Once more, the Pixies

Singer/guitarist Frank Black is well aware that the time during which the Pixies were broken up has treated the band well. When the Pixies split up in 1993, the band had slowly built enough of a fan base to headline theaters and large clubs.

But for the most part, the band’s reputation among other musicians and music critics far outweighed their popularity with music fans.

One key supporter was Kurt Cobain, the late lead singer of Nirvana, who touted the Pixies’ kinetic and inventive blend of punk, rock and surf music as a major inspiration for that band’s hugely popular brand of punkish grunge rock. A host of other acts, such as Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, Radiohead and Weezer, have also sung the praises of the Pixies.

The result has been a mushrooming fan base that discovered the Pixies well after the fact, a larger-than-life image for the band and plenty of clamoring for a reunion that seemed unlikely given the acrimonious circumstances that surrounded Black’s decision to disband the group and start a solo career.

Against that backdrop, it was no wonder that last year’s Pixies reunion was greeted with surprise, delight … and huge expectations.

It was a classic case of a legend becoming bigger than the band itself, and the sell-out arena-size crowds that bought tickets for Pixies shows were tangible evidence of how popular the group had become during their 11 years apart.

Black, in a recent interview, said he and his Pixies bandmates, bassist/singer Kim Deal, guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering, dealt with the anticipation surrounding the reunion the only way they knew how: by ignoring them.

“We didn’t make a big deal out of the band the first time around. We just did what we did,” Black said. “We just hoped that everybody was right as far as the big myth was concerned, and we just did what we did again. We didn’t analyze it. We didn’t make a big deal out of it. We just did our little shtick and everyone seemed satisfied.”

The fact that the Pixies are returning to the road this summer for another run of shows is a good indication that last year’s reunion tour was both an artistic and commercial success.

It’s also reassuring for fans that worried that the volatile chemistry in the Pixies would return and the band’s reunion be a short-lived, one-time event.

Black, who went by the name Black Francis during the Pixies’ original run (his real name is Charles Thompson), said the four band members get along fine these days.

“I think we always did get along, even when there was stress,” Black said. “Now that stress really isn’t there, so we’re able to be cozy and friendly. We used to be cozy and friendly, too, when we first started. But eventually things get messed up. Things happen and people get tired and people start to focus on the stress.”

Still, Black, who after the Pixies breakup released nine albums either as a solo artist or with his backing band, the Catholics, never sounded eager to revisit his Pixies past, continually shooting down any notion that he wanted to put the group back together.

His change of heart, he said, had a lot to do with major changes that had occurred in his personal life. As 2004 loomed, his marriage of 16 years was falling apart, a traumatic experience that prompted Black to move from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore., and go into therapy. He now has a new girlfriend, with whom he had a daughter several months ago.

With so many changes in his life, Black began to gain a new perspective on the Pixies.

“I had the rug pulled out from under me to a certain extent and a whole new life. So everything was just kind of dumped upside down and shaken around,” he said. “OK, it’s kind of a fresh start in your life, so things that didn’t seem good before didn’t seem bad or like a big deal. I could go, ‘Well yeah, I guess I’ve been making a big deal out of this [his Pixies history] for such a long time.’ But you know, you lose something that’s important to you and it tends to put things in perspective. [I started going] ‘Oh man, I’m making a big deal out of nothing. And we got an opportunity to make our families happy financially. So yeah, let’s do it [reunite].”

One of the big questions surrounding the reunion, of course, was whether old tensions would rear their heads again.

In particular, the relationship between Black and Deal (who after the Pixies breakup enjoyed a hit album, Last Splash, with the Breeders) was known to be thorny.

Residual bitterness from the Pixies break-up was also a major source of speculation. In breaking up the band, Black informed his bandmates he was leaving the group by fax, and offered no explanation for his move — something that Black has since expressed some regret over because it didn’t allow Deal, Santiago and Lovering an opportunity for discussion or closure.

In reuniting, though, Black said old issues were set aside and the group decided simply to start again with a clean slate.

“I think if you end something acrimoniously or in a time of stress, when you get back together it’s not so much what maybe caused that stress. It isn’t really about that,” Black said. “But you have to symbolically bury the hatchet, you know what I mean … It’s about being willing to do that, and saying, ‘Hey, it’s cool, whatever. Let’s forget about that.’”

At this point, the Pixies appear to be taking their future one step at a time. Fans undoubtedly hope the band will make a new studio CD, but Black is making no promises or predictions about that, saying the band members will have to be creatively inspired before they would consider recording.

“We won’t make a record because we’re having this wave of success based on the earlier records,” Black said. “We’ve just spent too much time being in between, so we don’t really feel comfortable just saying, ‘Hey, we’re hot again. We better make a record.’ That feels wrong. We just have to kind of start over, and right now we’re too busy playing the old songs to get too involved with starting over.”

In fact, once the Pixies finish touring this summer, Black will turn his attention to promoting and possibly touring behind a new solo CD, Honeycomb, which he recorded in spring 2004 in a four-day session, just before the Pixies went on tour.

The CD, which will be released in July, pairs Black with several legendary session musicians, including guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist David Hood and keyboardist Spooner Oldham. Together, they created a CD that puts Black’s songs in a relaxed, country-tinged roots rock setting — a stark departure from his usual hard rocking sound.

Black said he and the producer of the album, Jon Tiven, had kicked around the idea of doing a CD like Honeycomb for close to a decade before the project actually happened.

“Most of it centered around [Bob Dylan’s] Blonde On Blonde, that concept where the young rocker comes to town and calls up the hot dudes — not the hot L.A. dudes, not the hot New York dudes, but the Nashville guys, who aren’t necessarily country guys, although they do work in that world. But it’s also very rock and roll in a lot of ways,” Black said. “So it’s sort of modeled after that.”