are cells dividing, supposedly. So, I put that on the front. And my wife and I were in Balboa Park in San Diego last year, and I saw some trees that were parallel, and I took that picture for the back cover.
He must have been quite a guy.
Yeah, yeah, he was. He was really great. There were lots of other illustrations of other things, but I think that one spoke to me.
Where did the title of “Western or Larabee” come from?
Those are studios in LA. Western is where many, many things were done. The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, a lot of other Beach Boys things. Larabee is another studio in LA where there’s a lot of R&B, soul, and new wave. I think it changed names. I’m not sure if it’s around anymore.
But that is definitely a very unfocused song. It’s a bunch of non sequiturs. One of the lyrics says, “Men are masked / They sing at Western or Larabee.” So, I guess I just kind of pulled that for the title of the song because it didn’t have a title for a long time.
I think non sequiturs in songwriting are underrated. “Come Together.”
I’ve read the argument lately where each different “Come Together” verse is about a different member of the band. “He one holy roller,” and/or Yoko in a verse as well. But that argument sort of makes sense.
Also, growing up and being influenced during the time of punk, underground, new wave, experimental, as I was in the ‘70s and ‘80s — listening to college radio, feeling familiar with all these artists, and listening to them, there were a lot of non sequitur lyrics.
In those days, the early ‘90s, I had my band Gem, which formed in ‘92, ‘93 — that was the time of single-word band names, single-word song titles, which I’m not crazy about in retrospect anymore. It’s too easy. You can get away with almost nothing. So, I didn’t really push myself too much lyrically. I repeated a lot of things. There are a lot of one-word song titles. There was a lot of that going around too.
I just thought, Well, if the chords are cool and the song’s cool, then it’s great. But it sort of contributed to me resting on not really working on lyrics or sometimes even arrangements or melody as much as I really should have done in those days.
I think it’s kind of disrespectful when people say Robert’s lyrics are nonsensical, or non sequiturs.
Yeah, I mean, that even goes back to the beginning of Guided by Voices. It’s never been nonsensical. Even if it does seem nonsensical at times, there are amazing words. There are great words and rhymes that you wouldn’t normally think of.
He’s one of my favorite lyricists ever.
Yeah, mine too, for sure. That’s why [it struck me] when Bob wanted to cover “I Am a Tree.”
I had it on a cassette that I gave him. Gem opened up for Guided by Voices back in ‘94, I think, and Cobra Verde and Gem — two bands I was in — both opened up for Guided by Voices at different times in Cleveland that year, and he was already a fan of Death of Samantha, this other band I was in in the ‘80s.
I gave him the cassette: “Hey, man, I’ve got this band Gem. Here’s some of what we do.” There’s a studio recording of “I Am a Tree.” We put a record out in 1995 [Hexed]; and that song did not come out on that album.
So, that’s why, when we did Mag Earwhig!, he said, “You know the song I want to do? ‘I Am a Tree.’ Would you be into that?” “Yeah, I’d love to hear you sing it.”
I like the lyrics of “I Am a Tree.”
Yeah? I think they’re OK. I just remember making it up and how simplistic it was. Let’s see. What does a tree do? OK, it has rings, OK… Oh, branches! Leaves!
As the saying goes, “Keep it simple, stupid.”
I made it fit, and it’s basically something to carry the melody.
Anything else you wanted to mention about Crawlspace of the Pantheon? That pedal you use on “Dagon’s Plunger” is a slicer and dicer.
That’s called a Kogoy HSL9000 pedal. John Kogoy, a doctor in Asheville, makes these pedals. I think there was a wah-wah on some things, possibly. It also might be a late 60’s Univox Super Fuzz pedal Mark brought to the session. Travis has a Uni-Vibe pedal that we go through a lot.
I don’t know otherwise. We had fun with all the textures. There’s some acoustic things on “We Outlast Them All” and “Landscaping” that were fun. Mark played an autoharp.
I can’t think of anything else… Bambi Kino is still going. We just did a live show. We might do more this year. That’s the Beatles Hamburg tribute band that we do. We played Bowery Electric [in NYC] the last day it was open as Bowery Electric.
But, yes, we mainly do the covers that they did from 1960 through ‘63 — basically the Hamburg Cavern stuff. We do a couple of the originals, but the leather jacket years, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, even the ballads and showtunes, like “Bésame Mucho” and things.
It’s Ira [Elliot] from Nada Surf on drums, Erik Paparozzi from Cat Power on bass, I’m on guitar, and Mark Rozzo — who’s also an author and writer, and a New Yorker as well — is on vocals and guitar. So, it’s kind of a high-concept tribute band.
Are you into deep Beatleology? Mark Lewisohn?
Oh, yeah. We did a song with Mark Lewisohn singing.
No shit.
Yeah. See, our philosophy is: if it’s been written about that they did a song, then it’s fair game. It doesn’t have to have been recorded on the BBC Sessions or the Star Club record.
This guy, Joe Brown, who’s actually still alive; they did some Joe Brown songs. He kind of came out of skiffle and played banjo and guitar, and he did the title song for this [1963] movie called What a Crazy World: “What a Crazy World We’re Living In.” Mark wanted to do it, and he said, “Let’s get Mark Lewisohn to sing.”
Mark Rozzo has a relationship with Mark Lewisohn, and he came up and sang with us at a Beatlefest we did back in 2014 or ‘15 in New York. He sang “Ooh! My Soul,” the Little Richard song, with us, and a Ray Charles song with us.
So, we did this backing track, sent it over to him, and he sang this Joe Brown song with us. He used it as his end credits on this filmed live presentation he did a couple years ago called Evolver ‘62. It’s a really, totally fun band to be in.
I wish people would understand that the Beatles were experimental from the jump. The sheer range of their early repertoire was wild.
I know. It got them in trouble, meaning they didn’t get signed to Decca because they chose the schmaltziest songs to play on that demo. Paul put on this Elvis-like voice, and I think they were trying to be too… “light programming” or something. And, I mean, that’s good, because I think they got a better deal after that.
I guess their range was: they weren’t just trying to be rock ‘n’ roll. They were trying to be all sorts of things, in the best way. But, yeah, they were experimenting from the very beginning.
Can you connect that to GBV?
Yes. There are lots of different textures within any given album, not to mention throughout the entire catalog of releases.
I can't help but feel like you're ramping up to an interview with Bob himself.
but even if not, these interviews are a great public service. Doug is the coolest. great work, again. 👍
Holy shit, this was an incredible read. I am blasting "Tight Globes" right now. Thank you so much for this.