An Interview with John Vanderslice
Words: Susie Ulrey

Yes, Mr. Vanderslice is nice - but that word alone can’t possibly encompass his offerings to music and recording. Talking to him was less like an interview and more like a laid-back chat with someone I’ve known for years.

REAX: The biggest upside to being a one-man show is that you have creative control over everything that you’re doing, but when you want to go out and tour as a full band then you have to piece a band together.
JV: Oh yeah, it’s like being a swinger as opposed to being married. Laughs There are all kinds of unintended and sometimes depressing consequences. Sometimes you really connect with someone musically, and they’re too busy for you to hold them.

REAX: It’s funny that you talk about being a swinger, because playing in a band is a lot like being in a relationship. But sometimes it's way more complicated because there are more people involved.
JV: It’s a fake democracy. I’ve been around a lot of bands and sometimes they wear it well - it’s an elegant power structure - and other times it’s really unpleasant because there are a couple of strong-arm people. 

REAX: You also have a power struggle if there’s more than one songwriter so, the appeal of being a solo artist - was that a conscious decision?
JV: Yeah, it was conscious. I was in a band for five years and I really, I loved my bandmates. But the whole situation is so difficult to navigate because you really don’t have the freedom to make a decision. Literally everything goes to committee and it’s so boring and slow-moving. I delegate a lot now. There’s tons of stuff that just happens and I don’t even worry about it. I think that I just needed more control. The band would meet and talk about stuff as much as we played music.

REAX: The flip side to that, don’t you think, is that you have to have a lot of motivation to get things done yourself? Otherwise, you can get really complacent about writing songs and recording.
JV: Well the best way to fight that complacency is to buy a house in San Francisco, and then you will be so desperate to make money all the time you will stay up nights thinking about how to make things work. Laughs There’s always a way to be in a terrible predicament, to force yourself to work extraordinarily hard and unfortunately I’m living in a city where the overhead is just ridiculous.

REAX: When you write do you sit down and say, 'OK, I’m writing songs for my next album,' or is it more of an organic process?
JV: There might as well be a time clock. Not to say that there’s no inspiration, because there has to be, or there’s no song. But I have to sit in front of my desk with a stack of blank paper for four or five hours a day for months on end. I wrote a lot of songs last year - like, 27 songs, which is a lot for me because I don’t work super fast. It was a disciplined, work-week kind of thing. I would be down in my basement room where I have a few pieces of recording gear. There were many days that I didn’t want to be down there and there were days that I felt really lucky to be down there and have the time to work.

REAX: You recorded the demos at home but you recorded the album in a studio?
JV: Actually, I recorded about, maybe, one third of the record at home, and then I brought it into the studio I own, Tiny Telephone, and made the record with Scott Solter, who’s been my producer/engineer for six albums in a row.  

REAX: Analog vs. digital?
JV: I know it sounds really pompous and pretentious but analog just sounds more handmade. It’s a craftier kind of medium. They haven’t really sussed out digital converters yet, and I say this as a guy who’s spent an enormous amount of money on digital recording gear, so I’m not just Monday-morning quarterbacking. 

REAX: When you were writing Romanian Names did you approach it with a theme?
JV: I didn’t think about any overarching themes or narratives. I’ve done that with many records in the past, and I tried to look at this one as each song standing on its own. If there were any thematic connections it would have to do with key signatures or melodies or approaches to background vocals. To me, that was the thing that started to unify the songs.  Also, a tremendous amount of vocal processing and really tight, compressed song structures - the songs in general are very short. I guess I shifted my focus more toward melody and singing and music and away from lyrics. 

REAX: How do you feel when people describe you with terms like “indie innovator” or “sonic technician”?
JV: Well I don’t really pay attention to any of that. It sounds really disingenuous when anyone says anything like this, but they could be talking about someone else. I just don’t have that kind of stake in the game in that way. I guess I just don’t care. Laughs I mean, this is my seventh record. At some point you just do your own thing, and sometimes people slam you. Also, I gotta say that getting slammed is so much more exciting to me. There’s something exciting about being threatened that way. People don’t slam stuff that doesn’t mean something to them. I don’t know; I find it exhilarating.

Romanian Names comes out May 19 on Dead Oceans. John Vanderslice will be on tour in the U.S. throughout the summer.

johnvanderslice.com