Kansas City Blog

I always have the best interviews with Zach Campbell.

The guitarist and singer of Lawrence's Rooftop Vigilantes was working the door at the Jackpot on a slow Monday night when I popped into to discuss his side gig in a Guided By Voices tribute band. The group - unnamed as of the interview - will play this Friday at the Jackpot as part of a diverse bill that also includes rappers Approach, Info Gates, and Negro Scoe.

Zach Campbell is our kind of soldier.

We'll get to the GBV stuff in a minute, but first a few thoughts on being a doorman. It's harder than I thought - and more hilarious too.

Campbell's first task of the night is to turn away a group of gutter punks who want to check out the show for free. He tries to meet them halfway by asking how much they could ante up for the touring bands, and one girl offers a cough drop, a bass pick, and a nickel. Campbell politely tells them "no."

Five minutes later, a broham in a Billabong t-shirt comes in and asks if the bill is full. He says his band had planned on playing at the Bottleneck, but it's closed and he's looking for a last-minute venue to play a "sick-ass set." Campbell tells him that the lineup is full, but the broham is not deterred. He insists that he just wants to play a 20-minute set and "rock the fuck out."

"I'll play for dudes, bitches, nobody - I just want to rock," he pleads.

Well played, sir, but Campbell is no pushover. He holds his ground and sends the broham over to Fatso's.

The idea for the GBV tribute band started when Campbell got really drunk one night and booked a show. "Then I woke up the next morning and realized what I had done," he says.

He put together a band and played the New Year's Eve show at the Jackpot. By most accounts, it went pretty well.

This time the band will have more time to rehearse and more songs under its belt (largely from Propeller, Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, and Under the Bushes Under the Stars). Singer Charlie Downey will play the role of Bob Pollard, and the rest of the band will include Jerett Fulton, Nate Holt, and Shawn Lamoureux.

Like most GBV fans, Campbell knows his stuff.

On Bob Pollard: "He's just a big fucking kid. He's one of those guys that wouldn't be hard to approach; you could buy him a shot and he'd talk to you about football. If you read books about GBV, he seems like a really unique person. He doesn't buy into the notion that once you reach a certain age, you have to give up music."

On his favorite GBV lyric: I'll climb up on the house / Weep to water the trees / And when you come calling me down, I'll put on my disease (from "Game of Pricks")

On why Alien Lanes is his favorite GBV album: "It's like they took the format they had on Bee Thousand and perfected it. The album is sequenced perfectly. There are these little buffer songs, and once an epic 1:30 song hits, it's great."

On why Under the Bushes was the last great GBV album: "Tobin Sprout was was a really good alter-ego to Bob. After Bob kicked everybody out and replaced them with real musicians, it just wasn't as good. Don't even get me started on Bob's solo career."

As Pollard famously said about working the door at a rock club: Proud brothers / Do not fret ... C'mon, c'mon, the club is open