Guided by Voices albums don’t simply materialize every few months — someone has to turn Robert Pollard’s nonstop ideas into physical records that reach people’s hands. For nearly 30 years, Matt Davis has helped fill this essential role.
As a co-operator of Rockathon Records — the operational arm for Pollard’s music, EAT collage-art books, and projects like the side label Splendid Research — Davis manages the day-to-day machinery of the Pollardverse, alongside partners Mike “The Heed” Lipps and Kevin “Dex” Poindexter.
That includes overseeing artwork and layout with layout designer Joe Patterson, coordinating production of LPs, CDs, and books with partners like Gotta Groove, working with distributor Revolver to place releases in stores, and handling global mail order — five to six thousand packages a year, bound for every U.S. state and more than 20 countries.
That scale has been consistent for years: between 2010 and 2016 alone, Rockathon shipped roughly 4,000 orders annually to 36 countries and every U.S. state. During one “light year,” the label still produced five albums, nine singles, a 100-song box set, two T-shirt designs, and a book of Pollard’s collage art — the internal motto being, fittingly, “Keep it in Motion.”
Davis discovered GBV in 1994, at a show in Cincinnati where — in his telling — they “blew Pavement off the stage.” Within a year, he was volunteering at Rockathon’s early Dayton headquarters. By the late ’90s, he was helping Pollard launch the Fading Captain Series, deepening his role as a trusted facilitator behind the scenes.
As Pollard phased out the original Rockathon Records structure, Davis, Lipps, and Poindexter took over from Rich Turiel in 2009 and consolidated operations under a new Rockathon, replanted in Dayton’s revitalizing Fireblocks District — surrounded by shops, restaurants, and a music venue instead of industrial emptiness.
Beyond records, Davis helps organize the annual Heedfest fan gathering — a massive community weekend that he has helped run for more than a decade.
And all of this happens while Davis holds down a demanding eight-to-five IT career, managing sales across seven states. For him, the work — cutting open boxes, packing LPs, listening to mixes in an old concrete warehouse — remains “Zen-like.” More than logistics: a chance to help his favorite artist keep going, at the pace Pollard’s imagination demands.
I spoke with Davis about the mechanics behind GBV’s inimitable run, the evolution of Rockathon from DIY merch corner to label headquarters, and what it means to help guard “the most independent indie rock label in the world.”
Thick Rich and Delicious is out October 31 via GBV, Inc. To pre-save the album, click here. To pre-order it, click here.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing what you do — packaging records for a friend’s label. Very cyclical, very relaxing, right?
Yep. Dex, Heed and I all have eight to five jobs. All day, I’m meeting, talking about IT, doing whatever. I’ve got seven states I’m responsible for with a team of people. We’re a large, global, value-added reseller for technology. So, [it’s great] being able to cut the grass, which I just did, or package records — where we just bullshit and listen to music and podcasts.
We’re obviously neck deep into sending out Thick Rich and Delicious. Everybody’s getting it way early. I was just there [at Rockathon HQ] a little bit ago today to pick up a bunch of orders and take them to the post office, and I saw Bob. When your normal eight to five is doing what I do, being able to do this is zen-like. Calming.
What’s your position at your company?
I’m a Sales Director for state, local, and education for our company. I have Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. So, state and local governments, higher education, K-12 — that’s that patch for what we do for technology.
Doesn’t [former GBV touring manager/Rockathon head] Rich Turiel work in IT as well?
Yeah, he’s at WiscNet. We’re about to have overlap in our eight to fives for the first time. Because what we do, they can potentially use it. We’ll see when I get up there. We’re gonna go out and have steaks and drinks and sign contracts.
I feel like the average GBV enjoyer doesn’t realize how all-hands-on-deck this operation is — a family effort. As [GBV producer] Travis Harrison told me, “Bob’s chosen a fiercely independent path.”
Well, yeah — I will tell people we are the most independent indie rock label in the world.
Is that so?
1,000%.
Who would be a close second?
The Fugazi guys.
So, when you get to the very most independent [scale of things], when you can do whatever you want, there is one person who decides what we do — and that’s Bob.
And Bob does things that he wants to see or hear himself. He makes art for him. The byproduct is, we get all this great art, right? But it’s for him. He’s always said, “I write music that I want to hear. I want to put stuff down so I can have this album.” And when you’re at that level, and everybody around you says, “We’re here to facilitate that happening, to give you the most creative freedom possible” — you can’t get any more independent than that.
We have some great partners. Gotta Groove is our manufacturing partner for vinyl. They’re a part of this team because they know the speed at which Bob goes, and how things change and more gets added. And Revolver Records, out of San Francisco, has been our distributor for 20-plus years.
Robert makes music for himself first and foremost. Yet, he said in 2013, “When I make an album, I tire of it pretty quickly … By the time one album comes out, I’m already tired of listening to it and on to the next.” It’s an unscratchable itch.
That’s correct. They have the demos right now for the next one, and he’s thinking about the one after that, I guarantee it.
We’re self-sufficient financially, and we do well. There’s no great worry about that. When there’s no expectation by the industry or any other outside influence, then it boils down to him reminding himself of the dream that he gets to live every day — the dream he had when he was 14 years old, to be a songwriter, a creative artist, a rock star.
Whatever you want to call it, he gets to do these things that he loves to do on a daily basis. Or he could choose not to as well, right? It’s whatever he feels like doing.
Didn’t Robert used to create album covers for fictitious bands and then write and record the songs he imagined they’d make?
Yeah, he started with album art — the collages, and that’s where I think a lot of the collage inspiration came from. He didn’t have to draw or paint; he took other things, repurposed them, and put them together.
That’s how his brain works with music, too. If you think about everybody that has influenced him, and it’s a broad range — we’ve got six P’s [pop, psychedelic, prog, punk, power pop, and post-punk] — that filter into his makeup of a musician, and he’s putting pieces and parts of that stuff together.
You’ve got a Yes-sounding song right before a Black Sabbath-sounding song. You have the Beatles; you have Devo. All these bands that have influenced him over the years come together like a collage.
Speaking of an average GBV enjoyer: suppose they hear “Weed King” [from 1992’s Propeller] for the first time. “What does ‘Long live Rockathon’ mean?” they ask. Your response? Because it’s a complicated story.
It’s been a lot of different things. If you’d like to go back in time for a bit, and start toward the beginning:
I discovered Guided by Voices in probably the beginning of 1994. I saw them open for Pavement in Cincinnati. I didn’t know who they were. My buddy, Kevin Poindexter, who works with us at Rockathon, looked at me: “These are the guys from Dayton.” No offense to the lovely Pavement gentlemen, but GBV blew them off the stage that night. Because the energy of ‘94 GBV was like, Holy shit. They’re letting us do this live. Just absolutely on fire, and Pavement was not that kind of band that night.
So, anyway, I got hooked on that — like, What’s going on? We went and got this cassette tape somebody made for us, and we went fake camping, where you take your car down to the river and drink beer. “Gold Star for Robot Boy” got stuck in our heads; we played it, like 20 times.
Coming home, we listened to Propeller on the way to the record store to buy everything we could. “Weed King” comes on — “Long live Rockathon.” We were like, “OK, what is this? A record label? A company?”
First off, it was a record label that he made up, because that’s what he did with record label names. But then, also, in ‘95, we met Pete Jamison. He was at the bar downtown, by UD [University of Dayton], where everybody hung out. I went over to Rockathon — then a space in the east side of Dayton, where Pete did the merchandise and hand-screened the shirts. He played us Alien Lanes months before it came out.
So, I started helping out at Rockathon, and that’s how far back I go — ‘95. That’s how I got to meet Bob.
But Pete was involved before ‘95.
He was the “Manager for Life,” and basically, he took out a loan and helped Bob finance — to make one of the albums that [then-bassist] Greg [Demos] ended up sending to Scat, which is kind of what kicked everything off.
Today, Rockathon is the space and operational side of Guided by Voices, Inc. We do all the shipping to all the people that order from us directly. Most of our stuff goes to Revolver, into distribution in stores and online and everything else. But we do 5,000 to 6,000 mail-order packages a year.
What’s the difference between Rockathon and the Factory of Raw Essentials?
[Laughs.] You also have the Fading Captain Series.
I’ve been at this for a little bit, and even I’m confused.
Let me draw an organizational chart and send it to you.
So, a lot of how things have occurred are based upon how the finances of it work — how the splits work. [In the ’90s], Bob was on Matador, and then he was between labels — Matador and TVT.
A lot of transition in the band, too.
That original, “classic” lineup has different changes in and out; we all know that story well. Some things happened, and Bob decided to use the Cobra Verde guys as the backing band. They did [1997’s] Mag Earwhig!, and then Bob kept [guitarist] Doug [Gillard] on in the lineup, and went from there. There were different drummers at the time — Jimmy Mac [Jim Macpherson], Jon McCann.
In that gap, Bob called me and said, “Hey, I want to put out this album. We’ll just do 500 vinyl. Do you want to do it with me?” I’m blown away. This is the first thing he really asked me to do, and I helped with a lot. He said, “I want to do this with you.” I’m like, “OK.”
He calls back 20 minutes later: “Hey, I was thinking about this: I think we should do 1,000. Do you think that’s probably the right amount? I want to make it limited. It’s going to be called the Fading Captain Series, but we’re only going to put out one album — thus the joke.” I was like “OK, Bob. That’s great. That’s awesome.” And I was pacing around my house, excited as could be, wondering how I got to do this.
Fifteen minutes later, he calls again: “I’m thinking we should do CDs, too. It’s gonna be called Kid Marine.”
So, Kid Marine comes out [in 1999 via Fading Captain Series], does great, and then we just kept going. [That year], he did the side project with Doug Gillard [Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department], and Lexo and the Leapers and things like that. The Fading Captain Series became this way to do the secondary stuff, in his mind.
We did the first Suitcase album [2000’s Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft]. TVT didn’t have access or ownership of it, so we put out Suitcase with 100 songs, and then it just kept going from there.
He codified GBV, Inc., and then GBV returned with its “so-called classic lineup” six years later, in 2010. He must have known the band would return… right?
No, I don’t think that’s the case. Because Half Smiles of the Decomposed came out in 2004, and then that New Year’s Eve, GBV played their last show.
Then, Bob had some years with Merge putting out solo albums — the double album From a Compound Eye in 2006, followed by Normal Happiness later than year — and in 2007, Standard Gargoyle Decisions and Coast to Coast Carpet of Love.
With From a Compound Eye, he made a statement of, No, I’m going fully on my own. I’m doing it as a double album, and I’m going to tour as Robert Pollard. His intention was always to retire Guided by Voices.
From a Compound Eye is one of his most important albums.
And he waited. When he played that final show, he was sitting on From a Compound Eye, but he waited that time to let everything rest and breathe. Still, before its release, that album was circulating among family, friends, and fans, and he knew people were shitting. It was a statement, for sure.
Around the time of his run of albums on Merge, Bob decided to start up GBV, Inc. as a different organizational structure. On that front, he partnered with Rich Turiel — his manager David Newgarden, and some other people. But the core was Rich and him. Rich was doing the art and shipping records. They kicked it off with 2008’s Weatherman and Skin Goddess and Robert Pollard is Off to Business. That was GBVi1 and GBVi2.
So, there were different things for different reasons. Different labels for different financial structures, different organizations based on how he was doing the splits with everybody involved. It’s not a typical record label artist kind of situation here. It’s a partnership — but with a CEO, and then everybody else supporting that CEO.
I wonder what compelled him to choose this fully independent path — whether from the countless, predatory money-men in rock history, or just in his life.
I can’t tell you; you’ll have to ask him. But when people ask about Bob, I say — listen, he was married and had two kids. He had a job for 14 years. He was going toward having a great pension — a Dayton teacher’s retirement. And an opportunity came, and I’m not sure if I would have had the balls or confidence to do it.
I don’t know if there was ever an option for him to turn that down — to quit teaching and go and be a musician full time. I mean, you can read that in the books, man — there were a lot of people who were not very supportive. Like, “What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? You’re 36 years old!”
So, for him to do that — when he realized, I can make a living doing this, and a better living than even when I was teaching, and I could do the thing that I love, my dream — everything that’s come after is gravy. But he’s put together a structure that works.
He’s turned things down — that kind of predatory thing. And he’s been in situations where he could have done more — sold out, or whatever. And he’s not going to sacrifice his integrity, and he never has.
Back in the day, did journalists not treat Robert right?
I don’t think it’s as much that, because they were indie darlings, right? They were the inventors and pioneers of lo-fi rock. The number one indie rock album of all time is Bee Thousand. They were on all these lists of the top albums of the year. Spin, Rolling Stone covered them.
If I remember correctly, I got interviewed for Suitcase by The New York Times. I was shitting — like, what? Why do you care what I think?
But back then, what I think it became over time, Morgan, is this — and Bob may or may not tell you this, but the fans will tell you this. It became very lazy. “Ex-schoolteacher,” “heavy drinker,” “massively prolific.” “High energy,” “high kick.” “Robert Pollard drinks tequila on stage, plays 53 songs, it was unbelievable,” whatever. “Hey, Bob, what kind of tequila do you like?”
Pretty hokey.
Not to pick on anybody, but so many of these interviews did not get to the crux of what was going on. It was lazy.
I don’t want to pretend to be above any fan. That’s what first hooked me in 2010 or ‘11, when I first discovered GBV. But as interesting as it is, it’s the thinnest possible layer.
“Ex-schoolteacher” is great, you know? But how about the rest of the story that I shared earlier, which is the courage to walk away from a job where I’m sure he had tenure, or the equivalent of it.
He was able to have that job for the rest of his career and retire with great benefits. And he turned away from that guarantee to something that we all know is absolutely zero guarantee. That’s the interesting part of “ex-schoolteacher.”
Andrew W.K. said in 2013: “You could spend years enjoying just one of his albums, yet he’s already released four albums this year alone.”
Well, that’s exactly right. That’s the second part. “He’s so prolific. He writes so many songs.”
OK, but that’s thin and lazy. Why don’t you get to the rest of it? Like, holy shit, all of a sudden, there’s a song called “Climbing a Ramp” from an album that came out a few years ago [2022’s Crystal Nuns Cathedral], and it blows peoples’ minds!
It’s the quality of all the different types of songs that he writes. There’s been the heaviest shit possible — like two of my favorites recently, Sweating the Plague and Tremblers and Goggles by Rank. Heavier, proggier albums. I’m a Rush fan.
“Ego Central High” is nice and heavy.
Oh, yes. So, you have that stuff, and then you have songs that are incredibly sugary and poppy, like [Thick Rich and Delicious single] “(You Can’t Go Back to) Oxford Talawanda.” That’s the same songwriter and same band within a few years of each other. There’s stuff on the same album that you can’t believe in the same songwriter, because of the range of it — all of those six P’s.
When he did [2016’s] Please Be Honest, that was when the “classic lineup” reunion era was coming to an end. He went in the studio [Cyberteknics in Dayton] and played everything on it. I mean, that is a statement, right?
If Please Be Honest isn’t in my top five, it’s in my top three. To me, it’s like Robert slammed his fist on a big red reset button. The title says it all.
You are absolutely correct. He had solo albums if he wanted to do them. But with this particular one, why wasn’t it a Robert Pollard album? It’s because HE IS GBV.
Joe Patterson told me it was almost a Teenage Guitar album. But given the timing, the fact he basically declared, “No, this is Guided by fucking Voices” — that’s the coolest thing in the world.
I’m gonna show you something real quick.
So, let’s go backwards in time again. In ‘95, ‘96, when I got into this and started going over to the Monument Club — do you know what that is?
Robert’s old drinking club.
Things were starting to hit. I was helping out more at Rockathon — the old, Pete Jamison [version of] Rockathon. Then he asked me to do the Fading Captain Series. Now, we’re into ‘98, ‘99, pushing 2000, when they went to New York and recorded Do the Collapse. They did a festival, and the guy who was going to do the cover photography for Speak Kindly couldn’t show up.
Bob said, “Do you have a camera?” I’m like, “Yeah, [my wife] Missy’s got one.” “Well, get the camera, buy 10 rolls of film, and just show up and start taking pictures of everything. We’ll figure something out.”
So, I got a stack of pictures — and you never know what Bob’s going to like, right? I said, “You’re not gonna like those. It’s just junk.” He’s like, “Don’t ever leave something out.” One of those pictures ended up being the back cover. And I have the front photo right here.
That was one of the first times he was actually on the cover since, I think, [GBV’s second album, 1987’s Sandbox].
Wow.
Heed said this recently. He’s been fighting cancer, but he’s back. While shipping orders, he was like, “We don’t have to do this. We get to do this. We get to part of this.” I love that he said that, because that’s how I feel all the time.
Tell me about Rockathon HQ.
It’s a 100-plus-year-old building. We moved about 10 years ago to downtown Dayton, when it was way down. It’s this old cement factory building — concrete to the core. Our space has maybe 12-foot ceilings — about 2,000 square feet.
You would think the acoustics would be dogshit, right? There’s no way it would sound good in there. But when they practiced years ago, Bob was like, “Holy shit. This is my favorite place to practice.” Because of all the boxes and shirts that used to be in there, and everything else, the acoustics are so good.
At times, Bob will do vocals in there. Rip Van Winkle recorded there. So, beyond it being a distribution site — for lack of a better way to put it — and band headquarters, it’s also a fantastic place to record.
What would you like to see out there more about this band? What would you like to see on this Substack?
I don’t know where this comes into play, but one of the things we’ve been talking about recently is that there are, like, seven Guided by Voices. There are some people on Facebook or whatever who are always going to [champion] the “classic lineup” — “I don’t like the new stuff,” and all that.
I love all the lineups. They’re all great in their own way. But this one blows the others out of the water. It’s not even close.
So, this is my point. I don’t know how we carve this up, but Devil Between My Toes, Same Place the Fly Got Smashed — that’s kind of an era, right? Then, Propeller, Vampire, Bee Thousand are right in there — King Shit counts — which leads to Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes. There are at least two versions of Guided by Voices in those albums in that timeframe — ‘86 to ‘96.
Then, Mag Earwhig, ‘97, could be its own thing, but then it really leads into Do the Collapse, Isolation Drills, Universal Truths, with different lineups leading through Half Smiles. Then you have the “classic lineup” reunion — that’s four. Then you’ve got Please Be Honest, which could be five on its own, and then this stretch of 12, 16 albums, whatever it is.
So, there’s the overall, encompassing career of Robert Pollard — who is Guided by Voices, right? Everybody contributes. People are part of it, and they’ve come in and out. But Guided by Voices is Robert Pollard, and it’s been this 40-plus-year thing. It’s not one thing.
I think he would argue that he should have called Boston Spaceships Guided by Voices.
Why?
A good friend of mine, Todd, is a fan, but not a super-fan. The other day, he was like, “Give me one side project I need to go listen to.” Which is an impossibility for people like us, to answer that question.
I guess it depends on what you’re after. But for pure meat on the bone, I’d say Circus Devils.
No, not like one side project. One album.
Oh, man.
I know. It’s impossible. So, I was talking to Bob about this. He was like, “What did you tell him?” "I said, “I would put Let it Beard on there for sure.” He’s like, “But Boston Spaceships wasn’t a side project. Because that was the main thing I was doing at the time.”
I’ve read him saying that.
So, all this history — the 125 albums, all of the singles, everything — and even with something like that, he’s thoughtful about it.
You’re hitting on something there. He can be funny and whimsical and free with his music, but he’s never careless about it. Thirty years of music criticism has painted him as some sort of outsider artist, or savant…
"Needs an editor.” That was always the one all the fans hated. Screw you. You need an editor for writing that bullshit to begin with. When writers, critics, or even some fans say that… what unbelievable arrogance.
Circling back to how this conversation started, he makes music for himself. He does it for his 14-year-old self, his 22-year-old self. This is who he has been, and the things he’s gotten to experience, and the music he’s loved all the way through his life.
It’s like he can’t wait to hear the next one.
He makes it for all those versions of Robert Pollard, and he’s got to put it out so that he can hear it. It’s in his brain. It’s got to go somewhere.
We didn’t talk about [GBV’s annual fan convention in Dayton] Heedfest. The 13th iteration happened last summer.
This thing is singular in the world, because no other band is going to hang out the whole time and just be there. People will come up to me that have never been there, and they go “Bob’s… just… right there? And there’s [drummer] Kevin [March] and Doug?” Like, yeah, we told you. “Are you an asshole? No? Then you’re welcome to come and go talk to them.”
Those are the printed rules. “Love Bob. No assholes.”
And even if you don’t love Bob! Even if you’re just GBV-curious and you’re not an asshole, you’re welcome too. We’ve had people who are family — people who come for their wife or husband or kid — show up, and they go, “This is the greatest frickin’ thing in the world.”
Maybe I could come document it sometime.
It’s been offered, and some people have wanted to do it, and we basically said no. The reason is, it’ll get ruined.
Oh, that’s true.
Yeah, there’s enough video documentation of it in different places, that if we wanted to tell the story after it’s done, we could.
I don’t know if it costs money; it would make total sense if it did. But at the same time, you don’t want to monetize the experience in a way that lessens it.
Like, if the band plays, we used to do things where we would charge. But it was a bus, and all the food and beer you could drink, and it would take you out to a site, and we’d rent the PA and the place, and these cover bands would play, and it was just an all-day picnic. Then, other times, GBV would play shows, and we would charge for that.
But I’ve never made a penny off organizing it for 13 years now. We used to pay to go. Bob would pay to go to Heedfest. Everybody paid. That was the rule. It was like a backyard barbecue — and when you go to a backyard barbecue with your buddies or family, what do you do? You’ve got to bring something. Well, not everybody can bring potato salad and a 12-pack, so we just took care of all that shit, and everybody paid.
Is that how you still do it?
Well, the way we do it now is that we’re at clubs — different venues. So, they have the food, they have the beer, whatever you want to drink — they just take care of it themselves.
All the bands that show up pay for their own travel. They don’t get paid anything to play. They pay for their hotels, all their food. One year, GBV took the money that they would get paid normally for a show, and donated it. The fans came together and donated things that got auctioned off, and also threw in extra money. We donated $30,000 back to Dayton, because it was the year of the tornado and the shooting in the Oregon District.
So, the GBV fans not only paid money to come to Heedfest for hotels and food and travel and planes and everything else — but then, on top of it, we [gave back] to Dayton.
All the restaurants and bars come to us. And they’re like, “Your fans are awesome, man. They tip great.” They’re making profits. It brings real financial impact to the city when you have hundreds of people coming in from out of town.
We — Bob, the band — have never profited from Heedfest. That’s why it can’t be replicated.
I want to come.
Dude, show up! Are you an asshole?
No, I’m pretty nice.
OK, then you’re invited. And you can print that. That’s the last line.
I would love to see album shows ; Circus Devils show at Heedfest. I would be there, for sures!! Dayton is an interesting place. The Air and Space Museum is reason enough to see!!
Excited Ones: best Substack