I’m thankful to be asked to chat with you, Simon. You, my wife Pam and I go back even further than our friendship with Bob and Sarah and so many other dear friends that entered our lives through them. I keep using the word “surreal” to even attempt to frame how completely unexpected the release of this single was, and how it came about. Of course, it’s Bob and Sarah.

To answer your questions about the single, it’s really hard to spin some sort of detailed yarn about it because it literally just kinda happened, and I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but it started with you [laughing].

From the day Pam had her stroke Christmas Eve 2023, I didn’t touch a guitar for a long time. After she passed in November 2025, I was sitting in our living room for weeks with our two remaining old dogs, occasionally looking across the room at this old Epiphone ES175 sitting on a stand, but I never walked over and picked it up. I just didn’t have it in me.

I can’t nail down the exact day in my mind, but I’m thinking late January I finally picked it up as I was walking in from the kitchen and brought it over to where my ass spends most of its time, on the loveseat in the living room. I had no idea what I was going to play, if anything, and dorked around with it for a few minutes just trying to get a guitar that hadn’t been tuned or played for years to at least square up a bit tuning wise.

The very first thing that came to me, and the first thing I played since she had passed, was an impromptu medley of songs from The Kinks’ Arthur, Or The Rise And Fall Of The British Empire, one of my top 5 of all time along with The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle, The Beach Boys’ The Smile Sessions, Soft Machine’s Volume 1 & 2, and The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society. Those have remained my top 5 releases for years. I love trivial, useless lists like that [laughing].

I didn’t even plug the ES175 in to anything, I just grabbed my phone, hit record on the little voice recorder app, and played and sang “Shangri-La,” “Yes Sir, No Sir,” “Some Mother’s Son” (the greatest song about war ever and one of my favorite songs of all time), and just from memory kind of went through segments from that album. I hit stop on the recorder app, and that was it, I didn’t even listen back to it until weeks later.

So, apologies for not being exact on the date, Simon, but our good friends Nelson and Shelly sent a text to remind me that it was your birthday. Without thinking, right after seeing that text, I hit record on the phone recorder again, and thought for a second, and then for some reason played that slow version of “Map and Key.” I think at the end I said “Happy Birthday Simon” and I’m guessing I emailed it to you? Sorry that part got edited out on the single!

A few hours later, and this one is really random, I have no idea whatsoever why “You Make The Sun” was the 3rd thing I played and sang after the Kinks and “Map and Key.”

All I could think after doing that one-take version of “Sun” that’s on the single was when Bobby and I were putting Suitcase 4 together here at the house I adored his boom box demo of “Sun” and teased him a little bit, or I guess more correctly teased myself about how much of a softie I am and how much of a sucker I am for major 7th chords and that I loved that song.

But to just randomly pick up the guitar in the state I was in, hit record on the phone, and play and sing a song I’ve never remotely attempted before, that slowly, and just vamping through the words from memory and guessing at the chords, it was obviously all about Pam.

Bob and I had talked a few times during that period; he and Sarah and other good Rockathon friends we all know came to Pam’s celebration at Dublin Pub after her funeral, but we didn’t talk about music a lot, other than Bob bringing me up to date on what was going on at the moment.

So anyway, after I recorded “Map and Key” and “You Make The Sun” on my phone, I figured Bob and Sarah might enjoy hearing them, so I emailed them to Sarah. Maybe a day or two later, Bob calls me with his “speaking emphatically” lower, serious, hushed voice that he and I joke about, saying, “Nick, those are fucking beautiful, I’m going to put them out as a single, if that’s ok with you?” I’m like, “um, waddeya mean Bob?!?”

And that was that. Bob said it, I believe it, that settles it [laughing]. He asked if it was ok to put Pam’s picture on one side of the sleeve. I just kind of floated through the whole thing like, “Bob, are you really doing this?”

I believe it was Valentine’s Day a couple of weeks later, he and I were drinking at one of the two main drinking holes that get alternating attention each week on 5th street in the Oregon, and I asked him what he thought about making it a double A side, and also if he wanted to do something for the other side of the sleeve that was more colorful, more “sunny,” as the Map and Key side was the black and white of Pam with two of our family Mastiffs. So he chose that amazing collage for the “You Make The Sun” side of the sleeve. (See if you can spot Sissy Spacek in that collage.)

I’ve always wanted to say this to someone publicly [laughing]. I had a fantastic childhood and teenage years, my Mom and Dad were as awesome as any kid could ever hope for, although my Mom passed away very young from cancer at 46 in 1991. I have been told many, many times in my life by my parents, sisters, and others that at 3 years old, I would stand with my hands on the edge of the big 70s console stereo and listen to “Bottle of Wine” by the Fireballs over and over and over, until someone would finally rip that needle off the record and pull me away from it. The next song I remember, pretty much the same scenario, maybe a year or two later, was “Youngblood” by the Coasters. Over and over [laughing].

By 6th grade at Northwood Elementary in Englewood, I had announced to anyone that would listen that I intended to be a drummer, which obviously directly implied that I better see some drums around that Christmas tree forthwith. I got a snare drum only. That is probably the only negative thing I can think of about my childhood [laughing]. Shortly after, I traded an Erector Set for an Ohio Art drum set with a 6th grade school buddy named Fred Norman, and I was ready to rock! A full drum set! The heads on that toy drum set lasted maybe 15 minutes of me bashing them while wearing those big 70s Panasonic or Koss headphones in my room, playing along with the first album I ever bought with “my own money,” Cheap Trick at Budokan.

So jumping forward, my first “real” gigs were at Canal Street Tavern when I was 15. My parents had to sign a waiver for me to be able to play there. I actually met Dayton musician Sharon Lane during that time and she has remained a dear friend our entire lives, to this day.

Eventually I ran the recording engineering and production program at ICB from 1993 to 1997, while Pam was doing IT work from home, and eventually I was doing IT stuff as well, while playing and recording as much as possible. A band I was in somehow managed to win the WOXY X-Posure contest in 1996, and part of the “prize” was opening for Howling Maggie and The Chainsaw Kittens at Bogarts on NYE that year.

When our children graduated high school in the mid 2000s, Pam and I walked away from the IT stuff and since January 1, 2005, we did nothing but live music gigs. I did a count and realized that I had done over 5000 live performances from the time I met Pam in high school in 1984. And not one single time, not one, was she not with me. She was there for all of them.

Well I’ve named my Top 5, that’s an indication, but basically I have been glued to the 1965 to 1974 era my entire life, other than Bob and XTC and a few others after that era. I am an embarrassingly obsessed English Prog, Psych, Baroque Pop snob, and also love the jazz and Hammond B3 stuff from that same era like Pat Martino, early George Benson, all the B3 greats (Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Lonnie Smith, and the rest), Zappa, Soft Machine, King Crimson, The Nice (NOT ELP!), basically anything and everything freaky, sugary, poppy, experimental, Mellotron and/or B3/Rhodes/Wurly piano from the 60s into the early 70s. Ray Davies, Bob and Andy Partridge are my favorite songwriters (yes, and those guys named John and Paul), and of course I’m all ate up with, as Bowie and Ian Hunter put it, “their Beatles and their Stones,” The Who of course, Pink Floyd from 67 to about 72, and so on.

I think a lot of people may know this. Pam and I met Bob, Sarah and much of the GBV family, I’m thinking around 2012 or 2013 at Wings when I was doing a short “happy hour” set there every Friday before we would bee-line to Chappy’s south of town for the 2nd gig of each Friday. Bob and I just struck up a friendship, he coming up and talking with me while I was messing around singing songs, requesting cool, deep tracks and subversive stuff that only he and I would give a shit about, and generally me being what I am essentially, an entertainer.

My point being, aside from making records, which I love to do, I’m definitely a studio rat. I am primarily “A Singer Of Songs.” I love to sing, I love to sing stuff from all styles and eras, from Doris Day or Tony Bennett to Black Sabbath, Merle Haggard, every single song I’ve ever heard from the 60s and early 70s, XTC, and yes, Sir Robert Pollard.

I love faking shit. Off the cuff, all the time. If I’ve heard a song a couple of times, regardless of the style, era, whatever, I can likely do a “Shitty Nick Mitchell” version of it. I never practice; I never have. I’ve never had a single lesson on any instrument, and I never play anything remotely the same way twice, ever. I’m too lazy, and besides, it’s much more fun to just take the risk and go for it I guess. The mistakes and risk taking is charming, right? Part of the act?

Bob would get up on the mic with me, singing Beatles or whatever, and I eventually started surprising him with some of his songs, like “Question Girl Alright,” “Miles Under The Skin,” “Twilight Campfighter,” and others. Eventually he asked me to open some shows on the 2014 tour, and then shortly after that when the classic lineup reunion was winding down Bob was at my house in the studio almost daily from late 2014 through my time on the 2016 tour. That period after the classic lineup wound down was absolutely a huge transitional period for Bob. As it turned out, what a productive transitional period it was for him. Three excellent Ricked Wicky albums (and seven singles) in 8 or 9 months?

Aside from the actual music creation aspect of it, I can say with no ego whatsoever that I am honored Bobby trusted and confided in me while contemplating how to move forward, either doing shows as Ricked Wicky, as Robert Pollard solo touring, or something else, and settling on what was the obvious thing to do, because he always knew what all of us have always known: Robert Pollard is Guided By Voices.

I’ve never directly asked him this, but I’ve always assumed Please Be Honest was very directly a statement of exactly that realization he had as we were creating the RW albums, the Of Course You Are Robert Pollard solo album, and sitting alone together in the studio going over paperwork, touring scenarios, and the rest, because Bob had major decisions that had to be made during that time. And he made the right choices. Of Course He Did.

I don’t take any credit whatsoever for any of that. Bob arrived at the correct decisions on his own, just by being able to talk it through with Sarah, management, other friends, and in my case, someone that he felt comfortable with talking and thinking through all of it, an unbiased friend who would also be part of the core along with Kevin, Mark and BBJ to help facilitate making whatever direction he decided to go possible, successful, creative and fun for him.

It worked.

And then exactly what needed to happen to make it complete happened: Doug standing stage left, where he always belonged. I think it all worked out great for everybody, didn’t it?