Robert Pol­lard uttered these words on The Elec­tri­fy­ing Con­clu­sion Tour back in 2004. He was refer­ring to the amount of “hits” he has writ­ten with hardly any­one notic­ing. Over the years I’ve seen lots of “famous” musi­cians come back stage and pay homage to Bob. I always won­dered why there wasn’t a mas­sive Guided By Voices trib­ute album fea­tur­ing REM, U2, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick (all bands who have had mem­bers who have praised Bob’s music). But I real­ize that maybe I was look­ing at this all wrong. It wasn’t the already famous that mat­tered, it was the num­ber of young musi­cians that Bob was influ­enc­ing that were more impor­tant. These were peo­ple that mat­tered. The ones who saw GBV play in the small clubs, the ones that played WITH GBV in the small clubs. They were the rock and roll war­riors that share Bob’s rock and roll ethos. They are the spirit of GBV. Why you ask?

Guided by Voices are a truly influential band in the indie music sphere. Their 20+ year run provided the sonic groundwork for the lo-fi, DIY aesthetic so prevalent in today’s indie music scene. So it comes as no surprise that so many artists would be willing to provide covers from all eras of Guided by Voices work for the tribute album, Sing For Your Meat. Ranging from veterans such as The Flaming Lips, Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth fame), and Lou Barlow, to artists more recently making names for themselves like La Sera and Blitzen Trapper, the bands on this 23-track tribute pay loving homage to a band without whom they might not exist.
This album is a cel­e­bra­tion of the many faces of Guided By Voices and the mul­ti­tude of artists that they have influ­enced through both their music and men­tal­ity. Through a broad array of record­ing tech­niques and musi­cal gen­res the artists have shown us all just how deeply they have been inspired and engaged by the works of GBV. Both con­tem­po­raries and cur­rent indie up-and-coming artists alike have con­tributed to what we feel is an authen­ti­cally GBV’esque album. Some lean­ing heav­ily toward the lo-fi aes­thetic while oth­ers mir­rored the more pro­duced side of the vast cat­a­log, these fans-at-heart have cre­ated an album full of depth and raw character.

Tidbits about recording techniques:

Some of the tracks were lit­er­ally recorded in bedrooms.

West­ern Civ’s tracks were recorded in their prac­tice space (at Rich’s house) with a guy they had never met before and his portable record­ing rig. (Todd Fitch)

Lou Bar­low recorded his track 12 times on a walk­man like thing and then stacked them all. How cool is that? He gets my per­sonal thumbs up for coolest technique!

Kel­ley Deal and The Buf­falo Killers had never played their song together before they arrived at Can­dy­land to record it it! (Talk about insta-chemistry!)

The world found out we were mak­ing this trib­ute when Wayne Cohen tweeted him­self record­ing the
vocals for The Flam­ing Lips track.

La Sera’s track was done entirely by two peo­ple. Katy Good­man (vocals) and Brady Hall (instrumentation)

Both the Thurston Moore track and the James Hus­band track had been pre­vi­ously released on other projects. Thurston’s track was under the name Male Slut on the first GBV trib­ute, “Bla­tant Doom Trip” which was done by the infa­mous Trader Vic.

Mass Solo Revolt’s track was all played and recorded by one guy, Mar­tin Brummeler.

Superdrag’s track is from the web! A friend of theirs (Dewey Cole) had recorded a live show. John Davies grabbed the track from the web in MP3 form and we sent it straight to the mas­ter­ing engi­neer as is.

Which brings me to Dave.
Many thanks to our mas­ter­ing engi­neer, Dave Har­ris of Stu­dio B in Char­lotte. He deserves mul­ti­ple pats on the back for mak­ing all of this sound some­what cohe­sive while still keep­ing the raw GBV feel. You sir have super human ears, and we think you rock.