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Published on May 16, 2019

To fans of Guided By Voices—or at least of their output of the past twenty years or so—the name Doug Gillard has become synonymous with the massive, often crunchy guitar tones that permeate the solos, licks, and lead fills he’s been providing since joining the band in 1997. His playing has helped define the band’s sound, with his expert guitar playing, occasional lead and backing vocals, and other flourishes such as string and horn parts. Doug was recently kind enough to answer some of my most burning guitar-related questions, regarding how he learns Robert Pollard’s songs, which guitar effects pedals he currently loves, his involvement in the Cash Rivers albums, and more.

GBV Guitar: There’s an aspect of the whole recording process that I find fascinating: Bob records demos of the songs but doesn’t teach you how to play them. Does this ever prove challenging, given his often unconventional guitar techniques?

Doug Gillard: He’ll show me something on tour occasionally if there’s a question, or a part he thinks may be challenging. I know his usual shapes and drones—or can pretty much decipher what they are if it’s a new shape—and replicate them on the rhythm parts on the records for the most part, but also, I have some freedom to transform them and turn parts of chords into fuller chords with the same tonic or root intention. Priority-wise, the leads or solos come secondary to me and aren’t as crucial as getting his design right for each song chordally.

Your writing style on guitar is different from Bob’s, but from having been learning his songs for so long during your time with GBV, have you found any of his guitar habits having an influence on your writing?

I’m not sure. I may have started employing more chords with droning strings as a result, but I already had been doing that a lot since I was 18 or so. If anything, maybe the barre-chord-minus-one move, which is probably one of the most prominent techniques heard in our songs. It’s really one of the best moves. While it’s the same as going from the I to the V, most times it’s a cooler sounding way to go about it. You probably know what I mean, but examples would be “Smothered In Hugs,” “Good Morning Sir,” “Wished I Was A Giant,” etc. If you’d asked what one of my favorite sounding chord shapes Bob has played is, it would be barring one finger across a fret, playing either the top or bottom four strings. It adds an ambiguous quality to the chord base and throws you as a listener a bit in the finished version, and who doesn’t love that? It’s used in the song “Universal Truths And Cycles,” and most recently, “My Dog Surprise” from Warp And Woof.

I remember reading that when recording your guitar solo on “Gonna Never Have To Die” (from Half Smiles Of The Decomposed), you tried to replicate Bob’s original solo from his demo. Are there any other examples of times you’ve tried to emulate his playing style?

There are occasional moments on the demos where there is a very specific breakdown, e.g., a one note thing that repeats in a decelerating rhythm, say, and I’ll try to match that, or sometimes lately, it won’t be me doing it, but we’ll just include parts of his acoustic demo in the recording to achieve that, which also breaks up the recording “-Fi’s” in a nice way.

Of course, I emulate his playing style in the rhythm tracks or opening lines he wrote if the song starts with guitar only.

We all listen to the demos a lot to get the same feel he has in them.

On recent Cash Rivers And The Sinners release Do Not Try To Adjust Your Set I Am The Vertical And The Horizontal, guitarist Harry Covair tackles a wide variety of musical styles. As his music consultant, can you talk a bit about whether all of these different styles came naturally to him, or whether there were any that presented more of a challenge?

As kids, Harry and I grew up with the same countrypolitan things on the radio and TV due to our parents, like Charlie Rich, Lynn Anderson, Buck Owens, Floyd Cramer, Hee Haw, James Burton; later of course post-punk like Stranglers, Lou Reed (spot that one in the album!), classic rock such as—name anybody. It’s really endless—so it was only an extension of what we’d already been jamming on for years behind the scenes. What was most challenging was navigating the orchestration software and how best to integrate strings and horns in both Cash’s material and Guided By Voices. There are guitar and non-guitar songs that other GbV members mentored the Sinners on as well.

That entire album is superb. I don’t think anyone had an idea of what to expect from it, but the playing techniques and guitar tones for each different musical style are dead-on. I consider that to be a reflection on you and the other members of Guided By Voices (including Travis, of course), so congratulations on helping to bring magnificence to such absurdity. Songs like “Voodoo Lady,” “Don’t Mock A Chihuahua,” and “Slide On Sloopy” probably have no right being that good, which is a testament to the musicianship of The Sinners and to you for helping to oversee the project.

Thanks. The music on “Don’t Mock A Chihuahua” was started by and mostly (consulted by) Travis, and I (consulted) the celesta and marimba parts in it. Those are his daughters adding their call and response there. It’s so good. Bob’s/Cash’s lyrics on that one are great poetry too. That one just spilled out of his head, unrehearsed. Actually all of Cash is that way. The title “Buffalo Eleanor” came from a highway exit sign and was improvised on the spot by Cash. “Slide On Sloopy” was mentored by Bobby Bare Jr. on keys, drum machine, and vocals, and Travis, same with “You Know You Said Woah.” We all had fun creating whatever in different genres to Cash’s phone voice memo vocals. For example, “Children Of The Popcorn” is all Travis and Mark in the studio, and my only part was a couple solo licks in the breaks on one of those travel guitar things with a piezo we keep in the van. “My Heart’s Still Beating” is all Mark, Kevin did “Honky Tonk Bebop Lover” and plays on others, Travis did some songs himself, I did a lot of them myself, the ones Bob wrote when he was a kid I did all at home, etc. “Cats Crevens” is basically Rainbow/Nugent/Cat Stevens flipped around a bit. Some were studio efforts, some were done at home, so it’s a mish-mosh for sure. I did some melodica at home on “You Know We Get Happy When The Sun Goes Down,” Bobby had his famous dad do a voice over for the fake limousine ad, which has to be maybe the coolest moment ever. Travis did a ton of work putting this all together for the Sinners and his patience with them coming to the big city to record is to be admired. They’d never had “New York pizza” or a grande Americano before.

And now it looks like we’ll get to hear one last hurrah from Mr. Rivers and The Sinners with the unauthorized release of Loose Shoes this June?

Yes, that is true. He disappeared for a spell there, though. We thought maybe Cash had died but he just pulled a Skip Spence/Sky Saxon/Sly Stone (Sly Saxon?) and was found wandering the streets of a large coastal city, so he may be doing some more singin’. There’s always time for more Cash. (hashtag worthy?)

You seem to really love effects and have a pedal board stuffed with them, with pedals coming and going frequently. Any current favorites you can tell us about?

One is EarthQuaker Devices’ Transmisser, a multifaceted ambient reverb, heard on “Windshield Wiper Rex,” “Blink Blank” breakdown, and “Hudson Rake.” The Strymon Flint Tremolo & Reverb has 3 trem choices, and the one called ’61 Harmonic is my go-to. (Basically a ’61 Brownface Fender Concert amp trem.) That’s on “That’s Good” (record and live) and “Tenth Century” (live), maybe some others. The Antichthon by Catalinbread is a crazy little distortion/tremolo that reacts with your guitar’s volume/tone pots to create a variety of pulsating squeaks or just a compressed fuzz if you want. That can be heard on the second verse of “Steppenwolf Mausoleum” as its own track (the repeating squeals put through reverb) and I also stepped on and off of it while tracking the “Space Gun” single D notes (you know, like a space gun). I recently got a Sabbra Cadabra by Catalinbread too—early Sabbath distortion. That’s on some of the Sweating The Plague LP. I was using a Boss Harmonist in pitch rise/fall mode on the ESP Ohio LP and at the end of the song “Pearly Gates Smoke Machine,” an instrumental on How Do You Spell Heaven that originated as a vocal song (“Boil On”) by Bob, but he decided he wanted it to be instrumental with lead guitar carrying the melody, so I alternated following and straying from his original melody and chord progression. Though on “Everything’s Thrilling” from Zeppelin Over China, there are no pedals. I played that on a ’65 Silvertone 1454 that belonged to my friend Jed Parish of The Gravel Pit, straight into my ’75 Princeton Reverb at Travis’ studio. I was babysitting that guitar for him and used it on a few other things—I know its all over “Jack Tell,” and on “That’s Good.”

There are hundreds of new and innovative pedals coming on the scene constantly, and I’d love to buy new ones all the time, but I can’t afford to get a whole bunch every year, so I only look for them on an as-needed basis. To that end—I do find demonstration videos very useful, but it’s tough to find pedal demo vids where they’re not playing a Strat or similar in a semi-clean blues style in the middle pickup position, which doesn’t help me a bit! So it takes a lot of searching, but I can usually find a simpatico example somewhere. I would still rather spend a little time doing that than just buying one blind.

Travis Harrison is frequently mentioned as the sixth member of Guided By Voices. Is there any chance we might see him play on stage with the band at some point?

That’d be fun if he joined us for something, but then we’d miss him doing our sound, as he is pretty busy behind the board at shows, but he can be heard drumming on ESP Ohio, Lifeguards’ Waving At The Astronauts LP, and some rhythm guitar, bass, drums, and percussion on the Cash Rivers LPs. He curates and programs our before and after show house music as well.

Regarding Warp And Woof, there are some really fantastic guitar tones. One example: I love the tone of both guitars in “Dead Liquor Store” when the D5 – A5 – G5 chord progression begins, in particular. Were the guitar tones all achieved “naturally” (miking the amp) or was there any digital processing involved, considering the recordings took place in hotel rooms, in the van, etc?

The electric guitar sounds were almost all digitally achieved in a DAW of some sort. Any acoustic guitars are natural and mic’d. We would record a lot on the road, in a hotel room or band apartment above a venue, and I did some guitar and piano/keys/string tracks at home as well. A lot of the sounds/tones were in collaboration with Travis—some our suggestions, some his. Bobby recorded the cleaner rhythm guitar in the song “Tiny Apes” at his home; I did same at mine—mainly my ’67 ES-330. The guitar/ape sound thing at the end was done by automating the “wah-wah pedal” plug-in in the file after I recorded the part. No feet were used in the making of Tiny Apes. (No feet used. No synthesizers used—sincerely, Queen and Boston.) With “It Will Never Be Simple,” the electrics are all amp modeling, together with naturally mic’d acoustics. There really are 100+ guitar tracks on that one, at Bob’s request. I had to keep sub-mixing 10 tracks at a time from one session and import that mix file into the main session. There were 2 drum tracks. I’ve always liked the 2 different drummers fading in on Eno’s (song) “Here Come The Warm Jets,” and tried, but I wanted them in quick, so the fade isn’t that subtle.

One track is midi drums just live—played on keys, the other track was actual drums I played at a practice spot.

One exception to the digital amp modeling thing on this album: I did the guitars for “End It With Light” on stage at a soundcheck with Travis recording, so that’s my black Les Paul through the Mesa.

All of us in GbV have written and recorded B-sides for recent 7″ singles on our own or collaboratively much in this same way. Mark and I did “Knife City” while on the road into his computer with some amp modeling and sang it in my brother’s house in AZ on our way out west with the van. We wrote it in maybe half an hour and had it done later that night, then Kevin had the drums done the next morning in NJ! I did “Red Nose Speedway” at home, we all worked on BBJ’s “The Dead To Mees” remotely and had it done in a couple hours.

I’ve noticed that a couple of songs on Warp And Woof are a half-step down from standard pitch. Were the guitars tuned down for these, or was it done digitally after the instruments were recorded? Considering that alternate tunings are not very common on Guided By Voices recordings, was there any particular reason for this decision?

We did most of these in standard pitch, but I guess we recorded a couple in the pitch the demos were in.

Bob’s demos come to us in a lower pitch, due to the slightly faster speed his boombox records cassettes at. Whatever songs those were, we tuned our guitars down by ear to match the demo version.

I’ve often used actual alternate tunings for things, dropping a D, lowering the high E, etc. “Diver Dan” has the high E dropped to D I think for the bridge end bits, for example.

Bob’s been known to contribute a lot of guitar to past GBV recordings; is this also the case with the more recent albums (How Do You Spell Heaven, Space Gun, Warp And Woof, Sweating The Plague)?

He hasn’t played electric on one since August By Cake. However, that’s Bob playing the song “Zeppelin Over China” on BBJ’s acoustic in the van after a show. We do include parts from his acoustic cassette demo occasionally, as in the breakdown part of “Jack Tell,” or the ends of “Dead Liquor Store,” “Mumbling Amens,” and “Time Remains In Central Position.” The 6-song EP (Dislodge) The Immortal Orangemen that was included with EAT 15 is mostly Bob’s guitar playing and singing, with the band adding to things here and there.

The past three albums (Space Gun, Zeppelin Over China, Warp And Woof) have all been so different from each other, yet all very GBV in their own ways. Can you give us an idea of what to expect from the upcoming Sweating The Plague?

Sweating The Plague is a little more sprawling than Warp And Woof, a little more arena rock (mid 70’s kind as opposed to the wet and gated kind), post punk, a little less prog but still some there, and some nylon string flourishes in an uptempo rock vein á la Forever Changes on one song. Also a few really nice melodic muscly pop moments.

If you could add one song, from any of Bob’s past or present projects, to the setlist that the band doesn’t currently play live, what would it be?

Probably “He’s The Uncle” or “Captain’s Dead.”

Hell yes. “He’s The Uncle” is an all-time favorite of mine. It was a real thrill to get to see you guys play it live during the “Electrifying Conclusion” tour back in 2004. I get the feeling that this current lineup of GBV could really rock those harmonies in “Captain’s Dead!”

Doug, I can’t thank you enough for your time and for all the incredible music you’ve provided to us over the years. It’s been a real thrill being a fan so far, and we hope the music keeps coming for a long time!

Thanks so much for the great questions, and yes, it is and it will!

If you haven’t checked out any of Doug Gillard’s solo music, please do so using the links below! Salamander is a personal favorite album of mine, but you really can’t go wrong with any of his stuff.

And for all your Guided By Voices needs, please buy from Rockathon Records to support the band!