EVERYWHERE AT ONCE Doug Gillard

Sep 08, 2011

From Beefheart and Beatles tributes to collaborations with Sally Crewe, Robert Pollard and My Dad Is Dead, the multitasker also finds time for his own music.

BY JENNIFER KELLY

"It's a whirlwind this year. There's just so much going on."

Doug Gillard takes a brief pitstop to take the journalist's phone call. Reached in his hometown of Cleveland, he's currently working with Cobra Verde bassist Ed Sotelo to get ready for a tour with Tommy Keene.

Busy? That's not the half of it. If we could get him to wear a red-striped shirt and a beret, Gillard could easily stage the rock and roll version of Where's Waldo? He's everywhere, all the time, and no, he never gets his gigs mixed up. I asked. He said no.

For instance, if you caught the Captain Beefheart tribute at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City in June, you might have spotted the ex-Guided By Voices, ex-Cobra Verde, ex-too many bands to even list guitarist Gillard holding court with the Bush Tetras, covering the Beef's "Hot Head," "Tropical Hot Dog Night" and "Big Eyed Beans from Venus." If you happened to be in Hamburg last year, at the Indra Club, on the 50^th anniversary of the Beatles' first club dates, you might also have noticed a certain familiar guitarist rocking out with Bambi Kino. Show up at a Nada Surf show lately? Gillard was there, too. Ditto for the recent reunion shows for Homestead Records' My Dad Is Dead. He also found time to record a second Lifeguards album with Robert Pollard. Right now, he's getting ready for a tour with Tommy Keene, where he will play in his own band and back up Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves on guitar.

Breaking In Two 7" excerpt by 347 Records

You might think that the man who's spent the last few years channeling the Fab Four, conjuring Beefheart's tangled oddities, or backing up Nada Surf, would have trouble setting all that aside to write his own material. You'd think wrong. Even as we speak, Gillard is putting the final touches on a seven-inch vinyl single. The A side, "Breaking in Two," is raucous, melodic power pop, with hard Who power chords and softly accessible hooks. The B side, "So Much More" is a slower, more shoe-gazey drift, a daydreamer's long, perfect gaze out the window on a rainy day. Neither sounds much like any of Gillard's current projects.

"It's never been a problem to let all the other projects go," says Gillard. "I make up chord patterns and riffs in a certain way. The songs just kind of come out. It's not hard to shift gears and make up a song."

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At the epicenter of lo-fi

Gillard is probably best known for his mid-1990s stint in Guided by Voices, beginning with 1997's Mag Earwig! and continuing through 2001's Isolation Drills . "Robert Pollard was a big fan of Homestead Records, and through Scat Records, they were up in Cleveland and they became friends with John [Petkovic] and me from Cobra Verde," he remembers. "Cobra Verde ended up opening some shows for Guided By Voices, and then in 1996, when the guys from the original line-up were gone from the band, that's when Bob decided to try Cobra Verde as his band." Gillard says joining a well-known band in progress has its downside. Journalists thought that they were session players. At that, at one point as a joke, he told a writer that he'd met Pollard while playing in a Journey covers band at the Ohio State Fair.

Asked about how his own songwriting process differs from that of his former boss, Gillard says that he primarily works out his songs on guitar, trying out chord progressions and exploring melodies. The words come later. Pollard, by contrast, would often start with a lyric, then build a song around it. In Lifeguards, the pair's intermittent collaboration, the two of them divide songwriting duties along similar lines. Gillard puts together instrumental beds for songs, makes a demo and sends it off to Pollard, who then creates lyrics and vocal melodies. Their latest, Waving at the Astronauts (reviewed here at BLURT), is a wonderfully quirky, infectious collection of pop songs, out earlier this year on Ernest Jennings Records.

Back to the GDR

Gillard's other big project this spring was Bambi Kino, a faithful recreation of the Beatles' earliest material, put together originally for some live shows and later documented on a self-titled CD, released on the Tapete label. The band, which includes Gillard, as well as Mark Rozzo of Maplewood, Ira Elliot of Nada Surf and Erik Paparazzi from the Cat Power Band, was drawn together by a shared enthusiasm for four young men from Liverpool, playing their hearts out in gritty Hamburg. "We really formed Bambi Kino so that we could go to Hamburg and celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Beatles first playing over there last year," he says. "We played the Indra - the first place they ever played - four nights in a row." The band played songs from old Beatles setlists, mostly the R&B covers that John, Paul, George and Ringo learned early on, before they started writing their own material.

"Those shows at the Indra were really how the Beatles got to be good," says Gillard. "They played for hours on end, night after night. We learned a lot from learning the songs that they learned."

Gillard says that digging into the Beatles' influences gave the members of Bambi Kino a different perspective on their later material. "You could hear the things in the covers that they picked up, that they used later in their own songs," he said. "It was just kind of a discovery for us, learning these songs for Bambi Kino."

Same playing, different music

All this activity, in such different outfits, makes you wonder if there's a constant. "I can see similarities in my playing from project to project, but sometimes not a lot of similarities in the projects themselves,"
says Gillard. "The My Dad Is Dead material, for instance, those are very different songs and different guitar tunings and everything, but I love that music so much. It was really great to be part of that."

Gillard is getting ready to ship out again, embarking on a brief, early September East Coast tour with Tommy Keene and Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves. Gillard played guitar on Crewe's five-song EP Transmit/Receive (reviewed here at BLURT). He'll be reprising his work in the live setting, backing Crewe in her set, and having her join his band during his set.

Asked if there's anybody he's not played with yet that he'd like to collaborate with, Gillard takes a an extended pause. "Well, since I moved to New York, David Bowie has not been out and about in New York City. He's not doing much right now, so I haven't gotten to play with him," he says finally. "Nick Lowe, maybe. I don't really think about it."

[Photo Credit: Ana Luisa Morales]

Go here to see Gillard's tour itinerary (which kicks off Friday in Arlington, Va.), with Sally Crewe and Tommy Keene. For more details on Gillard and how to order his new single, go to his Facebook page.

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