Way Cool Music - Musician Interviews

John Vanderslice

Sometimes you come across an artist who is doing very interesting things and is making a quiet, almost unheard, buzz through the industry. When you finally take the time to listen, you wonder how someone so prolific could not be on the tips of everyone’s tongues. That’s how I feel about John Vanderslice. Although friends have been speaking of him for years, he’s somehow been under my radar. That all changed with the release of his latest CD ‘Pixel Revolt.’ That effort made me take notice of all that he’s been doing, including maintaining a studio, attracting clients like Death Cab for Cutie, Nada Surf, The Mountain Goats, and Matt Nathanson. We recently had a chance to sit down with John and talk about touring, analog recording, and the importance of rap music

Way Cool:

John, tell us about your background.

John Vanderslice:

Well, I grew up in Gainesville, Florida and I was an absolute product of the rural south, the northern Florida swamps with alligators, Swanee River and Fanning Springs. I think that when I go back there, I remember something about me, for better or worse. I think it’s made me mellower because I came from a sleepy, southern, super polite, structured, familial background. I always felt insecure because we moved up to Maryland and, for a long time, I felt like I was this white hick. The thing is that I was, probably, which is great. I think that anything that’s destabilizing to your ego is fantastic. I think it’s great. I think it probably helped me to have a little bit of an oddball upbringing.

WC:

How old were you when you moved?

JV:

When I was 11. I had buckteeth and I had an accent. I think whenever you have a dual identity, it can work in your favor. Now it doesn’t seem to be that important, but at the time, it really was.

WC:

Let’s talk a little about your latest CD, Pixel Revolt, which is really different from your previous CDs. It’s much more autobiographical, and sometimes just brutally honest. What’s been the reaction to that?

JV:

It’s been pretty intense so far. The shows have been really good. I think that whenever you strip away the veneer and directly go at your audience and open a clear line of communication, it amplifies everything. The emails I get now are a little more intense and probing, and maybe a little more overwhelming because they are more connected to me. So I think it’s good. I don’t know how much more I want to go into my own life, though. You know what I mean? It’s an uncomfortable thing because then you’re singing about it and you’ve immortalized these fleeting feelings. Sometimes I look back and think, “Did I really feel that way?” I can go back to the songs and see, “Yes, I did.” It’s a cyclical thing.

WC:

Was it a conscious decision or were you just ready to write about things that were more autobiographical?

JV:

I think it was a decision. I had done so many far-flung narrators and so many war narratives. I watched (John) Darnielle (Mountain Goats) do The Sunset Tree, which was his first autobiographical CD out of nine full-lengths. He kinda emboldened me. He said, “Dude, you have to write about your family and your father.” There are songs like ‘Family Tree’ that are strictly autobiographical and there are other songs that are on my records that are. But, there have never been so many on one CD. For the first time ever, I didn’t dodge that they were components of my own life. Even on this record, like ‘Plymouth Rock’ and ‘Exodus Damage,’ even when there was an outsider narrative going on, I was still with those characters. It might have been about something else. So, that mentor in ‘Exodus Damage’ might seem like a Timothy McVeigh stand-in, but he’s not. I really was thinking of someone else. I think about that and I wonder what I'm going to do next. I just wonder… it seems like I should just continue to strip away those layers of veneer and primer.

WC:

Does that make you feel vulnerable because you started to reveal that?

JV:

I thought it would. But, what makes me feel vulnerable is headlining shows and touring all the time. As a touring musician, you’re very exposed. People can get at you on stage; they can get to you after a show. They can just get at you… message boards, email… It’s constant probing and poking. That’s what makes me feel vulnerable.

And there’s a lot of money involved, there’s a lot of business. I tour with a killer crew, but they are rightfully expensive. This is a traveling business; it’s like a traveling moving company/vaudeville review. You get fucking lonely on tour! That there are not more drugs and there’s not more promiscuity and bizarre behavior, it’s an absolute miracle. From a mental stability standpoint, I’m very conservative about what I do on the road. I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. These guys hit it every night and I never go out. I go back to my room and I email my girlfriend and I’m really centered, taking care of business and contacting my family back home. Yet I’m still so adrift, even though I’m trying to anchor myself as much as I can, it just gets crazy. It’s a stand-in for manic depression and it just fuels a lot of… if you have even minor neuroses, it can amp them up.

WC:

Obviously, there are certain songs on Pixel Revolt where San Francisco is the back-drop. What lead to San Francisco being such a huge part of this CD?

JV:

I guess because I started thinking about jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and I thought, “Wow! It really is such an important location.” It’s an art deco masterpiece. It’s a metaphysical bridge and it means something to everybody. You cross it all the time and if you are transcendent and happy and a realized human being, you’re probably having those feelings when you’re driving across. If not, you’re probably thinking that you’re going to jump off. They had a camera set up over the summer where they were filming everyone who jumped off. This was a huge controversy because they got clearance for this art project. They understate all the suicides because they don’t want to fuel anything, but it happens all the time.

My ex-girlfriend, Terri Olson, who’s really close to me, I really wanted to write a love song to her. We went out for five years and we broke up last year. I really wanted to write a song to her and that was about her and it had to be placed in San Francisco; that’s ‘New Zealand Pines.’

I’m so ambivalent about San Francisco on so many levels. It’s a town that’s been wrecked by sheer economics, through no fault of its own. It’s a great town in lots of ways, but it got very unlucky to be so close to Silicone Valley. If Silicone Valley were two hours away, it would be a totally different city. It never would have lost its weirdo-art-camp feel, which it lost five or six years ago. It’s criminally expensive and it’s getting worse. It’s so expensive and it’s so fucked up. It’s like a rich kid, drug addict, trust fund world.

WC:

You’ve mentioned that John (Darnielle) and Scott (Solter) have contributed so much to this record. Talk a little about the collaboration with them.

JV:

Scott has been my engineer for a long time. We started to work together on Time Travel and in many ways I felt that he took responsibility for what I was doing in a way that no one else did. I got on his radar and he started criticizing me intensely in the most creative and loving way. He paid attention and said, “These are what your shortcomings are. This is great about what you are doing. And this is what you could do.” At first I didn’t agree, but slowly he won me over. We did a lot of touring together. He got to be a better engineer and I got to be a better singer and songwriter. We pulled each other up.

He was very important for this record and my singing style changing; and me withdrawing and being a little more patient and thoughtful and a little less shouty. It’s not good or bad, but we like to change just to keep ourselves moving and to keep things from getting too stable. So, Scott will make a suggestion to do things… “Let’s not use any distortion on this record.” He doesn’t have to say, “Because we used a lot of distortion last time.” I know what he means. And I know that we might return to sheer saturation next time, it’s just that we keep moving. It keeps us a little off balance and concentrating on figuring out how to make the next record. He’s a very intellectual person. He’s changed my records and that’s why I give him such gratitude on the album. And I pay him a shitload of money.

And Darnielle is the man. My first solo show I ever played was with Darnielle. He’s my guy. We keep each other sane and we support each other. He’s on tour and he calls me when he’s losing it.

WC:

You mentioned your changing singing style, which is very unique. Did that happen in the writing process or in the studio?

JV:

I think it happened in the studio. I started doing vocal takes and Scott and I rented microphones to decide what different ones do to my voice. We ended up using a '50s U47; it’s a beautiful and sensitive mic worth about 6 or 7 grand, so I could never own one.

WC:

A lot of musicians talk about how other artists have influenced them, like Nirvana or The Beatles or Elvis Costello. I’m really curious how rap music has influenced your music.

JV:

The writing in rap music is usually more direct narrative. It’s more up to the second. After 9/11, there were all these hip hop records that came out talking directly about 9/11, about the war on terror, about the war in Iraq. You just don’t see that in other areas. You see a lag time in indie rock that’s a little professorial; it’s a little aloof. In the best lyrics that hip hop has to offer, you’d have to be a numb nut to not pay attention. I’m a lyrics person and I get my fix wherever. It could be Trisha Yearwood, I don’t care. I just need the wordplay and intense thoughts. And the scanning… I was listening to The Eminem Show yesterday and some of the beats and cross rhythms… he’s flipping the beat and will come back to it. Just from the rhythmic point of view, forgetting the lyrics and wordplay, if you start counting the measures and how highly developed he is just on the rhythmic level, it’s incredible. Or the humor that you get in MF Doom and the sheer shock value in the Mortal Technique or 50 Cent, who was I listening to yesterday and just couldn’t believe what they were saying. Maybe the first half of The Game CD is so interesting. I would say that about 50% of what I listen to now is hip hop. Some of it is super commercial. I like a lot of Dr Dre’s stuff. I listen to Outkast and Missy (Eliot) and R. Kelly. I just think that a lot of the default in hip hop is that the artist has a persona. But, there is a good chunk of autobiographical stuff in there, with the persona laid on top. It’s expected that there will be a story and you’re expected to listen to the words and that’s beautiful. I don’t know Interpol, but I don’t think that when people buy their records, it’s expected that they will tear off the wrapping to read the lyrics. There’s something about hip hop that’s so direct that the first thing you do is tune in.

Or like Naz. There’s some stuff on The Lost Tapes that he put out a few years ago… There are some stories about his childhood, some really sentimental stories of him growing up. If you’re not floored, then I could never have a chance of communicating with that person. For me, hip hop is huge. I think that it’s tough now to make music and not pay attention to hip hop. There’s just so much coming out of that genre.

WC:

At what point did you decide to open your own studio (Tiny Telephone)?

JV:

I probably made the decision about three years before I actually did it, so that would be 11 years ago. I knew that I would never be able to make the kind of records I wanted to make unless I opened my own studio. We got a rehearsal space that we kind of knew we could convert into the studio. We held on to it for a couple of years and slowly put a co-op together to build the studio. I needed a place to camp out. I needed to use the studio extensively, and to do that you need to know the studio.

WC:

Why the decision just to be analog rather than digital?

JV:

That didn’t happen in the beginning. That happened later. I had a lot of experience with digital workstations. One of my best friends works at ProTools Digital Design and he got me a deluxe system from the get-go. I was very hopeful. I had nothing to lose. Most people are very invested in their pro-digital statements because they’ve spent a lot of money on it. I came from a very unique position because I had a studio that had a lot to gain financially by offering two formats. I was in a position to make more money if I accepted digital into my life and business. I also had a very easy in because of my friend who worked at ProTools, which at the time was becoming dominant format. Now, without question, it’s the only thing that matters. But, I knew the truth about digital. I was radicalized because I was hearing about it every day. I was hearing the difference every day. I’m not an engineer, I own the studio. So, I would go in with a different perspective. I would walk into the control room and say, “Wow. This is really brittle. It’s almost painful to listen to.” I was in a different position than most people. I didn’t really care about the money. I wanted to be true to my own sonic philosophy. I grew up listening to classic English and American records of the ‘60s. Those were some the best sounding records ever made. Standards have dropped significantly in 30 or 40 years.

So, I got radicalized and became anti-digital, but I never started that way. It started because I heard the difference and I became disgusted with all the bullshit I was hearing from engineers because they were making shitloads of money by accepting digital. They were able to control the bands, have more creative input in the bands, and make more money. I just thought that was disgusting. They would all admit in closed rooms that it was shit. They knew. It’s gotten a little better, but it still sucks.

HD and ProTools are still in my studio every week; it’s just that I won’t allow it to stay. It’s not wired in my studio. If you want it, you have to bring it in. If they ask, “What do you think of digital?” I say, “Dude, look at my site. I hate ProTools; it’s the work of the devil. Read it. I don’t care. My studio is booked 24/7 so I don’t really care. To be honest, I love you and I love your band, but if you record on computers, you’re puss-ifying your band.” It saps all of the sex, all of the life, all of the organic feeling out of a recording. 70 years went into perfecting analog. Digital will be great some day, but it’s not great now.

WC:

But, surely you understand that for the musician who can’t afford to go into a studio or who wants to record in their home, that’s their only choice?

JV:

Absolutely. The way I see it is that I’m like the owner of a hospital. All I can do is say, “Listen, if you’re coming to this hospital, I would recommend this doctor and this course of action for your heart disease because (a different) action might shorten your life. Or this machine.” So if someone is calling from Buenos Aires and they’re like, “I make $30 a month and I can’t make it to your hospital,” I think “Dude, stay alive. Do whatever you can.” The same goes for those struggling musicians.

But, there are tons of bands that come into Tiny Telephone who are there paying the fee and they have no concept that there’s a difference between formats. It’s almost like the dialog hasn’t begun. If someone comes in and says that they know the argument and know the difference and want to record on digital, that’s fine. I respect that.

There used to be a lot more cynicism about what the pro-audio lobby was jamming down your throats. They’re making consumer junk. It’s designed to break and it doesn’t sound good. If you want a flat-screen TV and you’re just watching cable, that’s cool. But, when you’re making a record that’s going to sell 20,000 copies or 2,000 copies or 100,000 copies, you’re projecting your own laziness onto a lot of ears for thousands of hours. So, it’s important.

WC:

I think it’s in our psyche that the latest technology is the best.

JV:

Definitely. And there’s a tremendous amount of money in the digital lobby to get people to buy stuff without asking basic questions about usefulness and sonic quality. There are so many ways to subvert the sound of a band and to make things sound horrible and once you get attuned to the sound of crappy recording… I love fucked up home recordings, I’m all about it. A lot of the stuff I listen to has tons of microphones and tons of weird shit and tons of digital. But all things being equal, I own a studio, so I have to have an opinion about this. I have to be very vocal and transparent. Otherwise it’s just deceitful.

WC:

On the other hand, you offer so many MP3s online and you use the Internet.

JV:

Digital is beautiful and fantastic for that. The thing is that we’re talking about maximizing what we have. The only way to get free music from a server is to digitize it and compress it as an MP3. There are a million ways to do that and what I do on my site is suggest ways to set your MP3 converter to get the best sound. I also have tons of high res stuff on my site, as high res as I can get without overloading my server. If I’m going to photocopy a chapter for you, I’m either going to do it at 10% where the pages are crooked and hard to read, or I can try to do it nice on good paper and good ink with a quality copier. It’s the same with MP3s. It may not be perfect, but it’s the best we can do right no.

WC:

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear in your studio that you just love, that you’re most proud to own?

JV:

There’s a Hammond B3 that’s great. That organ has been around since the late ‘30s. It has a mythic quality. It’s an American invention and it sounds like an American instrument. I have a lot of old ‘40s PA heads that were used to power a roller rink band and we’ve converted them to be guitar amplifiers and they sound unlike anything else. I have a lot of tape delays. We use quarter inch tape decks as tape delays by using the difference between the play and record head to send stuff back in a feedback loop. We have an old plate reverb from the ‘60s in West Germany, an old EMT plate. That’s one of my favorite things in the world. That’s like the Radiohead reverb sound. It’s beautiful.

WC:

You’ve mentioned before about your voice problems in ‘90s. Tell us about that.

JV:

I tore my vocal cord and I probably never fully covered the range and resonance of my voice. I took classical vocal lessons for six years and had to stop to go into vocal rehab. It actually changed my entire life. It fucked me up. A lot of people damage their vocal cords and never come back. It took me a long time. If you ask my band mates what my problems are on tour, they’d say stuff like: He doesn’t talk in the van. He has to leave right after the show. He is constantly being neurotic about his voice. But, my voice is always on the edge of going out. I’ll never fully recover. I can compensate, but it won’t be the same.

WC:

We like to end interviews with a game we call "7 Questions."

1.	What's the worst job you've ever had?
	When I was in high school, I was hired by a mountain bike store in Maryland to put together the bikes for the floor. That was the worst job. I think I overstated my mechanical abilities. They had a photo and I was down in a basement and I had to put together these bikes. I think I was operating at 1/5 of the speed they needed me to. It was horrible.

2.	What's your favorite movie quote or song lyric?
	I like that Bob Dylan line, “If my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” That probably sums up my life.

3.	Who would you want to star in the movie of your life?
	I wish Billy Crudup would. I think he’s a really underrated actor.

4.	What's your favorite TV theme song?
	The first 4 or 5 episodes of Twin Peaks were so powerful for me that when I hear those sounds, it recalls memories of my brother and me trying to figure out the plot and sinking to this magical soap opera.

5.	If you were a superhero, what would your name be?
	Heroic Doses. That’s also the name of a great instrumental band.

6.	What do you want to be when you grow up?
	I want to be normal. I want to be stable. And I want to have children. And I want to own a house. And I want to be a normal person. I mean, I don’t want to do normal things, like go to a job. I don’t want to stop being a musician and having an unusual skill set and interesting people in my life. I just want to have the stability of what a normal American family would have. It’s just very hard for me to calm down and settle down. I envy people who can do that because I honestly think I would be happier if I could do that.

7.	Finally, why are there so many songs about rainbows?
	I think you’re hard-pressed to find a better metaphor for hope and happiness. It’s like Writing 101 that after rainfall, things are gonna clear up. I’ve seen many rainbows that never changed anything.

To find out more information about John Vanderslice, visit his website at www.johnvanderslice.com.