Listen to the Robert Pollard interview

Say hello to Bob Pollard, hero to any musician who’s ever toiled in obscurity in a basement or garage, poster boy for every artist who’s scraped up money to produce his own records, role model for guys in their late 30s who hold out hope of being discovered.

Pollard, 38, is a former fourth-grade teacher from Dayton, Ohio, who’s now gaining international recognition as the singer/principal songwriter for the band Guided By Voices.

The records Guided By Voices once made for fun – and couldn’t give away – now fetch $150 each in collectors’ circles. (The band has recorded a dozen albums, nine singles and a five-disc box set since 1986.) Songwriting, once Pollard‘s hobby, now brings in more money in publishing royalties than teaching ever did.

“I can’t believe I get to do this for a living,” says Pollard, who’ll be in town Saturday when Guided By Voices plays the Patio.”I get to sit around and write songs and cut out pictures (for collages). All the things my mom and dad said I needed to quit doing.

“Lo-fi” leaders

“Success will happen if you’re doing something that satisfies your soul. Which I did. If you’re just doing something with some false ambition, where you think, `If I do this long enough, somebody’s going to find out about my talent,’ it probably won’t happen.”

What happened with Guided By Voices is that, without even trying, the band became a leader of the “lo-fi” movement in music.

The group records mostly on basic four-track equipment that favors feel over sound quality, and most of its songs clock in at less than two minutes.

“Because we have access to a four-track,” Pollard says, “I try to make it sound like a long-lost Beatles bootleg, long- lost studio stuff that you can’t get anymore.”

Pollard‘s songwriting style is a descendant of that ’60s British invasion sound. Its new disc, Alien Lanes, brings to mind everything from the Beatles’ Not a Second Time to The Who Sell Out.

Almost-instant album

Writing comes easy to Pollard, whose work has drawn so much attention that he’s been commissioned to write a song for a forthcoming Tom Hanks movie about a 1960s one-hit-wonder band.

Every morning, Pollard wakes up early (a remnant of “14 years of programming”), brews a pot of coffee and sits down to write. Arriving home from the band’s monthlong European tour, “I sat down and wrote 15 lyrics,” he says. “Then I went and wrote the next day. Got up the same time, made another pot of coffee and wrote the music to it. So now I have a new album.”

Most of one, anyway. The next Guided By Voices album, The Flying Party Is Here!, is due in March. Before then, there’ll be a six-song vinyl record featuring alternate, polished recordings of songs from Alien Lanes and a 10-song release in January.

“My left hip hurts,” Pollard says. “I don’t know how much longer I can jump around on stage. But hopefully, I can continue to be a songwriter for as long as people need songs.”