John Vanderslice is one of indie rock’s best kept secrets. While he has gained a substantial, worldwide following since the late-90’s breakup of his band MK Ultra, everyone who experiences one of Vanderslice’s records ends up feeling like his only fan. Perhaps its his reputation as “the nicest guy in rock and roll.” Or maybe it’s his incredibly in-depth and personal website- full of notes, scribbles, diaries, and mp3s- that makes us all go, “Man, maybe we’re the only ones that know about him.”

But, regardless of any percieved obscurity, Vanderslice has had an enormous effect on the independent music industry, both with his music and with his legendary San Francisco analog-based recording studio, Tiny Telephone. A longtime veteran of Seattle’s Barsuk Records, Vanderslice seems to consistently teeter on the edge of mainstream success. But, after the marathon recording sessions for 2005’s Pixel Revolt, his fifth full-length, does widespread acceptance even matter anymore?

I caught up with John during the recording of his next album, due out in Spring of next year, and chatted about the new tracks, the new band, the upcoming Pixel Revolt remix record, and Axl Rose.

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RLF: So you’re headed back to Europe soon for another tour.

JV: Yeah, we’re gonna go to Europe for five weeks.

RLF: I guess the first time was a decent enough experience to warrant a return.

JV: Yeah, we got very lucky because the first two tours we did there, the first one we did was opening up for Nada Surf in Europe and then the second one was opening for Death Cab. The second one was six weeks and that really helped us. We played everywhere and they were very good to us and we played for a lot of people. You know, you can carry over a little bit of that energy into a headlining tour. I mean, it’s not easy. In some ways you’re really starting over again. If you’ve only done two tours in some places, you have a lot of work ahead of you.

RLF: Do you find the American and European audiences different in any way?

JV: Well, you know, I would have said so, just by listening to what people would have said to me in the past couple years about Europe. I would have said so without experiencing. I would have said, “Oh, yeah, of course.” It seems like every band feels that it’s a totally different experience.

I think it’s exactly the same. I think playing in Japan is exactly the same. I think that people are- besides small little quirks, like how they respond in-between songs, whether it’s culturally okay to talk at all when you’re in a club, those are kinda minor things. But, I think, overall, the experience of talking to people after a show or hanging out in a city or interacting with a culture, it’s exactly the same. And I think that that’s beautiful. I think that shows me that there’s a real universal feeling and appreciation about music, and a way of communicating about music. It’s made me feel that there’s, like, an underlying constant in humans, you know? I imagine that people get this all the time just from traveling, but for me, it really happened when I started playing shows in different places.

RLF: Last time you went to Europe, for most of it, you just had Dave Douglas with you on drums.

JV: The last European tour was half with Dave and half with my band. We did that for scheduling reasons. I think that Dave and I preferred to be out with the full band because, it’s, like, a lot less pressure on us. I mean, there’d be some nights where we’d be playing as a duo and there’d be, like, 1,500 people there and it’s very tiring. You kinda step out on this huge stage and you look over at Dave and you’re like, “Fuck, man.” You know? There’s too many people here, you know, for just, like, two of us.

RLF: So you’re taking the full band out there this time?

JV: Yeah, I think that, almost always, we’re gonna be with the band only now. I think that we always wanna be with the band, Dave and I. I’m gonna be touring Australia on my own, though. After Europe, I go to Australia for a couple weeks and I’m gonna be doing that on my own, and that’s only for budget reasons. The label’s, like, paying $2,000 to fly me out there. I mean, it’s incredibly expensive right now to fly.

RLF: Well, this is the most consistent line up you’ve ever had. I’ve seen you on every tour since Time Travel came out and there have been so many different versions of “John Vanderslice live.” You seem to be settling into this new group of guys. What’s that like, now? Are there any pros or cons to doing that?

JV: I would say there’s nothing negative about it. Of course, I was afraid for many years to have same lineup because I felt that there would be a real responsibility that I would have for my players. Because, you know, a lot of the time, you’re not touring. I guess I always wanted people to be busy and doing other things so I didn’t feel… I don’t know… guilty or responsible, I don’t know. I guess that sounds really stupid.

RLF: No, you wanna help people out.

JV: Yeah, you wanna, like, be there for them. I always thought that if I had a permanent band that I would be more or less responsible for everyone and everything when we weren’t touring. But, now we’re touring more and more and it’s clear that every album that we do, it’s gonna be busier and busier, so I guess it doesn’t really matter if we’re on tour or not. There’s always little shows or little things coming up, and then there’s the recording, and those guys are now getting paid for recording. It’s kind of more stable and it works out a little bit more.

I’d say it’s just positive all around. I mean, first off, you can’t- and I knew this for a long time, but- you can’t really gel without playing with someone for a year or so. And when you have the same lineup playing the same songs over a couple of years, it’s really unbelievable what happens. The music becomes more elastic and it really breathes and it has an organic, unconscious quality to it. If people are just kinda figuring out their way through the songs on a tour, then they’re kind of locked into that mode for the whole tour. That’s not really live music, you know? So, we’ve probably played five or six tours together, maybe more, and everyone just kinda knows what they’re doing. It feels a lot more musical and natural to me.

Also, I’m lazy. I don’t wanna rehearse for two weeks before every tour. I mean, we can get together for two or three days and rehearse. Or, we’ve done things where those guys flew out to Europe and met us and we didn’t even rehearse before the tour. We just rehearsed in soundcheck.

I remember Guns ‘N’ Roses saying, like, they made a mistake during some live broadcast, playing some song, and someone asked Axl Rose about what had happened. He said, “Well, we don’t rehearse.” And he said, “After a point, you just stop rehearsing.” And I thought, just the balls of this dude to be playing a stadium show for 60,000 people and they don’t even have the patience to get into a room for, like, two hours before the show to go over stuff. I thought that was pretty great.

RLF: You’re recording the new record with the full band, which is also new, right?

JV: Yeah, that’s very new for me.

RLF: How diplomatic is this process now? You’ve had people collaborating with you, from Scott Solter to John Darnielle, on past records. How much input does the band have on the record?

JV: In the beginning, they do way more than I do. Actually, as we’ve been tracking this stuff, I am very often not playing an instrument while we’re tracking. We’ll rehearse the song at my house a few times, and then we’ll go in the studio with Scott, and maybe I’ll be playing electric piano or acoustic guitar or electric guitar just while we’re rehearsing it in the studio. And, then, at some point, I’ll stop playing and then, just, you know, absolutely focus with Scott on the performance of the basic tracks, which is usually Wurlitzer, bass, and drums. Or, it could be piano, bass, and drums. Only later do I get involved, and that’s been incredible. It’s almost like Scott and I are tag-teaming in production on the tracks themselves. When we go into overdub mode, whoever wants to play anything can just chime in. That’s been a pretty amazing way to record. The basic tracks so far have been really wonderful.

We have four tracks finished and, to me, they’re really different. They sound really different from any of the other albums. It sounds like there’s a band in a room.

RLF: Your confidence seems to have been growing with every record you put out. On Pixel Revolt, you seemed more confident than ever, especially vocally. Are you feeling better and better every time you go into the studio for a new record?

JV: That’s Scott really making me sing better and play better, and just making the albums better. Especially with singing. Scott’s had a lot to do with finding the right microphones for me to use, and also, you know, really getting me to stand back from the microphone and actually, in many ways, deliver the vocals as if I’m standing back from the microphone. It’s not as much of an immediate sell. He wants me to sing more patiently and be more open and a little bit more relaxed and “ballady” throughout the whole record, and you can hear that. That’s the biggest jump from Cellar Door to Pixel, is that the vocal delivery is so much more relaxed. The album feels different because of that, and that’s Scott. You know, he’s very smart with that stuff.

RLF: With all the attention that Pixel Revolt got, which is more than your past records, with all the tours and the videos and everything, do you feel any sort of pressure or anticipation from anyone while making this new album?

JV: This is the most bizarre thing that ever happened to me. My whole life, I just wanted to have that kind of pressure on me. You know what I mean? Like, I really worked for it. You know, I toured and, basically, my booking agent- my first booking agent ever, Adam, and I- we kind of worked together so closely, he eventually became my manager. We’ve really made a lot of decisions to kind of build everything up so everyone can get paid and it’s more of a substantial thing every album.

But, man, it’s weird, some days- not always, but some days- this process bleeds the fun. I know this has been said probably so many times, and I never understood it until the past couple years. But this process just absolutely bleeds all the life and love out of this enterprise. It’s really strange. You do start to feel… I’m not sure about pressure, because this will be my sixth album coming out. I’ve been doing it so long. I never, like, came out of the gate where anyone cared. It was like a slow building, every album. That, I think, is really helpful. That’s healthy progress because nothing’s too sudden. And, also, if you get slightly bigger with each record, that’s easier to take than kinda blowing up and then getting smaller with each record, which can happen. I imagine that would really fuck with your ego.

RLF: That makes sense that some band would just come out of nowhere and then feel this sort of pressure to perform with every record. But, more and more people catch on to your music with each album that comes out, and they’ve got a whole back catalog of stuff to go rummaging through while they’re waiting for something else.

JV: It’s a more stable fan base. That’s the Mountain Goats approach. He taught me a lot just by me watching what he did and how he did it. He was my model from the beginning. Make a record, tour, make a record, tour, and don’t look back. Be super, super productive and very true to your own ideals. I mean, his new album is insanely good and it’s so different than anything he’s done. He was my model from the get-go.

But, like with Darnielle and a lot of other people I know, when all the sudden you know you have manager who is making a percentage of his income from what you do, it becomes more and more of a business. Tiny Telephone is a business, but that’s clearly a business. I opened it as a business. You never imagined that you would actually be deciding to tour because you wanted people to get paid, you know what I mean? Now the economic factors get mixed in. I would say that it has a very corrosive and polluting effect.

I’m really not quite sure about what I’m gonna do about it, but I’ve been thinking about it. I mean, I know why people just stop doing this and I know why they just disappear. I wanna be in love with doing it, and I wanna reclaim the love that I had when I first started fourtracking and recording. I wanna find that again. I know I can, I just gotta figure it out.

RLF: So maybe it’s the business itself that’s, you know, evil, not these major labels that indie musicians get so scared of.

JV: Yeah, what’s weird is that I’m an Econ major. I love business. I’m not conflicted. I mean, I’m a capitalist. I do own a profitable business, so that’s not it. I can’t explain why it’s taking the fun out. It’s not that, like, deep inside I’m socialist and I’m upset that I have to sell my art. I don’t really care about that at all. I’ve never had conflicting feelings about that. But, there’s something about the grind of it. You can see that there’s this cyclical motion to making records, and then it really has less and less to do with you just being super inspired and more with that there’s an album cycle that has to be fulfilled, you know?

RLF: Did that have anything to do with the different recordings of Pixel Revolt? You had the studio versions of the songs, you had the live band versions of the songs- which were really different- and then you had Suddenly It All Went Dark. Was that a conscious reaction to the album cycle?

JV: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Suddenly It All Went Dark was a reaction against making a record over nine months. I mean, talk about a loveless affair. You’re trying to create a baby and it’s not like passionate love. It’s just like mind-numbing sex every day for nine months. You know what I mean?

So, Suddenly It All Went Dark was, we went into the studio for one eight hour recording session and made a record. We did it straight through, and that process was amazing. It was so fun. I guess part of it is that when you’re making records over so long of a period, you don’t really have the joy of creation anymore. It’s too long of a period. You don’t really wanna even engage with the album after that period. I mean, it’s difficult for me to listen to Pixel Revolt because of that. Because it was so micro-managed and micro-recorded. I have no issues with the record, I love the way we made it. And Scott’s treatment of my music and lyrics, that was the right decision. But, that’s a long period of time to make a 54 minute record.

RLF: So, basically, you’d make a really bad filmmaker.

JV: You know, actually I think, some days, that I would make a bad filmmaker and some days I think, man, I should have gotten into film. You know, I’m really actually toying with the idea of just getting a simple video camera and making some, like, nonsensical art movies on tour and putting some music to them and posting them on the web. I think that would be really, really fun.

RLF: Well, speaking of the web, you’ve gotta be one of the most mp3 friendly artists out there, even in the independent community. Do you see a direct benefit in doing that, putting out that amount of music out there for people to hear?

JV: I think that I do see a benefit. The thing is, I definitely do it because of my philosophy. Like, I just lean towards open source and full disclosure. I’m the kind of guy that, I do think that recording notes and tour diaries and, you know, notes on songs and talking about lyrics… I would rather have someone feel comfortable explaining what they do and putting up live tracks. I don’t feel like I need to hide to prevent people from understanding what I do. That’s part of the mp3 thing, I just think it’s more, like, supplemental material.

Also, I think, the reason why I’m doing this is because I like making music. It’s not that the thrill is actually the sale of the music. That’s just something that has to happen for this to be a full-time job. The thrill is making the music. So, for me, mp3 is a pretty efficient way of getting out music.

I think that- this is not confirmed- but, the remix album of Pixel is going to go up on the web for free. I can’t totally confirm that. But it is so good. It is incredibly good.

RLF: I was gonna ask about it, cause I’d heard about it over a year ago now and I wasn’t sure if it was going to come out since you’ve started on the new record.

JV: I think it’s gonna be out on the web for free. And the reason why we’re taking so long is that Scott is making, like, a really top-level remix album. I mean, it is so good, and he spent a long time doing it. I think that we’re gonna put it up in compressed and uncompressed formats on the web with supplemental materials. And I think that it actually might not actually come out until January when we roll out the new website. So, really, everything’s gonna start happening in the beginning of next year.

RLF: Well, I gotta be honest with you, as much as I love Cellar Door, I actually listen to MGM Endings more often now.

JV: Yeah. I listen to it all the time. I think it’s incredible. I mean, that’s Scott. I had very little to do with that.

And the new remix, I think it’s gonna be called Paxil Revolt, I think. It’s just unbelievable what he’s done. Now, it’s not for everyone. It’s abstract and kind of like laptop glitch. In some ways, what Scott is doing is taking what he’s learned from people like Jacob Kirkegaard and Pole and these Touch Records guys that he loves so much- they’re all, like, laptop guys- and he’s doing that and rephrasing that in an analog way. He’s rearranging and cutting and distorting and deconstructing on analog tape, which is creating something, I think, totally new. It’s very, very interesting what he’s doing.

RLF: Well, with everything you’re talking about going on next year, you also have the 10th anniversary of Tiny Telephone, don’t you?

JV: Yeah, I was just thinking about that the other day. That’ll be next September. There’ll be the 10th anniversary, and we gotta do something special for that.

RLF: What have you learned in ten years of running a recording studio, especially something as specialized and analog focused as Tiny Telephone?

JV: I’ve learned that equipment is very important. The means of production and the gear that you have is as integral to what you make as anything else. I mean, it’s completely tied into the content of the music. It’s been the most important thing for me to own this studio, to really, like, kind of set the path for my records. I think I would be making completely different records without the studio. Now, they might be better, they might be worse, but I just know that they would be very different albums.

I’ve also learned that becoming obsessed with craft like I did- probably much more so a couple years ago than now- and with kinda the hobbyist’s angle of collecting gear is that it can be very, very damaging from a financial point of view. In many ways, the story of my past especially seven years has been obsessive collecting of instruments and recording gear. It’s definitely compromised other parts of my life, for sure. Like, all fatalistic hobbyists, like baseball card collectors or stamp collectors or anything else, there is an enormous amount of resource drain that goes into that. I just wonder what I could have done with all that money.

RLF: I know it’s sort of a stupid question to ask people sometimes, but in another ten years, where would you like to be? Can you see yourself doing something similar or different from what you’re doing now? Where would you like to be headed?

JV: I would say that if I could, ten years from now, have made eight or nine albums and be playing with the same guys and be making albums with Scott and be living in the same house and be making the records out of Tiny Telephone and have Adam as my manager and have Barsuk as my label, everything remaining the same, then that is total success. Because that means that the thing that I’m spending my time on and my energy on is the content of the music and in making interesting albums. So, I hope that, in many ways, everything is exactly the same. I’m pretty happy now. I think that what I need to do is to make good records. I don’t think that anything else really needs to change.