Press

Having a Field Day: New festival brings indie-rock and Vermont vibes to Guilford

Filmed in Bernardston, Leyden, Colrain, Ashfield, and Guilford, Vermont, “Root Hog or Die” follows the arc of one agricultural year, starting with Nellie and Stubby Howe and their Guilford sugaring operation.

Then Again: Lucy Terry Prince, a poet and storyteller who stood up …

This past winter, Pixies decamped to Guilford, Vermont to record their first new album in three years, Doggerel. While the album won’t be arriving until Sept. 30, fans can get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the record in a new short documentary.

The clip opens with frontman Black Francis offering one side of how the Doggerel sessions came about. “Fortunately my kids are old enough now that they’re not gonna burn the place down or anything, so I just said, ‘Guys, just leave me alone for a couple of weeks. I gotta do this thing,’” he recalls, adding with a laugh, “And they’re like, ‘Yeah, whatever fine. We don’t want you bothering us anyway!’”

Pixies recorded Doggerel — their eighth studio album — at Guilford Sound, an eco-friendly studio in Guilford, Vermont. It was an ideal space, their manager Richard Jones explains in the doc, outfitted with a big room where Pixies could track live together and a top-notch mixing board for producer Tom Dalgety. 

Not only was the space right for Pixies, but so was the band’s mindset. Coming into the sessions, bassist Paz Lenchantin notes that Francis had amassed a much larger tranche of demos than usual in the years since Pixies’ last LP, 2019’s Beneath the Eyrie. And as guitarist Joey Santiago says, “I was always in full music mode on this one. My headspace was a lot better.” 

Elsewhere, the doc is filled with plenty of behind-the-scenes moments and anecdotes. For instance, Dalgety recalls how a freak snowstorm at the start of the sessions allowed for some crucial early rehearsal time, while drummer David Lovering explains why the tambourine is actually the most difficult instrument to play.

Later this week, on June 10, Pixies will also release a special “bonus episode” of their It’s a Pixies Podcast, which they launched around the release of Beneath the Eyrie. The group will not only discuss their new music, but also recount the rather harrowing story of how their tour in Australia was cut short by the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Greensky Bluegrass unveiled a video featuring keyboardist Holly Bowling performing “Last Winter In The Copper Country” with the band during the September 2020 sessions that helped yield GSBG’s 2022 studio album, Stress Dreams. The +14-minute clip was filmed at Guilford Sound studios in Guilford, Vermont, on September 22, 2020.