“The production of the album became possible because of computers, which we constantly use anyway.” Gillard, Bare, and Shue tracked their parts at home in New York, Tennessee, and Virginia, respectively Harrison tracked Pollard’s vocals in Dayton while socially distanced. “When COVID hit, plans changed,” Harrison tells Discogs. The initial idea was to record Styles We Paid For live to two-track tape in producer Travis Harrison’s Dumbo, Brooklyn, studio, Serious Business Music. I constantly worry when he’s on the road, and I knew having this time off from touring would allow him to address his severely arthritic hip, with plenty of time to recuperate.” Still, “He constantly works and at a very fast pace,” Zade-Pollard says. When Sarah Zade-Pollard realized her husband would potentially spend 2020 at home in Dayton, Ohio, “Honestly, on a personal level, my first thought was one of relief,” she tells Discogs. They do this by accelerating their output while in isolation, spoiling diehards with previously-unheard content via a weekly subscription service, and producing an audience-free streaming concert. How robust is this business model? A world-upending global health crisis is as good a litmus test as any.īut Guided by Voices, an underdog band with a message of fearlessness and self-realization, keep moving anyway. The band records their parts separately, releases music through their label, GBV, Inc., and raises funds through art sales, a fan convention, and brewery partnerships. It’s always been this way with this lineup, and COVID-19 has done nothing to disrupt the flow.” As such, Styles We Paid For, their third album of 2020 after Surrender Your Poppy Field and Mirrored Aztec, dropped December 11 - pandemic or no pandemic.Īccording to Fortune, Guided by Voices, who last cracked the Billboard charts in 2002 and has suffered declining record sales in the Spotify era, maintains equilibrium through constant creative output and financial self-containment. Projects overlap. We’re finished with a follow-up album or two before the previous one is released. “We’re constantly making records in perpetual motion. That’s the most important aspect of being a band,” Pollard explains to Discogs. Their longtime manager, David Newgarden, halved his four-person staff, loaded his Chelsea, Manhattan, office into storage, and began working marathon hours from home.Īs for Robert Pollard, GBV’s 63-year-old singer, songwriter, and only original member? “I knew we were going to continue to be creatively active. Drummer Kevin March, the manager and director of School of Rock in Montclair, New Jersey, pivoted to remote teaching. Bassist Mark Shue threw his clothes and instruments in his car and returned to his folks’ house in Virginia. put their heads down on home-recording projects. When COVID-19 grounded live music globally, guitarists Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare, Jr. Their first gig of 2020 turned out to be their last. Guided by Voices routinely perform three-hour shows and slug out multiple albums per year, but last New Year’s Eve, the cult rock band pulled off a feat remarkable even for them: a 100-song, four-and-a-half-hour blowout at Los Angeles’s Teragram Ballroom.
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