To nobody’s surprise, neither age nor the dissolution of Guided By Voices has slowed the prolific output of Ohio’s most famous schoolteacher-turned-songwriter. Robert Pollard has simultaneously issued two new solo albums, Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love and Standard Gargoyle Decisions (both on Merge), with help from producer and collaborator Todd Tobias. He’s also putting the finishing touches on a coffee-table book of lyrics and collage artwork titled Town Of Mirrors: The Reassembled Imagery Of Robert Pollard (due out next year) and recently staged an exhibit of his visual art at Studio Dante, Sopranos star Michael Imperioli’s New York City theater.

I assume that you heard about the explosion outside Studio Dante in September.
Yeah. It was a pipe bomb or something. I heard that it wasn’t targeted for his theater. I emailed Imperioli and said, “I hope everybody’s OK.”

What’d you think of the last episode of The Sopranos?
I was glad no one from the immediate family was killed. I thought Meadow was gonna get it. I liked how it looked like something went wrong with the television at the end, too. I’ve also been watching Big Love, which is fucking awesome. I like On Demand because it allows me to get my drinking in. [Laughs]

Speaking of TV, I hear a Guided By Voices song is going to be in a car commercial.
I’m supposed to sign a contract today; Nissan is picking up “Quality Of Armor” (from 1992’s Propeller) for a commercial in Canada. I’ve always said to my manager, “You need to get some of my songs in commercials, especially car commercials.” You know how it was for fucking Bob Seger; it’s like he never had to do anything else. [Laughs] I’ve got “Motor Away” and “Oh yeah, I’m gonna drive my car” (lyrics from “Quality”) and things like that. At one point, I wrote a jingle for Krispy Kreme.

No way.
Yeah. Just for fun. And it’s good, really catchy, really ’60s-like. It’s kind of like Herman’s Hermits. It’s all sugary like the doughnuts. When my manager finally got serious about it and said, “Yeah, let’s do it,” I got cold feet. I can’t be remembered as the guy who wrote the Krispy Kreme theme.

Did you write it because you like them?
Yeah, I used to. I don’t eat them much anymore. I mean, you can’t eat too many fucking Krispy Kreme. I was just fucking around with my acoustic one morning and must’ve just had some Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and I started writing this little thing: “Start off your day with a Krispy Kreme doughnut/As sweet as life can get.” I once had a chance to write a Budweiser commercial, but I had to sing, “This Bud’s for you,” and just couldn’t hack it. I’ve cost myself a lot of money because of that. I was offered to write the song for (1996 Tom Hanks film) That Thing You Do! at one point.

I remember that.
I just couldn’t do it, man. It’s hard when someone gives you a title or a lyric or a phrase, and you’ve gotta write some sort of viable commercial jingle around it. But I’m supposed to be doing this Cleopatra movie with (director) Steven Soderbergh, which sort falls in the same category. They want to use old songs of mine and just change the lyrics.

Is that definitely supposed to happen?
Nothing’s ever definite with directors and shit; they can change their mind at any time. I heard they were even interested in me singing some of the songs—or at least somebody’s part—and they would dub my voice, which would be funny to watch. This is a big-budget thing with Catherine Zeta-Jones, and it’s a musical, but I really don’t know how actively involved I will be in it.

You have a number of fans, like Soderbergh, Imperioli and (actor) Paddy Considine, who are successful artists in other fields.
It’s good, because there are a lot of people who don’t know who the fuck I am. But the people who do like my stuff seem to be, like you said, artists and directors and other musicians. To me, that means I’m doing something fairly good still. You can make commercial records and you can go for it and a lot of times when you’re done, you’re gone. I’ve been able to just do what I wanna do for going on 16 years now. I think it’s because I do what I wanna do, I stick to my guns. It’s not ever so drastically different. I tried to do the big-studio thing and it just didn’t work. I think that some of these people we’re talking about, like Steven Soderberg, Imperioli, they’ve been listening to my stuff for a long time. It’s an honor for other artists to dig what you’re doing. But the main thing is the people who’ve been listening to my stuff for the last 16 years, it’s basically the same people. There was an attempt at one point with TVT, and before that with Matador, for us to try to break through to a larger audience. I think it’s my fault that it didn’t happen, because I just wasn’t willing to do some of the things that they wanted me to do. I didn’t know you had to tour for a whole year and after you played a show at night, you had to get up and go play at a radio station at eight o’clock in the morning and sing. And if you didn’t do it, you were semi-threatened, like, “Hey we’re gonna pull the plug on you.” Well, my thing was like, “I don’t give a fuck. Pull the plug.” I just wanted to see some success for Guided By Voices, because we were doing the dog-and-pony thing and we were playing all these festivals around the world. We’d play on a third stage at 11 o’clock in the morning, and I’d see Tenacious D second to headline on the main stage and it kinda pissed me off. We were using big producers and going to big studios, so I didn’t think [mainstream success] was beyond the realm of possibility. And so we kind of went for it and I realized, “Jesus Christ, what have I gotten myself into?”

Now that indie-rock reunions are big business, have people started bugging you about getting Guided By Voices back together?
To me, it’s just cashing in. If you’re gonna get the band back together, it should be to support a new record, not just to play the hits. That’s like doing the county-fair circuit. I don’t see Guided By Voices reforming. For one thing, there were 50 or 60 people in Guided By Voices over time. But I know the name does matter, because I’m not selling as many records as Guided By Voices did. That name’s been around for a while, and it’s kind of in the scene. Guided By Voices, Pavement, Sebadoh—you know, all that kind of shit. And so the name will sell more records, it will also cause more people to come out and see you play.

I doubt Stephen Malkmus sells what Pavement did or Lou Barlow sells what Sebadoh did.
And in essence, it’s the same thing. It’s just a name has changed. Those guys and me, we’re not Pete Townshend, we’re not David Bowie. Sometimes I remove myself and look at my records and say, “Now if this fucking record was done by some huge band’s lead singer who can’t write, like Robin Zander (Cheap Trick) or Roger Daltry or Mick Jagger, people would think it was amazing.” It’s only natural that they would come to expect more from me. I’ve been around for quite a long time and I do a lot of stuff, and I don’t expect everybody to like my music; it’s understandable that when you first start, it’s fresh and everybody’s hearing it seeing it for the first time. I’m not saying that those records are or aren’t better than the records I make now, and I’m not comparing them. I know as a listener myself and from buying records and watching shows, that when I see a band for the first two or three or four years, I dig them and then that starts to wear off. I can’t expect everybody to stick around and 16 years later like my music as much as they did when they first heard us. Now, you get the comparison between the different lineups and the different bands and the different styles and approaches that we’ve had to making music. And we’ve been through a few different stages: the lo-fi four-track thing, and then when we started recording in a studio, and then we got a producer, then we kind of went back to just a middle-of-the-road type approach. And so now, what I’ve settled into is what I am. There’s no attempt to change directions, there’s no “what do I need to do?” I’m fortunate to have someone that can help me pump out records that quickly. I can just send Todd Tobias the music and I say, “Todd, play the music, and take your time and tell me when you’re done and I’ll come up and sing them.” So I’ve gotten into this nice groove with the assistance of Todd Tobias where I can do whatever I want. It’s kind of nice. I’m really comfortable and happy right now because there are no expectations. It’s nice to still be on Merge, a label that has some visibility, and still be able to whatever I want to do on the side. I do enough to sustain me, to make a living, but it wouldn’t be unless I did a host of other stuff. I gotta work, I gotta stay active. And so the point is, I guess if you don’t have that much going on, if you’re not a maniac like me, then you gotta do things like reunion tours and whatever.

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