Pinback is back in Bend

Published 12:00 am Thursday, November 29, 2018

Pinback guitarist Rob Crow sounded exhausted during a recent conversation with GO! Magazine.

Two days before Thanksgiving, the vocalist and songwriter was racing around his hometown of San Diego with his five kids in tow. During the interview, his wife had taken the kids to get flu shots; he had another interview scheduled, then dinner before taking care of the kids while his wife went to her 12-hour night shift.

The following week, Crow would be on tour with Pinback, the project he started with bassist and songwriter Zach Smith in the late ’90s. The duo, with drummer Chris Prescott, will play their first Bend show in roughly eight years at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Saturday.

“Yeah, it’s difficult,” Crow said of juggling family obligations and life on the road. “Five kids, two babies. Yeah, it’s really difficult.”

And Pinback, whose progressive, acrobatic guitar work and delicate pop hooks gained national attention in the early 2000s, is one project among many for Crow and Smith (though by far the most popular). Crow, a veteran of the San Diego indie-rock scene, got his start in bands such as Thingy and Heavy Vegetable, released a series of solo albums and also leads the metal band Goblin Cock, among many, many other projects. Recently, he’s spearheaded the political, hardcore punk project Anal Trump, whose songs rarely clock in at longer than 10 seconds.

Crow said Pinback may attempt some new material in Bend, even though the band’s most recent album, “Information Retrieved,” was released in 2012. Though Crow said he sees Smith “almost everyday,” the duo simply haven’t been able to find a studio to record in.

“The last (studio) Zach took over from some people without being told that it was getting bought and turned into a growing center — like a big weed grow room,” Crow said. “So all the stuff that he had built is gonna be torn down anyway. So that was lame.”

Even without studio issues, Crow said it takes a long time for the duo to get anything done. And he wasn’t much interested in speculating about what a sixth Pinback album could sound like.

“I’m the kind of guy that will just do stuff instead of talking about doing stuff,” Crow said. “… I like to do the thing and then maybe talk about it after, instead of hyping something that doesn’t exist or hyping anything at all, really.”

Fans will have to make do with the 11 new albums Crow will drop later this month. The records, including material from his projects Optiganally Yours, Thingy, Goblin Cock, Byre, Third Act Problems, Other, Remote Action Sequence Project, Physics and Anal Trump (plus a previously unreleased Pinback single), will be part of a box set and the culmination of Crow’s yearlong residency at Joyful Noise Recordings.

“I had started doing stuff with Joyful Noise because I was asked to participate in some of their charity records, like gay rights awareness and things like that,” Crow said. “I was totally on board, and through that, just started hanging out with (Joyful Noise founder) Karl (Hofstetter). He’s a cool dude, and he asked me to do this thing, which I didn’t want to do for a while, but at some point I was like, yeah. If I’m gonna actually get all these records out, this is probably the way it’s gonna happen.”