Doug Gillard is known (rightly so) for his guitar wizardry in bands such as Guided By Voices, Cobra Verde, Death Of Samantha and, for the last few years, Nada Surf, but that notoriety sometimes overshadows the fact that he’s an accomplished solo singer/songwriter. With his third LP, Parade On (Nine Mile), Gillard continues to show off his virtuosity—solos like the one on “On Target” are just ridiculous—as well as his knack for catchy, folk-inflected power pop. Gillard will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him. To see more photos corresponding to these entries, go here
Gillard: My last post on this topic concerned the attic of a house, so this one deals with more house, but this time a living-room situation. I had moved in 2000 to a cottage-like rented house on Lake Erie, next to what used to be Euclid Beach Amusement Park. This was a 1903-built mother-in-law house to the big one next door in a large row of turn-of-the-century vacation homes. So, the cliff and the lake were 20 feet outside the door. This meant I could set the drum kit and amps up and play at any volume at any time.
When it came time to do the more proggy collaboration with Mr. Pollard we called Lifeguards, I composed and recorded all the music beds with no clue as to what Bob would sing, so it was always a thrill to get the results back. I was set up in this place by this time, and set to work recording in this small carpeted living room. At least now I had the piano right there, and had just gotten a Roland VS-880 hard-disk eight-track digital recorder. This record was actually split between using the Roland and the four-track cassette, but most were done on the digital machine. “Gift Of The Mountain,” “Starts At The River,” “Shorter Virgins” and “Surgeon Is Complete” were the songs I remember being solely on four-track cassette. I still had the same mics as before, but this time I added a Shure 57 to the collection and a couple stands, so drum miking was easier this time. That record shows I didn’t care about changing the beat-up drum heads so they would sound better or anything. The record shows they took the blows. But, it was another fun venture.
“Surgeon Is Complete” alternates between a stoner-rock riff and bash beat, to a light-jazz shuffle thing in the middle, but the song recorded in real time. I was unable to have a click on that song due to the pregnant pauses I had put into the riff structure at the end. Is there such a thing as Riff Structure? Wait, that was Dave Edmunds’ first band, wasn’t it?
New instruments were part of the mix, such as a terra cotta ocarina in the shape of a turtle that I call Ceramic The Entertainer. I’ve tried to have him make an appearance on most of my solo and Lifeguards records ever since. (He’s on “Society Dome” and “Fether Herd” on Mist King Urth.)
I recorded other things in that room, such as a soundtrack to a short film my friend Michael Nigro was doing. That time I borrowed Mike McDonald’s one-inch eight-track portable Otari machine, which had NKOTB stenciled on it from when it belonged to some New Kids. This same machine was also used to record my Malamute Jute EP and some Gem recordings, and I’m sure other things that Mike worked on for other Cleveland bands.
Anyway, the photos show the cable spaghetti and helter skelter that was always going on in the room, but I made sense of the chaos, highlighted the creation, and the living room was adjacent to the backyard.
