Guided by Voices producer and engineer Travis Harrison was kind enough to jump on the horn once again after giving the first-ever Excited Ones! interview upon its launch in the fall of 2025.
That conversation mostly centered around that year’s Thick Rich and Delicious. But, as usual, its follow-up was just around the corner: Crawlspace of the Pantheon, their new album out May 29 via GBV Inc., and the 20th by this lineup.
Thick Rich and Delicious was recorded live in Harrison’s Dumbo, Brooklyn studio, Serious Business Music, between guitarist Doug Gillard, bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March — Bobby Bare Jr.’s backing vocals lifting up Robert Pollard’s leads.
Crawlspace of the Pantheon continues in that vein, in that Gillard, Shue, and March laid down the basic tracks as a live unit. But where Thick Rich and Delicious made use of minimal overdubs, Crawlspace of the Pantheon lets them spill over liberally, in the spirit of previous albums — as Harrison describes it, a “diversity of sounds.”
Pre-order Crawlspace of the Pantheon here, and read on for our full follow-up interview.
Right before I called, I was listening to Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs. The songs are only really hitting me recently. You into that one?
Man, that is a trip, dude. I didn’t really understand it when I was younger, either. I still don’t understand it, really, but I can enjoy it, and it almost feels like this weird, voyeuristic thing, like you’re kind of inside this guy’s descent into madness.
It’s on Robert’s ballot for Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, right?
Totally. That list is great. I discovered a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of classic rock choices on there that are ubiquitous — the Who and the Beatles — but there’s also some kind of obscure stuff: Thin White Rope, and his favorite Pixies album is Trompe le Monde. He’s definitely spent time with all those albums.
Crawlspace of the Pantheon seems to have an emphasis on lyrics more than some other ones.
100%. A huge part of the album is that lyrical content. Sometimes Bob gets in a mode where he’s going to write voluminous lyrics, which I love. Language coming at you fast, and a lot of it. So, it’s always fun to work on stuff that has that.
The majority of the work that we’re doing on [any given] album, we don’t even know what the lyrics are going to ultimately turn out to be. Although we have the skeleton that’s expressed in the demo, and sometimes the words that he sings in the demos stay all the way. That’s very common.
But there’s other times on this album that are examples of where he takes the opportunity to sculpt the lyrics over time. So, when we get to the session to do the vocals. a lot of times, we’re hearing the final lyrics for the first time, and it’s a beautiful thing.
What information did you guys hear in the Crawlspace demos?
All the information is in the demos. It’s kind of like the whole song. It’s the way he plays guitar. That’s GBV: the way he plays guitar; the way, obviously, his chords go and the songs go and the form. But everything is in the demo.
Kevin is amazing at extracting the drum part that is implied in the demo. It seems like he always nails it to what Bob hears. There’s other ways you can take it, but you have to have to have this kind of experience and understanding of what Bob’s hearing. It’s kind of unspoken.
Kevin’s incredible at that, and then Doug’s the same way with how he interprets the chords that are there. He understands Bob’s language better than anyone.
And Mark’s bass playing weaves it all together with love in such a brilliant way. He knows when to drone, when to move, when to drive it, when to lay back. He’s pretty much the perfect platonic ideal of the GBV bass player.
So, everything is on the demo, but you have to do it like Bob does it to get it to be what it’s supposed to be. Any old musician coming in and playing what they think the songs are would not get it right. You have to understand how to interpret his language. Doug’s so good at interpreting Bob’s guitar.
Does the band ever offer feedback on where a song could go?
Not often. There’s no need to, and it also creates friction in the process that’s unnecessary. One of the great strengths of Bob’s songwriting is his form. Melody, lyrics, of course — all the bread and butter. But what people don’t immediately give him credit for is using form in very unconventional ways.
Sometimes he will use regular pop structures, but other times, it’s more Beethoven-y or something. It’s kind of like there’s a beginning part, and then another part, and then he goes into another part. That kind of stuff is common in his songwriting. So, from our perspective, we’re just trying to learn and express that.
There’s never really a need to change it, unless something in my process of ironing out the demos, I might sometimes accidentally add or subtract a bit of time that creates an uncomfortable rhythm. Then, we’ll definitely adjust it. But it’s never a change. His demos are pretty much locked.
What about fine-tuning arrangements, or moving chords around over the same melody?
You might know as a guitar player: Bob has a specific language, a chordal language that he uses that incorporates a lot of open strings. A lot of very specific chord voicings moving your standard open chord shapes around the neck. All these kinds of tools that he uses, and Doug’s really intuitive and instantaneous at knowing exactly what he’s doing and playing it that way.
Doug often adds his own harmonic complexity. He uses different chord voicings that incorporate all the notes that are in Bob’s initial chords. He’s just a genius at harmony, and as a rhythm guitar player, he’s the greatest maybe ever. But he just understands all of these chord voicings that work with Bob’s peculiar chord voicing.
So, it’s not like Bob’s using all power chords; he does use a lot of power chords, but it’s not a neat box like a lot of people would write in. There’s just some specific things that Bob does that are unique to his style.
On “Out With a Theory,” the drums don’t come in until halfway through. That must have been in Robert’s notes.
Yeah, 100%. Bob will give us notes that essentially accomplish the same thing that a bandleader would do in rehearsal: “OK, I want the guitar and bass to play this riff alone until this point in the song, and then we’re going to have the drums enter, and a second guitar is going to enter, and at this next point in the song, the drums are going to go away.”
He uses time code and we reference our demos, but he’s got it all kind of composed in that way. So, the band takes that score, and then all the guys imbue it with their own style and fill it up with their thing.
They love it that way, because that’s what allows things to move so smoothly — removing the friction of a creative competition or people trying to exert their own [sense of] I think it’s got to go like this. All the normal band kind of dynamics.
With this, you have a situation where there’s a composer laying out the material for you, but he’s not going to perform any of the instruments. Of course, everybody loves it whenever Bob plays guitar, and he’s a fabulous guitar player, but he’s only gonna sing on it.
He really trusts this particular band — this particular group of people — to do this. The trust is heavy. It’s a really beautiful thing that that he trusts us to do it, and we’re still doing it on the 20th album.
There’s also way grimier vocal textures than on Thick Rich and Delicious. How’d you come at those?
Same deal. Bob composes that as well, if you can imagine that. We record where the band rehearses and the label operates in Dayton, and Bob just has an idea for every song.
The thing about Crawlspace of the Pantheon is that we’re just back to doing the same kind of shit that we’ve been doing for the past bunch of albums, in terms of combining a lot of different colors and textures and having different vocal sounds, but doing it now in this more specifically focused live-in-the-studio beginning approach, or basic tracking approach.
It was really fun. It was a way to build on the success of the way we did the last one, but then have more of a diversity of sounds, and a diversity of vocal sounds. So, when Bob comes in and does his vocals — it’s not a huge palette, but it’s like, clean through amp, or big reverb, or something.
For the song “Lost in the Sun,” he asked for a big ‘80s stadium reverb or something like that, and I just interpreted it in this specific way. That’s the only song that has that sound, but it’s cool to have that diversity.
Heavier instrumental textures too. “Dagon’s Plunger.”
For “Dagon’s Plunger,” you’ve gotta ask about his specific approach to that guitar sound. That’s just really a testament to Doug. He’s such a great guitar player, and he doesn’t give you what you would expect.
That demo is an unusual kind of chordal world for Bob to work in. It’s almost like metal — all these semitones, very, very dark.
Doug shines on guitar as always. But I love his orchestral arranging too, like the fanfare on “A Grand Ceremonial Jester.”
Yes, totally. That one has a ton of shit on it that’s like, Bob wanted that to be complete chaos. At the end, it was a big, grand flourish with a million things going on.
What other songs jump out to you as having interesting moments under the hood?
Ah, well, I mean, I don’t know about under the hood. I think going forward a few years, looking back on this album, I probably won’t remember the under-the-hood stuff as much as I’ll remember — to borrow the phrase — the grand gestures. Having a song like “We Outlast Them All,” and having it be so strong.
Just as a whole — the sentiment, the way the guys played it, the way the chords go. I think that’ll always be a favorite of mine — a sentimental favorite. Even if it’s not direct, because Bob’s lyrics might always be a little bit coming from different angles. Fuckin’ A, dude. Twentieth album, we’ve got “We Outlast Them All!”
There’s an incredible guitar lead on “Advance Without Dropping,” at the end, that’s very specific — just so Doug to the max. One of my favorite Doug guitar leads.
I know Mark inherited an autoharp that he played on “Landscaping.”
Yes, I love that. Like, it’s this beautiful instrument connected so deeply to him personally. It was from his family, and it’s this heirloom; what could be cooler than that? And then, on top of everything, it sounded incredible on that song, and it’s the easiest thing ever to play. So, it’s a quadruple whammy of Wow, gotta have that on there.
Anything you want to say about mics or compressors or other gadgets?
Well, I mean, it’s hard for me to jump into that kind of talk. It’s kind of like going from “You come here often?” to “Jump in the sack!”
Fair enough.
One thing I could start by talking about is: when we do track live, when I have the band in the studio with this particular configuration, if I can track on tape, I do so. In this case, we did, so the basic tracks of Doug, Mark, and Kevin are tracked to my two-inch tape machine, which helps for the workflow.
Which the band really responds well to. They’re not big persnickety editors, especially we’re just cutting live tracks there. They just do a couple takes for every song, so they really respond well to the workflow, working on tape. And then it just gives us the kind of gnarly sound that we’re looking for. So, that’s the first piece of equipment that’s definitely involved in the basic tracking.
Should I take off my blouse now? Or do you want to…
[Laughs] I hear you. Just thinking of the audio geeks out there.
I don’t know what really is of interest. It’s not like I have anything particularly crazy going on. It’s just pretty basic tools, you know. I’m not using crazy mics. I record Bob’s vocal with a Shure SM7B! Wow, what exciting stuff. Guitars, I use a Shure SM57! OK, yeah, let’s write that down!
But there’s stuff that I do that imparts a specific sound, you know? I record a lot, I mix a lot, I’m doing it constantly. So, when I am working on a GBV album, it’s just part of this large flow that is always happening. The amps in the studio, the mics that are up, or a certain trajectory that I might be on in terms of the way that I’m working at that particular time — that might be reflected.
The perfect example of that would be all the work that we did during the pandemic. The circumstance of where the world was at that moment demanded that we used different methods, technologies, and techniques to get the job done. To kind of use what’s available to you, I guess.
So you’ve got a way more classic approach. It’s not buying-new-shit-oriented.
Definitely not. I love gear, but I’m not a gear person where that’s my focus. I’m more focused on just the process, mainly because I have to create a lot of output. With Bob alone, I create a lot of output, and then I work with lots of other people. I’m just focused on process, so all the gear choices are very practical.
I don’t want to go down rabbit holes of irrelevant technical things, but I’m using the hell out of the computer too. I don’t have any misconceptions about that, because it just makes things fast and easy.
You’re able to create a mix and you don’t have to wipe it at the end of the day on the console. You’re just mixing as you go along and using all the benefits of the technology, but having the super-analog live energy and electricity and spark and all that stuff maximized.
Any other exciting recording projects since we last spoke?
It’s always kind of a flow of things going on. We’ve been helping these guys. I don’t know if you remember a few years back, there was a mysterious few records by this mysterious figure named Cash Rivers.
Sure.
Well, unfortunately, Cash passed away a few years ago.
That’s terrible.
Yeah, but there was some kind of chaos going on with his family, and they basically dug up his body and they found, in his shirt pocket, a cassette. So, there was this whole thing going on with his family, and I’ve been helping them master and finish this unreleased Cash Rivers album. You know, it’s got to be done. It’s got to be done.
In other news, there’s always a potpourri of bands and people coming through. I reconnected with an old friend of mine named Jon. He’s got a project called On.Lé.Ore, and I’ve been playing drums on that. There’s a record coming out quickly.
That’s what’s on the front of my mind right now, because we’re finishing up that master. Then, hopefully just keeping up the good fight.
Listen to anything good lately?
I mentioned Beethoven. This year, I’ve been going deep into the symphonies. I’m only on the Fifth. So, I have the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and now I’m on to the Fifth, which is more [familiar to me], but I’ve just been going so deep into it and loving it.
Also, the other greats of music. I did a double-whammy Jimi Hendrix Audible run recently.
Was it Room Full of Mirrors?
I did that one, and then I did another kind of generic one. But I’ve just been on a Hendrix deep dive, so Beethoven and Jimi Hendrix. Also, that sent me down a rabbit hole of listening to a ton of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew.
But I want to be into new things too. There’s a lot of good new stuff. Oh, you know what I like? I’ll shout these guys out: Model/Actriz. You know who that is?
Rings a bell.
It’s very dance punk, but they’re new. They’re from Brooklyn, but it’s like heavy, intense dance punk kind of shit. But it’s really good. A lot of crazy, heavy polyrhythms and really cool dry vocals. Just a cool band.
Gonna catch any shows soon?
Yeah, my wife and I have two tickets. We’re gonna go see Beethoven’s Third. But also, I’m going to see the Hives with the Chats opening. I’m psyched about that.
Thanks for being here again, man.
Sure, I’m happy to talk anytime. I always love it.
Thanks for this! I appreciate you asking vocal chain questions, even tho he scoffed. So perfect. I think he's referencing a Shure SM7B mic for Bob's vocals, not 70. Knowing that alone gladdens my heart. Really appreciate it, Morgan!