Travis Harrison has produced, engineered, and mixed every Guided by Voices studio album since 2017, shaping the sound of the band’s evermore prolific modern era.
At his Dumbo, Brooklyn studio, Serious Business Music, Harrison recorded August by Cake, How Do You Spell Heaven, Space Gun, Zeppelin Over China, Warp and Woof, Sweating the Plague, Surrender Your Poppy Field, Mirrored Aztec, Styles We Paid For, Earth Man Blues, It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!, Crystal Nuns Cathedral, Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, La La Land, Welshpool Frillies, Nowhere to Go but Up, Strut of Kings, Universe Room, and their forthcoming Thick Rich and Delicious, out this Halloween — GBV leader/mastermind Robert Pollard’s birthday.
Across this run, Harrison has become Robert Pollard’s most trusted engineer — capturing hundreds of songs with speed, fidelity, and feel, and helping define the sonic identity of Guided by Voices in the 21st century.
Outside of GBV, Harrison has recorded and mixed projects for Built to Spill, Dooe Body, Fred Armisen, The Men, OK Go, the Homosexuals, and Upper Wilds. He also hosts and produces the long-running live performance series Serious Business on BTR. Additionally, he runs front of house for Guided by Voices’ live shows and drums in the GBV side project ESP Ohio.
I sat down with Harrison to discuss his recorded legacy with Guided by Voices over the span of nearly a decade. Thick Rich and Delicious is out October 31 via GBV, Inc. To pre-save the album, click here. To pre-order it, click here.
Thick Rich and Delicious. What’s on your mind with it coming out?
I’m looking forward to it. You know, we’re always psyched about whatever the newest thing is. But then — this is the one, right? An important dynamic within the group is being psyched about the new thing, so that’s always the case. But this one… it’s so power pop, and it’s so satisfying on the way down. It goes down the hatch.
Thick, Rich and Delicious is a little bit of a shift from some of the more recent records. Some of the records we’ve done recently — and I love records like this — we consider more growers, like Universe Room, which has no repeats and is more prog — punky prog. Small, concise, but proggier forms. On this one, the forms are a little more pop, with choruses that repeat — that kind of a vibe.
Man… Universe Room. At first, I was like, This is intriguing, but I’m not quite sure to make of it. Then, “Dawn Believes” hit me, and I was like, Oh my god. This is one of the best songs Robert has ever written.
I know, dude. That one hits really hard. That’s [longtime guitarist] Doug [Gillard] — it’s all Doug’s work on that song. He just knows how to get to the emotional core of a piece of music like that.
I remember [GBV bassist] Mark Shue telling me that when you guys get Robert’s demos, it’s like Christmas. That you guys spend a lot of time with them, and kind of feel out what the songs are asking for when they hit the studio. What were the songs on Thick Rich and Delicious asking for, in a sense?
Well, a lot of times, the demos for a new album kind of hit you has a whole, because Bob has, I guess you would say a theme. Not a theme — a mission statement, a focus. It’s not just a random collection of songs, really, ever, in my experience so far.
So, when Mark’s talking about Christmas: you’re getting this whole new environment to play around in, even though it’s kind of the same. You’re at home with your family, but there’s a new Castle Grayskull. [Laughs.] So, with Thick Rich and Delicious, we had come off of doing Universe Room, where basically the whole record was through composed. We had done some really big, kind of prog-heavy records, where the focus was making really big stuff for the stage — big performance pieces.
My mind also goes to Nowhere to Go But Up, or Tremblers and Goggles by Rank.
Yes, right. Those are really big albums for us, and they got a chance to really blossom onstage too. They’re hard, though! They’re intricate, intricate music. So, with Thick Rich and Delicious, the biggest difference was that you can hear the song once and know how to play it live. It kind of harkens back to some of the older stuff, too, where it was just simpler.
And then there’s the fact that some of the songs actually are sourced from older days, and then there’s a whole Pollardological excavation that the fans are doing where they go back. And now, both of the two singles that have come out: I recognize “(You Can’t Go Back to) Oxford Talawanda” from when he used it as a backing vocal on [Pollard’s 2011 solo album] Lord of the Birdcage. “Phantasmagorical Upstarts” has its roots in a Suitcase 3 song. There’s this whole universe.
So, that was kind of fun too, because he was butting up with songs that go all the way back to the ‘80s, when he was playing guitar on stage — putting those right up against brand new things he’s just written, and tying it all together in this kind of power pop package. It was exciting. Again, it’s not a random group of songs. It’s like, Here’s what I think we should do. I think he came up with a lot of the concepts during our touring and the trips we took last year and stuff.
I know Robert draws a lot from the archives. And I don’t want to spoil the mystique or the chase, but obviously, “Captain Kangaroo Won the War” is old. And “The Lighthouse Resurrection” is the intro from “Ester’s Day” from Bee Thousand turned into a full song.
Yes, that piece was collaged in from another song — I don’t have total recall what the other one is, but it’s on King Shit and the Golden Boys. But, yes, there’s all this stuff woven in. He’s kind of playing around with the universe he made — the Pollardverse, or whatever you want to call it. Because it’s so big that he’s not doing a redo of “Game of Pricks” or whatever and putting it on the album. It’s more of these weird, deep tangents and stuff — from when he played guitar, before they were a four-piece just playing in bars in Dayton. From that setlist.
Again, I want the fans to embark on the full wild goose chase — to honor and respect the mystery. But are any other Thick Rich and Delicious songs specifically from the archives?
I think [the band] would know better than me. But yes, a lot of these songs are sourced from back in the day. I have to look at my notes. I know “Mother John” is a brand new song. He was going to put that on either Universe Room or one of the ones before that. But yeah, I don’t want to misspeak on which songs are which. I think a lot of the hardcore fans will definitely have fun.
My favorite song on the record is “Our Man Syracuse.” I’ve listened over and over and over again. Any tidbits on that one?
Doug’s performance on that is really fucking great.
Oh, he smokes.
When I first heard it, it struck me as a kind of ‘60s-infused song — the structure and the melodic stuff and the chords being used. It’s not punky. It’s more of an older vibe to the song. But that particular recording of it showcases that session where it was just the three guys playing together [Gillard, Shue, and GBV drummer Kevin March]. You get to really clearly hear Doug’s style, where he’s playing the chords, but in between every chord, there’s so much inflection and melody in the way he plays leads and voices chords. There’s a universe inside of him, just playing the chords of the song. It’s just one guitar track on there.
The same goes for the rhythm section. They’re deeply in tune with each other, and there’s worlds within their playing. It’s not just, like, running through it. They put a lot into everything about it. We’re stoked that people are going to get to hear that kind of rawness.
My wife Brenna premiered “(You Can’t Go Back to) Oxford Talawanda” over at Rolling Stone. I think she only wrote a paragraph about it, but Robert told her he’d been carrying that melody around in his head for a long time. So I Googled “Oxford Talawanda,” and realized it’s a real high school — Talawanda High in Oxford, Ohio about an hour from Robert’s hometown of Dayton. This is like a fight song!
100%. I don’t know if that’s the actual content of what the words are saying [reflect that] — Bob’s got his kinds of ways that are kind of indirect and always poetic, and people can make the meaning what strikes them. But yeah, Talawanda High School is totally a high school in Oxford, Ohio. I just got this information in recent history, but the Talawanda High School football program has been struggling a bit. They have a new coach in the past couple of years, and this year, they’re undefeated! 6-0. So, we’re hoping that they can use “(You Can’t Go Back to) Oxford Talawanda” as a fight song, as you described it, to assist in further victories.
It’s the Pollard magical arts just working their way through the universe. Which is kind of a real thing — leading up to Halloween, which is his birthday, for chrissakes.
I mean, it’s not like he’s a practicing wizard or something, but he kind of is.
So you had Mark, Doug, Kevin, and [GBV second guitarist] Bobby [Bare Jr.] in your Brooklyn studio?
Yes, except the main core of the music is just a one-guitar lineup, and Bobby is singing harmony on every song. Bob credits it to the “Self-Righteous Brothers.”
[Laughs, hard]
That’s what it’s credited as on the back cover. Bobby’s role on the record was totally as a harmony singer, in the kind of old-school way. That’s actually one of his superpowers.
Because he’s got that Grand Ole Opry upbringing, right?
Yeah, and he can lock in right away.
So Doug played all the guitars.
Yes. Doug did four or five guitar overdubs on the whole to add a lead [here and there] — he did very little overdubbing. Then, there’s a couple of songs where Bob wanted him to add some orchestral flourishes and stuff like that. But the whole thing is really raw. One guitar, two amps. It kind of sounds like it could be two guitars, but it’s just Doug. That’s one of the things that’s so different. It’s not a layered thing. It’s not studio-ized in that way. It’s more studio-ized in the setup of the capturing of an event. Back what they used to do — what GBV is kind of known for.
Were parts of Welshpool Frillies recorded that way? “Romeo Surgeon” has a really special swing and a kick to it, where you can tell those four are really locked in, reacting to each other. Some GBV albums are recorded remotely or piecemeal, but on that song, you can hear the eye contact. Kinetic rhythmic moments.
1,000%. It’s funny that you mentioned “Romeo Surgeon.” There are a couple of songs that kind of go with that very specific style of recording. It’s a little bit different than what we did for Thick Rich and Delicious, but the basic spirit is the band in the room together — all the amps in the room and all the bleed maximum.
The other one that would go in that category is from Mirrored Aztec, called “Biker’s Nest.” There’s another one from Surrender Your Poppy Field. All those songs were in the early stages of production. Bob gives us production notes, basically to help the guys know when to come in and out. “We want this to kick ass,” or this one to be more like this or that.
These songs, he asked for us to record them on one mic — basically like a boom box. I would like to do it on one mic, but it’s a stereo ribbon mic — it picks up in two different ways. So I had all the band’s amps literally almost touching the drum set — really close to each other around the drums. And there’s this one mic that basically picks up two figure eight patterns, and that’s what we got.
So, by the time we got to “Romeo Surgeon,” we were clicking on that method — and I wanted to do that again.
Thick Rich and Delicious sounds huge, but as I understand it, recording 101 is that if you just turn all your shit up, it can paradoxically make everything sound tiny. How do you achieve that big, powerful sound?
Less stuff on there, really. When we were doing stuff in the remote way like we did during the pandemic, that was a revelation in the opposite direction — where it was like, Wow, we could do anything. We can’t even see each other, so we can do anything. So we did all this crazy shit and really utilized the disconnectedness. Bob’s in Dayton; the other guys are East Coast; Bobby Bare’s in Nashville.
Now, it’s totally the opposite — back to basics. We could get it done with just capturing the performance of a band that has put a lot of miles [behind them] and spend a lot of time playing together. We really had developed a musical rapport, and the language that they use is really developed. So, when we did Thick Rich and Delicious, we totally made a point that we had to do this live. It had to be done that way. There was just no way we could get the right amount of energy if we didn’t do it that way, especially when the forms of the songs are more regular.
The composition of the music is taking you for a ride on its own. When this stuff is primal rock, you can’t beat around the bush.
As far as the side projects go, I know how Cub Scout Bowling Pins came together, and ESP Ohio — which you drummed in. What’s the deal with Rip Van Winkle? I really like their new album, Blasphemy.
Rip Van Winkle is a bunch of Bob’s friends from Dayton. Guys that we all hang out with in Dayton, and members of the band Joseph Airport.
Oh, wow. I thought it was just GBV under a pseudonym, like Cub Scouts or Cash Rivers and the Sinners.
There’s none. No GBV people on Rip Van Winkle [except Bob].
Did you help make it?
I mastered it. I didn’t record it. They did it themselves. It’s Ben Penry on guitar, who’s the cover boy on Blasphemy with Bob. A great guitar player. Jason Short on drums. Joe Patterson, who always helps Bob do all his visual art and layouts for the albums and all that. Members of the GBV family.
What are you working on outside of the Pollardverse?
I just finished a record I’m excited about with a band called Upper Wilds that everybody should check out. They’re on Thrill Jockey Records, and super cool — high energy, punky space rock. Really fucking good. Really psyched about that. But yeah, it’s a line of really cool bands I get to record here in my studio in Brooklyn. I mixed a record by Savak that was really great — came out this year. There’s always new stuff.
What do you do when you’re not recording? Do you go to a lot of shows? Are you a homebody?
I should go to shows more. I’ve got two teenage girls.
What’s that like?
I’m lucky to have some good ones.
Our mutual friend, the writer Hank Shteamer, told me that back in college, you were like if “Thunder Road” was a person.
[Laughs.] The Boss is a very big part of my personal rock story for sure. My wife and I met around that time in college, and she’s also a crazy Springsteen fan. If “Thunder Road” was a person — that’s me, man.
Do you think you’ll get another “Christmas” soon? Another platter of tunes?
There’s definitely another album in the works. We have demos for it, and then we’re gonna start recording it. I know the overall songs and vibe. It’s not going to stray too far from what we have with the Thick, Rich and Delicious vibe. Don’t expect a part two of that, but it’s definitely on that path.
We didn’t talk about other songs, like “Lucy’s World” and “A Tribute to Beatle Bob” and “Siren.”
”Lucy’s World” is a beautiful song.
Yeah, it’s pretty gangster.
The thing is, everybody loves the power pop side — some people only like Bob’s power pop side. So, a song like “Lucy’s World”….
Old? New?
Yeah, that is a new song. He wrote that song last October. Like, how wouldn’t it be any power pop band’s best song? It’s just crazy. The hook is just wild.
He does that one trick perfectly that John Lennon kind of pioneered — that quasi-lazy vocal melody where it just sits, but then the chords twist around it and recontextualize it.
There’s a moment where Bob uses one of his signature moves with the power chord, where you drop your finger down one fret so it actually becomes the major third. Whatever you call that move, Bob uses it a lot.
Thick Rich and Delicious is framed around instrumentals: “Babies and Gentlemen,” “Dance of the Picnic Ants,” “Ozark Ivanho.”
I think it’s a pretty cool move on this record. They’re not going to be the ones that get talked about, but the instrumentals are pretty hot. In a way, they also harken back to the first Guided by Voices album, Devil Between My Toes, which has three or four instrumentals on it. With Bob, if you get a straight power pop album from him, that’s amazing, but there’s always going to be something about it that’s going to take you for a little bit of a ride — that makes it a little bit more cinematic. The instrumentals set up big moments. So, there I am, giving a little love to the underdog.
He’s so good at writing episodically and sequentially. There’s a line about “picnic ants” in “Mother John” that sets up “Dance of the Picnic Ants".”
Everything’s a universe within a universe within a universe within a universe. You get the Pollard world of, like, 5,000 songs in this whole language that he’s created. He’s drawing from it and pulling into it. But then, all his albums are self-contained. It’s not just like, every one of his albums is about airplanes and shit. Some of them have that as a main theme, but there’s always a vibe — a setting, a feeling. There’s always recalls. The lyric on this song comes back on that one. I feel like that stuff’s important — to make it almost like a film director’s thing in a movie. Every line that he writes matters.
I just launched Excited Ones! with this interview and a personal essay. What would you like to see on this newsletter in the coming weeks and months? What do you want to see more of out there regarding this subject?
It’s a great question. There are two ways to look at it. I always think of the people who listen to Guided by Voices as different concentric circles. The tightest rings of the bullseye — the people who know everything — are really hard to work with.
But you’re not a crazy person. And then there’s people who are interested, but because of the way the band’s music is constantly coming out, they let it roll off their backs. And then some people get stuck in the bigger years [back in the ‘90s].
There is a large audience that has goodwill for GBV. They just don’t know anything’s happening. The message is not getting to them. You have no restraints on doing something that’s genuinely interesting. It’s more interesting to pull people in than the dog and pony show that has to happen.
In my mind, this run of records blows the “classic era” out of the water. But on the main, I don’t think these records are being engaged with on their own merits.
I mean, it’s a really tiny mom and pop thing, that’s all. You can’t blame it for not knowing about it. You can’t blame the band. It’s literally called GBV, Inc. — two people who are dealing with all of that. It’s not a regular label that puts stuff out. Bob’s chosen a fiercely independent path. The Rockathon guys do an outstanding job.
When I sit down with Crystal Nuns Cathedral or It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!, I’m not thinking, Another beer-swillin’, high-kickin’ set from Uncle Bob. I’m thinking, What is ‘Black and White Eyes in a Prism’ about? This is crazy!
Dude, yeah. There’s so much art there.
He’s one of my favorite lyricists alive, for one thing.
Underrated! Underrated in the lyric game. I don’t think people really fully understand it. I studied English as an undergrad. I didn’t go very far with it, but I read enough and took enough poetry classes and things to understand the basic language of what’s going on.
What’s so above and beyond about Bob is not only his knack and natural ability, but how he works it like a muscle. He reads his ass off — history, rock books, metaphysics. You know, he actually makes his own dictionary. If he’s reading and he comes upon a word he’s unfamiliar with, he has a book where he writes it down.
“Carapace.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That song, for sure. He really is a wordsmith. But then there’s that other artistic, magic thing — tapping into this other realm. He’s a conduit. He has all the brain stuff, but then he can just turn off the brain and let it flow through him. It’s mind-blowing. The world of language in the GBV world is delicious.
You know, people joke about all the fantastical titles and stuff, and that’s cool. Was it Tim Heidecker who did a parody of it? It’s funny to do a parody of it, but also — I don’t know. It’s not bullshit. He’s not screwing around. There’s poetic weight to almost everything that he’s done, and he’s also pretty humble about that.
I want to do a whole treatise on his lyrics on this Substack.
For sure. There’s a lot of interesting shit about this world, man. We just had [GBV’s annual fan convention in Dayton] Heedfest.
How was that?
It was awesome. The people who are hardcore fans are really sweet people. It’s a family reunion vibe. Everyone’s a cousin or something. And then you get to talk to everybody, and it’s just a high concentration of smart people who love rock music and know all about it.
It sounds like there are people out there who care a lot about the actual gestalt of the music — the words, melodies, and atmospheres. What the records are trying to say, however abstractly.
I’m always feeling like every day I’m getting a year older — like, oh my God. But I hope there are still young people attracted to music. Bob’s an older guy. In most people’s minds, its a band from the ‘90s, even though in the ‘90s, Bob was already turning 40. There’s something about the vibe and universe that is kind of timeless, and it’s appealing to young people.
This one guy [Kai Slater] is in a band called Lifeguard, but he’s in another band called Sharp Pins. Have you heard them?
Didn’t Robert and Doug do a record as Lifeguards?
Two side project records as Lifeguards, plural, yeah. No, this is a new band. They’re kids. Like, 18 years old. And then this spinoff, Sharp Pins, is very in the basic genre of this. It’s cool that the kids are digging it. But I hope there’s an interest in album rock. That’s my thing — albums. People are liking that Geese album [2025’s Getting Killed]. Are people talking about albums nowadays?
They are. There’s a kind of post-Son Volt, post-Jason Molina wave going on, aimed at kids just out of college.
There was a while when I was getting scared that album rock is done. Even the rock bands that should be working on getting enough songs together for an album — what incentive is there to do albums? Everyone’s doing singles and little EPs, and doing it for years, until they get to the point where they can do a proper album.
But I always think of the album as the format. Bob’s definitely always thinking of the album as the format. Like, fucking Scorsese makes movies. Bob makes albums. Each album is like a little universe of songs.
Great interview and thanks for sharing! I love hearing from inside the camp and how these albums are made. I was in Oxford OH last week doing a college visit at Miami U of Ohio with my daughter and you can only guess what song was in my head all day. Got a Pic in front of Talawanda High School in my gbv shirt.
Obsessed with the new album. I’d love to hear Bob’s demos for these songs. Oh my god.