IN MY ROOM

R obert

P ollard

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The boozy bard of Dayton,
Ohio, gets his art on

1PHOTO BOOKS, GLUE, AND TAPE “I usually work on my dining room table, laying out all the source material, cutting out the parts I like, and stacking them together to build a new environment. I’ve never been concerned with mistakes. To me, that’s character, that’s human. So I use tape or glue, because it doesn’t matter how perfectly it’s put together.”

2BOOM BOX “My ex-brother-in-law gave it to me. I like these old solid-state cassette players for recording—they get a good, bright guitar sound. When Guided by Voices were on TVT, they’d make us go to a studio to make the demos, then to a bigger studio to record the album, a process I really don’t understand.”

3RECORD COLLEC TION “These are all Ohio artists. My favorites are Devo, Pere Ubu, Guided by Voices, and the Breeders, and there’s a bunch of bubblegum bands from the ’60s that actually had a lot of hits, like Ohio Express and the Lemon Pipers.”

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4SUMMER IN PLANE TS “I did this one in early 2007. I told someone who bought it that it’s a young Rosie O’Donnell in the middle.”

5UNTITLED “This one was done for the cover of the GBV Tigerbomb EP—it’s a statement on consumerism. I colored my brother Jim’s face yellow; that’s sort of a punk-rock thing.”

6OFF TO BUSINESS “Since I’m now putting out records on my own label, I felt like that little guy is me making a new start, so I made this the cover of my new album.”

7CINCINNATI BENGALS BLANKET “They’re my favorite football team, but they’re a great source of frustration for me. Every year.”

8THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED SCREENPLAY “You’ve heard of this Jerry Lewis movie about the Holocaust that he won’t let anyone see? We were playing Seattle, and Eddie Vedder came and brought me the script. And it’s weird because two other people had already done that, so this is my third copy. How do people know that I’d want that?”

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9BAD FOOTBALL HELMET “I did an album with Chris Slusarenko called Bad Football, and on the cover, which is one of my collages, you can see a guy wearing a helmet like that. A fan—I think they call him Applehead—made this for me for my 50th birthday.”

10PAUL FRANK BOXERS “It’s Pete Townshend smashing a guitar. Paul Frank does great underwear; they don’t stretch out or get baggy. You can wear ’em for a week.”

Photographed for Spin in Dayton, Ohio, May 14, 2008

BY GAVIN STEVENS
PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG RUFFING