You could say that it’s an unlikely story. This prolific Ohio band are quietly working away, making home recordings and releasing limited edition records. Very gradually their following starts to grow, and earlier this year they moved from obscure indie Scat records to ‘big-indie-with-proper-distribution’ Matador. They left behind a string of one-off singles and tapes as well as ten full length albums, the best of which are now available as a Scat box set, imaginatively titled "Box". It is the most accessible and least frustrating introduction to their back catalogue which, let’s face it, nobody round here knows anything about pre-’Vampire on Titus’. They really started to compete with the likes of Pavement and Sonic Youth -they share a management company with the latter - with the release of last year’s ‘Bee Thousand’ (for what it’s worth, voted no4 album in the ‘94 Weedbus Reader’s Poll). They followed that with this summer’s 28 song album ‘Alien Lanes’, a strange and thrilling collection which some have said is GBV’s ‘White Album’. There is lots of Beatles in there, particularly in the melodies/ harmonies, but they rub shoulders with an excessively hissy lo-fi "production", as well as bits of pyschedelia, the Fall and other odd guitar bands. It is a wonderful record.
With that behind them, the band set off for their first ever British tour, and I was lucky enough to grab a few words with vocalist/ songwriter Tobin Sprout (mainman Robert Pollard had to rest his voice) on the day of their first UK gig at Sheffield Leadmill.
So why has it taken the band so long to get over here?
"We never really had the budget to do it with Scat, and Matador offered the budget to us and seemed to think it would be a great idea. As far as touring goes, I think we’re not real thrilled about being away for more than two weeks at a time! We’ve been a long time in Europe and I think we’re about ready to go home - but seriously, we are looking forward to the English dates."
Have you been in the band since it started?
"Pretty much. I had a band previous to Guided By Voices and that’s how I met Bob (Pollard). We played probably the only club in Dayton, Ohio that let people play their own music and Bob used to come in there and talk to me and eventually recruited me for the band. I joined for a while, and then left for about three years, coming back around the time of ‘Propeller’."
What were your early ambitions as a band? Did you ever think that it would come to the sort of acclaim you receive now?
"I was hoping that it would get to a level with Scat records where we had somebody that would put the records out for us, and we could break even and still be able to make records. Until the time we did the New Music Seminar in New York about two years ago we were still largely unknown. from that point on it just kind of bloomed."
Did you all have proper jobs while you were making the early albums?
"Yeah. I had always painted. Six or seven years ago I started painting - oil paintings - and I was making a living at that. But as soon as the band started taking off was right at the point where I was getting married and we had a baby, and it was just a whirlwind. Right now I’m just kind of catching my breath."
Did you ever think you would have such a huge back catalogue with the ‘Box’ coming out on Scat, as well as all the one-off singles and so on?
"Well I guess if you’re just starting to get into it I guess it is pretty frustrating! How do you figure out which ones to buy? It’s just built up from doing it for so long, and we’ve got two EPs coming out in the next few months and then an album next Spring. Matador would like us to hold off for a while. We’ve already got all of those finished and we’re actually working on the album after. We like to stay ahead of the game!"
You are noted for being prolific aren’t you! Is the next album (the one which went on to be 'Under the Bushes Under the Stars') the one you’ve done with Kim Deal?
"She produced quite a few of the songs in Memphis, and before that I guess Steve Albini had heard this live bootleg and was real fired up about it and he approached us to come to Chicago and do some songs. He’s a nice guy - from what you hear I was a bit wary - but he’s a good guy to work with."
Is it different to ‘Alien Lanes’? People who know all your work have said that you seem to be getting more lo-fi and the songs are getting shorter.
"It seems to me that it’s kind of gone full circle with this forthcoming album. The EPs are pretty much half and half, a couple of songs done in the big studio, and a couple done on four track. As far as the LP goes, it seems like it’s getting back to what we did on ‘Propeller’ when there were big studio productions and bitty four track stuff. Oh, and the songs are longer, like they are on ‘Propeller’."
Are you always trying to move the music along a bit?
"I think that subconsciously we’re always trying to do something different, but we do rely on what we’ve done before as far as the techniques of recording go. I think we’ll always be trying to improve things."
Do you think that you will continue to be as prolific the bigger you get? If you tour more it is going to eat into recording/ writing time.
"It seems like we’re doing a lot more touring than I thought we would have been. It’s because of that , we’ve now got more time to write lyrics, and when you get home you can get down to the music. I think we’re so far ahead that we can afford to lay off a little bit."
Was it ever hard for the band to keep going over the years - was there any point where you thought you would have a break?
"Yeah, or thought that we would quit! That happens on every album. Bob would come in and say ‘Well that’s it - this is the last album’, and I’d say ‘Yeah, right’ and a week later he would be back with about ten songs, wanting to record them right away!"
Is the old story true - the one about Robert writing a lot of songs when he was really young and collecting them all in a book and giving it a name, pretending it was a album?
"Yeah. That was before he could play an instrument. He used to have a whole box full of stuff and I think he ended up throwing most of it away which was a real shame. I couldn’t believe it. He would have all the lyrics in them written out by hand and they would open up and have cardboard albums inside with labels. He would just think of things the whole way through. He kept a lot of the songs. He couldn’t play guitar at the time, so he kept them in his head and then eventually when he started playing he could put them down. Songs like ‘Weed King’ and ‘Drive My Car’ are very old and came out of that process."
He is the main songwriter - I suppose that no-one else can keep up!
"Yeah I know. It’s real frustrating cos I’ll come in with one song and he’ll have a whole album written, so it’s like ‘oh, I guess we can slot yours in here!’ I feel pretty lucky though, I was doing art for so long that to get even one song on the album was great."
What inspires you to keep on going?
"We love music. We always have done, I think it’s what put the band together in the first place."
Are your influences quite mainstream? Some of your harmonies make you more accessible than a lot of the other bands on Matador.
"I think it seems to be mainstream as regards to what we do. As far as influences go, we listen to all sorts, and I think our songs like ‘Devil Between My Toes’ are pretty experimental, the ‘Vampire on Titus’ album as well. I think there are times when we get crazy, and times when we just like straightforward sunny pop songs!"
