Steve Hopkins has been part of Robert Pollard’s inner circle for years —through Heedfest, the Monument Club, and beyond. And during the reunion of Guided by Voices’ 2010–2014 “so-called classic lineup” — Pollard’s phrase — he became an integral part of their operation.
That lineup, most associated with 1994’s Bee Thousand, 1995’s Alien Lanes, and 1996’s Under the Bushes Under the Stars, consisted of Pollard, guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell, bassist Greg Demos, and drummer Kevin Fennell — later replaced by Kevin March, who remains in the current incarnation of the band.
In Hopkins’ living room, Pollard recorded “So High” — sampled at the top of “Doughnut for a Snowman” on 2012’s Let’s Go Eat the Factory and featured in full as a B-side. The drum-machine pattern for “Keep It in Motion” — from its follow-up that year, Class Clown Spots a UFO, and whose tenacious title became something of a band mantra — is his.
As the reunited lineup hit its stride on the road, Hopkins hauled gear and handled logistics and served as the band’s roadie. Yet the same time, Hopkins’ personal life was dramatically shifting.
Adopted at birth, he met his biological family for the first time in 2012 and later changed his last name accordingly. In Dayton, he spent years as a full-time caregiver — eventually returning to social work, serving homeless and at-risk veterans.
Through all of this, he stayed involved in whatever the band needed to — yes — keep it in motion. Below, Hopkins goes deep on how he became part of the operation during one of Pollard and GBV’s most intensive periods.
GBV’s most recent album, Thick Rich and Delicious, was released October 31. Click here to order.
How’s it going, Steve? Sorry you had to cancel your Thanksgiving plans and stay home.
Well, that’s the thing, you know? It’s one of the disadvantages of [my family and I living where we do]. I live in Dayton, and they live up a little north of Chicago.
That’s part of my journey. That’s my biological family. I was adopted at birth, and I met them in 2012, and my biological parents got married three years after I was born and had three more children. So, oh my god, it was weird, because we’re all on the same wavelength. Like, completely on the same wavelength.
If you ask me about nature vs. nurture — this might be a little too crude for some people, but you can raise a pug with Whippets, but it’s still going to be a pug. I never quite fit in completely with either my adopted parents’ families or step-families, but with my biological family, it was just instant.
My brother and I have eerily similar mannerisms. It was kind of an unnerving thing to see people with familial resemblances for the first time when you’re almost 38.
That’s why I went from MacDougall to Hopkins. If you look on Let’s Go Eat the Factory, the “So High” song — tagged on to “Doughnut for a Snowman” — Bob did that in my living room. His recorder and guitar were perfectly in tune, so he called me up and goes, “It’s in tune. Can we record this?”
So, I had to set up a studio real quickly because I was doing stuff on a computer; I knew he was going to want to hear it, so I had to set it up into my stereo system and whatnot. But it was a fun little recording session.
Take us back to your beginnings with Robert Pollard and GBV.
I’d actually met everybody at the inaugural Heedfest. It was kind of a weird thing, because I’d seen Guided by Voices in 1995 at the University of Dayton pub, but it was definitely a frat boy crowd. I know it’s a little crazy at Guided by Voices shows, but it just felt a little more like a frat boy vibe than a typical GBV crowd vibe. Like, there were light fixtures getting destroyed and whatnot.
At the time, the thing that got my attention was because I heard of Guided by Voices, obviously, being in Dayton. But the opening act was called Real Lulu, and [the Breeders’, later GBV’s] Jim Macpherson was on drums. This was not long after Last Splash. I was like, Is that Jim Macpherson on drums? I just did not expect to see that at UD Pub.
The other thing that really stood out to me was looking at the band and thinking that none of them belonged in the same room together, let alone the same stage. Jim Greer was on bass, and I think that was [Craig] “Craig-O” [Nichols]’ first show on drums.
Then, the next time I saw Bob was at Bogart’s [in Cincinnati] in 2002. I knew they’d had some personnel changes and whatnot through the years. I went thinking I’d see some friends who were really into GBV at the show, namely Jason Short of Rip Van Winkle and Kyle Melton of Smug Brothers, who were in a band called Montgomery Greene at the time, but they didn’t go.
But Bob came out with a bottle of beer and a cigarette in one hand, microphone in the other. He chugs a little beer, takes a puff off the cigarette, and goes, “We are the fourth greatest band in the world. The first greatest band is Pearl Jam. The second greatest band is Radiohead. The third greatest band is R.E.M., and we’re number four. Fuck you, Foo Fighters! We’re number four!”
At that point, I may have known “Glad Girls.” The only song I absolutely knew was [the Beatles’] “A Hard Day’s Night,” and Bob’s sister Debbie came up on stage and sang with them.
But the thing that got my attention beyond the music — just being blown away by how great it was, and how energetic the crowd was — was that there were were a bunch of people on the side of the stage — the old Monument Club’s friends and family and stuff like that — and I’m like, That’s where I really want to be — on the side of the stage. I want to be having as much fun as these people are.
I saw a $1 bill stomped on and doused with beer and whatnot, and I put it in a little Ziploc and kept it as a souvenir. I was like, I just want to look at that and remember that was a fun night and I had a good time. And I still have it.
I saw Guided by Voices one more time at the Foundry in Dayton, and then I saw Bob at Southgate House [in Newport, Kentucky, in 2007]. That was his solo band, and it was memorable to me because [drummer] Jon Wurster [also of Superchunk and the Mountain Goats] caught a can of Foster’s with his face during the set.
That’s a giant can.
Yeah, no, it clocked him right in the eye. The thing that impressed me was, he only missed, like, a measure, and he got right back into the song and finished the song. That blew me away.
What brought you to that next level of fandom?
Well, what happened was, in 2005, I had a skin reaction to a TB test, meaning I’d tested positive for TB exposure. I had to get a lung X-ray and then was put on this brutal medication called Isoniazid. It’s a nine-month medication, and the dietary restrictions are absolutely brutal.
At the same time, I was working at one of my agency’s satellite offices where the elevator rarely worked, so I had to take the stairs. It was just a flight or two, but I was constantly going up and down the stairs. So, between the dietary restrictions and using the stairs — in March of 2005, I think I weighed about 310; by July of 2006, I weighed about 180. A friend of mine said, “Whoa, you lost a whole teenager.”
[GBV layout designer] Joe [Patterson] took this photo a few weeks ago. Bob looked at me, said “Steve’s back, all skinny and shit,” and sang [from Under the Bushes Under the Stars’ “Big Boring Wedding”]:
Pass the word
The chicks are back
The chicks are back, yeah
The chicks are back
So, all of a sudden, I had energy and whatnot, and the stuff I’d been into at the time just wasn’t cutting it for me. Music-wise, I’d go to a show — and shows that I would have loved to go to, all of a sudden, I was going to, and I was bored out of my mind. I’m like, What the hell didn’t bore you? And I was like, Guided by Voices.
So, that’s what the initial attraction was. And then I really started delving into it a bit more and went down that rabbit hole. I went on the Disarm the Settlers message board in 2007 to find out more. There was event happening called Heedfest, which was the inaugural Heedfest. I was hesitant about going because I thought I was too new of a fan, since I only had 15 albums!
The cutoff date to sign up happened to be my birthday, June 20. I’m like, “Should I? Shouldn’t I?” And my mom took me out to [old-school Dayton steakhouse] the Pine Club. And after the Pine Club, I was like, “Yeah, we’re doing it.”
And then I got there — and as I’m pulling in, I realize I don’t know anybody at all. As it turned out, though, there were a couple of friends of Bob and [his wife] Sarah [Zade-Pollard]’s who I knew professionally. Of course, I was three sheets to the wind at that point. I’m like, “Oh, no, oh, no!” They’re like, “Don’t worry. This is Heedfest.” A “what happens here stays here” kind of thing.
I’d already known [then-GBV drummer] Kevin Fennell. He wasn’t there, but I knew him professionally. I had worked with him for a little bit, but I didn’t realize he was Kevin Fennell from Guided by Voices. I didn’t put the two together until I watched Watch Me Jumpstart. And that was actually the first conversation I had with Bob.
I don’t want to get too off track. But what industry were you in then, and which one are you in now?
In both cases, social work.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Well, right now, I’m working for a program that helps out veterans who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, and helping them secure or maintain housing. At the time of the first Heedfest, I was actually working as a case manager at a homeless shelter.
Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan?
It’s across the board. I’ve had guys in the past who were Korean War. I’m still brand new at my current job right now. I’ve only been there for about five weeks, but I’ve already worked with a couple of Vietnam vets. Veterans and/or the homeless have been my dream populations to serve.
What brought you to your new job?
Well, that’s a whole story. I’ve had an interesting year. I was out of the workforce for a long, long time — about 13 years — and most of it was because I was my mom’s caregiver. I spent five or six years of the last eleven of her life as her live-in caregiver. I developed some health issues that became really apparent when we decided to sell her house.
The idea was that my mother, then-girlfriend, and I would share a house, which actually was the case for a little over a year. We moved to this neighborhood in Dayton called Patterson Park, which has a lot of amenities that gave my mother, who was no longer able to drive, a lot more independence.
It was a very chaotic situation, because I was dealing with a multiple stroke survivor and I was dealing with what turned out to be a hereditary autoimmune disorder. The medications I was being put on were just brutal — 60 milligrams of prednisone, which, if you don’t know, can make you pretty much insane. It’s like those little squiggly cartoons, where they’ve been hit over the head: Something’s not right.
That can lead to a vicious cycle in close quarters.
Yeah, and on top of that, there were two cats and a dog. Although the cats were pretty much segregated from everybody, it was just a chaotic situation.
I burned out as a caregiver, and my mom moved to senior housing. That was in January of 2020, and all of a sudden, you have this global pandemic. In August of that year, she broke her hip, they gave her a shot of fentanyl, and she had another stroke.
Holy shit.
Yeah, it was a fentanyl-induced stroke. My mom never really handled pain medication very well. So, she spent six months in a nursing home learning how to swallow and speak more clearly.
After six months, we were able to get her into assisted living, and she smarted smoking again — a lot, like she was making up for lost time — and she died 28 days later.
I’m so sorry.
Well, on the upside, I took the first-month-free promotion, so it didn’t cost us anything. I guess you could say we got our money’s worth.
Take us back to GBV.
This is going someplace. My mom passed away towards the end of the pandemic, before I could get vaccinated. After we got her ashes scattered, I just kind of shut down for a few years and drifted away from the band a bit.
And then I got shingles and was put on this medication called Lyrica, which turned me into a zombie for a year. The enormity of everything just really played with my head, and I just kind of became a recluse, to the point where my ex left at the end of this past February.
However, I was kind of thawing out by that point and reconnected with various friends. I also dealt with a successful malignant melanoma extraction. In July, I went to see Park Doing play at Belmont Billiards [in Dayton], and realized I had a green light to get in touch with Bob.
Two weeks later, my ex blindsided me with news that she had eloped (I didn’t even know she was dating), which was sort of the icebreaker I needed to contact Sarah.
Anyway, Bob had me meet at Wings [Sports Bar & Grille in Dayton] that day, and it was like no time had passed. It was the craziest thing: he was talking about Mike Campbell [of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers]; a fan got an autograph for Mike Campbell’s book [2025’s Heartbreaker] wearing a GBV shirt, and Mike Campbell said something about wanting to do a record with Bob.
This was on a Monday, and coincidentally, I had tickets to see Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs opening for Blackberry Smoke that Saturday. The big encore set featured both bands and they played “American Girl”, “You Got Lucky”, and “Runnin’ Down A Dream.”
When I was leaving, I was like, Wait a minute, we just saw the real Mike Campbell. Now, let’s see the real Steve again. Let’s get back to how we used to be — when I had a job, lost a shit-ton of weight, and had a little enthusiasm.
That’s how I got the job. I remembered who I was, I remembered that I had more going for me that I’d completely forgotten about, and I remembered what it was that drove me. I decided to maybe believe in myself again.
Incidentally, I’ve actually hung out with Bob more this past four months than I have probably in the last 10 years, which further speaks to that.
You sound like you’re in a good place.
I really am. I’m working in my profession with the population I want. And I have a good excuse to go buy Levi’s and Dockers.
I’m not necessarily a linear type, but this is what I will say about Bob. I was reading through a lot of the other [interviews on your Substack], and I just want to reiterate: Bob has these people who’ve been part of it for decades, myself included — 15, 20, 30 years. And there’s a reason for that. It’s not that we’re always just loyal to him. He’s loyal to us too. If we’re having a moment, he’s there for us. In other words, he’s truly a friend. And he’s a hell of a lot of fun to be around.
When we went up to Toby’s for Let’s Go Eat the Factory, I remember him singing the lyrics to “Chocolate Boy” — and he got through the song, and all of a sudden, he’d just look and crack up a little. He would tell the story about what inspired the song, which was an unfortunate thing [chuckles] a kid falling into a vat of chocolate at the Esther Price factory.
How did you get more closely involved with the band during this period?
So, Matador was having Matador 21 [their 21st anniversary festival] in 2010] and wanted Guided by Voices there. It was at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas, and there were all kinds of Matador acts. There was the big stage for the A-list Matador bands — and then there was another stage for the most B-list ones, and Guided by Voices was picked to be the headliner for it.
Before that came up, that April, Bob decided that he wanted to do his [2010 solo] album Moses on a Snail live, and he wanted to use the little tribute band I had to be his backup band. He said he wanted to be in a tribute band. I’m like, “I don’t think you can be in a tribute band by definition.”
So, we were doing that, and while all that was going on, he decided, “Yeah, I will [play Matador 21]. Let’s get the classic lineup together — Mitch and Toby and Greg and Kevin Fennell, who we couldn’t find right away. It took a little while to find him, but everybody else was on board pretty much instantly.
That was kind of going on in the background when we were doing the Moses rehearsals — which I was happy about, because Bob hadn’t done a show since the last Boston Spaceships show. That last show [in 2008], I fell and busted my forehead. I had to get 13 stitches and spent the night in the hospital. Hey, I walked out with clean underwear. So I was proud of myself on that.
But, yeah, I was not going, I was not going. [Then-tour manager] Rich [Turiel] said, “You have to go! You have to go!” [Decemberists and Boston Spaceships drummer] John Moen was the one who gently talked me into it. So I went. My joke on that was that I was less of an insurance liability if I was part of the entourage than if I was just a fan. So, the next show Bob did, I was in the band — and then the next show after that, I was the roadie for Guided by Voices.
The next weekend after the Moses show, Bob, Mitch, and I, and a few others, were at a bar — it’s no longer there — in Huber Heights. Mitch goes, “Hey, man, could you do us a favor? Would you mind filling in for Toby at rehearsals?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’d totally love doing that!”
That was a fun little thing for me. I went to the first rehearsal, and Mitch comes over — sunglasses on, cigarette half-hanging out his mouth — and he goes, “Son, you’re gonna have to turn up. You’re playing with a real band now.”
And then the whole me-lighting-Mitch’s-cigarette thing, I didn’t know about until they were literally walking on stage in Dallas for the first show of that tour.
What’s the lighting-Mitch’s-cigarette thing?
Oh, I was his cigarette tech — except I was really bad at it, because I don’t smoke.
You’ve gotta cover it with your palm.
Yeah, yeah. So, the next show in Austin, we’re all standing behind the band, and Sarah’s showing me how to light a cigarette. She’s like, “No, Steve, you do it like this.” There were things that weren’t maybe discussed, like, “How would you like me to hand the cigarette off to you?” Because one time he put the hot end in his mouth. So, yeah, just little logistical issues.
Were you there when they did “The Unsinkable Fats Domino” on Letterman?
Yes, I was. In fact, Greg had a dog he nicknamed Boo Boo. The whole ride back, Greg was acting like he was on his cell phone: “Boo Boo, Daddy fell on national television.”
That was an honest spill. I don’t think he meant to do that.
No, no, no, he totally didn’t. What happened was, he was wearing his stage boots, but the floor was really slippery. So he was going to do a rock pose, and his foot got out from under him.
His headstock knocks against the floor. He’s so out of tune until the end.
Well, and the best part was, they offered the band a chance to redo it. Bob — in classic Bob fashion — was like, “No, no, that’s good enough.”
To me, that’s one of the mantras of Guided by Voices: warts and all. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be good. If this is what it is, this is what it is. This is what it is.
The classic lineup is the Dayton guys. When I think of the years when they were doing stuff in the basement in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, it was kind of like: instead of having our little bowling team, we have our little music team. Some guys go fishing. We come up with stuff in the basement.
They came up with these ideas of how to push the limits of four-track recording. They would record all the music on one track — do the music in mono — then use the remaining tracks for doing more harmonies. They pushed the limitations of the medium they were using — which, to me, is impressive as hell.
But you get somebody like Doug Gillard, who is an absolute masterclass guitar player — just a mind-blowing guitar player — and he’ll come up with all kinds of crazy stuff. Maybe that gives Bob an outlet to explore a little bit beyond what the other group was able to do.
After Let’s Go Eat the Factory, there was Class Clown Spots a UFO.
Class Clown was a lot of fun. That’s a really great record. In the song itself — the title track — Bob was stressing out for three weeks that it was going to take forever to record it, and they did it in, like, a take.
And I want to say that “Blue Babbleships Bay” was done on that session. We were there for maybe five hours, and the two songs combined took a quarter of the time. And then there were all kinds of overdubs and stuff, like Toby’s little trumpet-sound keyboard on “Class Clown.” The whole song was finished by the time we left.
So, then, we went to the sports bar across from the hotel and had a fabulous night. A rough morning the next day, but a fabulous night.
Check this out: “Keep it in Motion” [from Class Clown Spots a UFO]: that was my drum machine, and I actually found the drum pattern to use on that. Bob was like, “Hey, man, bring your toys” — musical equipment — “and see what we can use on the record.”
The first studio thing I ever did with Bob was [his 2011 solo album] Space City Kicks, and that’s my red Telecaster on the cover of the album. I still have that guitar. It’s for sale, technically, but only because my midlife crisis involved buying a shit-ton of guitars.
I was with the Space City Kicks project from its very inception. I was at Wings with Bob when [Ricked Wicky and ex-GBV guitarist] Nick Mitchell, who was playing covers there, gave him the songbook with all the songs that he knows — the request book. Bob saw “Something” by the Beatles, and then “Strawberry Fields Forever.” So, that became “Something Strawberry.”
There’s a song on Strut of Kings called “Dear Onion.” “Dear Prudence” and “Glass Onion” are the second and third tracks on The White Album.
It could be. It could be. I mean, that’s how Bob works. I would say Bob’s thought process on collages maybe is the same with music — taking little ideas here or there and making them into something completely new.
On the song “I Want to Be Your Man in the Moon,” he was playing these chords, and I was like, “This sounds like it should be the Who — bigger, a lot more jangly.” I had this little compressor pedal called a JangleBox. I was like, “Guys, could we just humor me on this one thing?
And they did — and all of a sudden, Bob played the chords, and it was like, Yeah, that’s how it should sound. That’s what I like about Bob. He will listen to ideas, no matter how silly or trivial they might sound. And the result at the end is, you know — it pays off.
Were you around for the ensuing records? The Bears for Lunch, English Little League?
I was not there for The Bears for Lunch. That’s around the time I was meeting my family and stuff. English Little League, I was there. That was done in a house in Centerville over a few days. That was interesting for a lot of reasons. Probably not the right ones.
I was in the studio with them when they did the first Ricked Wicky album [2015’s I Sell the Circus]. The Ricked Wicky stuff was going on simultaneously with the last tour with the classic lineup — the Cool Planet tour.
For me, it looked like — you’ve got this one band that knocked out this great album in a weekend. Well, probably more like five days by the time they did the overdubs and whatnot — but the core of the album was done in a weekend.
And you’ve got people who are with the Guided by Voices side of the coin. It’s like, “Are we going to be able to do this album in six weeks?” and not really knowing if we’re going to be there or not. You know, “Are we going to be able to do the songs that I want to do in concert tonight, or not?” It’s like you see one thing struggling and the other thing kind of thriving.
So it’s like: OK, well, Todd [Tobias] doesn’t really do shows. Who do you get to play bass? Well, Mark Shue. And he would have been one of my suggestions from the outset, because we’d seen Mark with Doug several times by that point. Actually, the first time I remember meeting Mark was after the last show of the proper reunion tour in New York City, at Terminal 5.
How about Motivational Jumpsuit?
Park Doing is actually on Motivational Jumpsuit. He’s on “Until Next Time.” There’s a little high harmony at the end. He was kind of singing in the background, I think, asking for forgiveness before asking for permission.
Wasn’t Cool Planet recorded during a polar vortex?
It was cold. It was very cold.
I saw GBV for the first time on that tour, in Santa Cruz, in 2014.
I actually turned 40 on that tour, at the Madison show. This is how the Madison show played out:
We get to Madison, and Bob goes, “Steve, once you load up all the merch and get it all sorted out, you’re done for the night. I want you drinking — good and drunk.”
So, we get there, and I get down to the green room, and they have cheese hats on the wall — because, you know, it’s Wisconsin. Of course they’re going to have the cheese hats. And I just remember looking and saying [to myself] “Under no circumstance whatsoever are you wearing a cheese hat tonight.”
And then I start hitting the Crown Royal and Coke Zero.
So, I’m doing as instructed, from the top of the chain.
At some point, I realized the equipment wasn’t being torn down and whatnot. At that point, Kevin March was on drums, and the drummers would tear down their own stuff, and I would tear down everything else. And I realized that wasn’t happening. So, I started tearing down everything else and loaded up the van.
When we got back to the hotel, we’d heard something may or may not be missing. Park said “I’m gonna have to go back to the club”, and I start panicking and was running up and down the hotel corridors in a blue Superman T-shirt and red running shorts (yes, there were Underoos jokes). Anyway, everything turned out fine.
The next day, in the van, Toby said “Hey, Steve, that was funny when you ran across the stage in the cheese hat last night.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? I didn’t run across the stage in the cheese hat.” He said, “Yeah, you did,” and showed me a video.
I had no memory of it. But I got to thinking: What better way could you have celebrated your 40th birthday?
Thanks for these awesome interviews ❤️
Every story in this Substack has been so engaging, interesting and whole-heartedly unexpected.