John Vanderslice (born May 22, 1967) is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and recording engineer. He is the owner and founder of Tiny Telephone, an analog recording studio with locations in San Francisco Mission District and North Oakland. He has released ten full-length studio albums and five remix records and EPs on Dead Oceans and Barsuk Records and has collaborated with musicians such as the Mountain Goats, St. Vincent, and Spoon.[1][2][3][4][5]
Vanderslice grew up in rural North Florida before his family moved to Maryland when he was 11. In 1989, he graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Maryland, where he also studied art history. Vanderslice moved to San Francisco in 1990. While supporting himself as a waiter, Vanderslice took classes at University of California, Berkeley, with the intention of becoming an English teacher. Vanderslice then spent five years as a member of the experimental band Mk Ultra, with whom he released three albums in the 1990s. The last of these, The Dream Is Over, received a 9.2 from Pitchfork.[7]
In 2000, Vanderslice released his first solo album, Mass Suicide Occult Figurines, and briefly gained some national media attention for the single "Bill Gates Must Die" after concocting a hoax in which Microsoft supposedly threatened legal action over the song; Vanderslice had trouble manufacturing the CD because the artwork resembled that of a Windows installation disc, and at least one manufacturer was wary of legal action.[10] During the controversy, he was interviewed by Spin, Wired, and the San Francisco Chronicle.[11]
Many songs on the 2005 album Pixel Revolt referenced the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq War and were more overtly political in their lyrical content. The album earned an 8.3 rating on Pitchfork and was cited for its "meticulous arrangements" with "everything in its right place", and declared an "excellent album".[12] The album's ending resolves the narrator's struggles with acute depression ("Dead Slate Pacific") and suicidal thoughts ("The Golden Gate") with a love song to psychotropic drugs ("CRC 7173, Affectionately").
The title of Vanderslice's 2007 album, Emerald City, references both the nickname of the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and the name of the city in The Wizard of Oz. He has said about the album: "I was so beaten down after the 2000 election and after 9/11 and then the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan; I was so depleted as a person after all that stuff happened, that I had to write my way out of it. I really had to write political songs because for me it is a way of making sense and processing what is going on."[13]Emerald City achieved a score of 82/100 on Metacritic.[14]Entertainment Weekly called the album "a gleaming gem" that doesn't disappoint.[15]Billboard's review of the record called Vanderslice an "always perceptive lyricist".[16] Calling Vanderslice a "master story-teller", Matt Fink of Paste said that Emerald City was "vividly imagined yet subtle in tone, with conflicted character sketches unfolding around somber synth melodies, creaky electronic effects, and fuzzy acoustic guitar strums."[17]
In 2009, with Romanian Names, Vanderslice broke away from overtly political lyrical content characteristic of previous albums and turned his focus to personal reflections on romance and a modern person’s relationship to the natural landscape.[18][19] Maintaining his commitment to fully analog production, Vanderslice recorded guitar and piano tracks for this album in his analog basement studio of his San Francisco home. He completed further instrumentation and production at his own Tiny Telephone recording studio with producer Scott Solter.[20]
In 2010, Vanderslice released a free EP called Green Grow The Rushes.[21]
A full album, White Wilderness, was released on January 25, 2011, on Dead Oceans. Here, Vanderslice forwent his usual meticulous process of manipulating and heavily over-dubbing tracks in the recording studio, in favor a pared-down production style.[22] He recorded the album live with Minna Choi and the 19-member Magik*Magik Orchestra, the house orchestra of Tiny Telephone, in three days at Berkeley’s historically-renowned Fantasy Studios. Vanderslice wrote acoustic versions of each song, while Choi wrote all orchestral arrangements. The collaboration resulted in a looser sound that maintained the structural complexity and pop sensibility of Vanderslice’s previous songwriting.[23] Lyrically, Vanderslice reflects on his trajectory as a musician and performer and draws inspiration from the California landscape. "The Piano Lesson" recounts early memories of learning to play the piano as a child, while "After It Ends" imagines a performer destroying and escaping his venue at the end of a show. The romping "Convict Lake" is an autobiographical account of an overdose on LSD during a camping trip at this Sierra Nevada, California, lake.[24] It was produced and recorded by John Congleton.[25]
In January 2012, Vanderslice left his record contract with Dead Oceans. He created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to start his own label and reached his $18,500 goal within hours of starting the campaign,[26] which ultimately resulted in his ninth album, Dagger Beach.[27]
Self Portrait
With Dagger Beach, Vanderslice pushed experimentation with analog production techniques to the forefront of his songwriting. For some songs, including "Harlequin Press" and "Damage Control", he tried to avoid familiar song structures by writing over improvised drum parts played by longtime collaborator Jason Slota. On the album, Vanderslice revisits the theme of navigating the California landscape as a metaphor for personal relationships: “Raw Wood” reflects on solo camping in Wildcat camp of Point Reyes National Park, while “North Coast Rep” describes a disintegrating friendship by way of a found photograph of the Sonoma, California, landscape.
In conjunction with Dagger Beach, Vanderslice released his own full cover version of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs. The idea for the cover album came in August 2012, when Vanderslice performed Diamond Dogs in full at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, followed by a screening of Michel Gondry's cult classic, The Science of Sleep. After intensive rehearsing for a single show with a limited audience, Vanderslice decided to channel his creative efforts with Bowie's original material into an entire cover version of the album. It was released on limited edition vinyl in June 2013.[28] Using the original album as a backbone to experiment and improvise in the recording studio with collaborators, Vanderslice altered lyrics, song structures, chord progressions, and titles of many of the songs.[29]
With full control of the production and distribution of his self-released albums and a commitment to quality control, Vanderslice had both Dagger Beach and Diamond Dogs pressed on 200-gram vinyl by audiophile Quality Record Pressings plant. In response to widespread music file sharing and in an effort to control sound quality of distributed files, he has made high-quality music files of many self-released songs freely available online.[30]
In an interview with The New Yorker, Vanderslice stated that a near-death experience in 2014, in which the van he was touring in almost flipped on Interstate 80 in Ohio, prompted him to quit touring and making records. Surviving the incident was a life-altering experience: “After that happened, maybe a second later, I was like, I’m done. I don’t want to die in a van. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t celebratory. It was just like, eh, I had a good run.”[31]
Recording technique and collaborations
Vanderslice is a proponent of using analog instruments and recording equipment to produce a richer, more raw sound, which he has sometimes called "sloppy hi-fi".[32] He has collaborated closely with engineer/producers in the production of his albums, including John Congleton, Scott Solter, and John Croslin.[33]
Vanderslice was a contributing producer on the Spoon album, Gimme Fiction, and also produced The Mountain Goats albums We Shall All Be Healed, The Sunset Tree, and Heretic Pride. In March and April 2009, he toured alongside The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle in the "Gone Primitive Tour". These shows featured Vanderslice and Darnielle each playing acoustic sets and then performing material together.[34]
Vanderslice is influenced by film and is a fan of David Lynch, whose work is referenced in his song "Promising Actress". He is a prolific amateur photographer, and has taken publicity photos for Thao Nguyen, The Mountain Goats, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, and Mirah. He has also had his work used as album artwork by Matt Nathanson, Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes, and Mobius Band, as well as for his own 2009 release, Romanian Names.
Okkervil River is an American rock band led by singer-songwriter Will Sheff. Formed in Austin, Texas, in 1998, the band takes its name from a short story by Russian author Tatyana Tolstaya set on the river Okkervil in Saint Petersburg. They began as a trio made up of Sheff and friends he had met in his native state of New Hampshire but, over time, have gone through many lineups.
The Mountain Goats are an American band formed in Claremont, California, by singer-songwriter John Darnielle. The band is currently based in Durham, North Carolina. For many years, the sole member of the Mountain Goats was Darnielle, despite the plural moniker. Although he remains the core member of the band, he has worked with a variety of collaborators over time, including bassist and vocalist Peter Hughes, drummer Jon Wurster, multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas, singer-songwriter Franklin Bruno, bassist and vocalist Rachel Ware, singer-songwriter/producer John Vanderslice, guitarist Kaki King, and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark.
John Darnielle is an American musician and novelist best known as the primary, and originally sole, member of the American band the Mountain Goats, for which he is the writer, composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist. He has written three novels: Wolf in White Van (2014), Universal Harvester (2017), and Devil House (2022).
The Sunset Tree is the ninth studio album by the Mountain Goats, released on April 26, 2005 by 4AD. The album's songs revolve around the house John Darnielle grew up in and the people who lived there, including his mother, sister, stepfather, friends, and enemies.
Down the River of Golden Dreams is the second full-length studio album by Okkervil River, released on September 2, 2003. William Schaff continued to create artwork for Okkervil River with this release. The record label Jagjaguwar released the album on CD and vinyl under the catalog number JAG54.
We Shall All Be Healed is the eighth studio album by The Mountain Goats. The album focuses on semi-fictional accounts of band leader John Darnielle's years as a teenager, particularly his friends' and acquaintances' experiences in California and in Portland, Oregon, as methamphetamine addicts. As The Mountain Goats' official website puts it: "All of the songs on We Shall All Be Healed are based on people John used to know. Most of them are probably dead or in jail by now." Like Tallahassee, but unlike the rest of Darnielle's repertoire up to its release, We Shall All Be Healed was recorded with a full band in a recording studio, and produced by John Vanderslice, as opposed to The Mountain Goats' previous practice of recording at home on a boom box with, at most, one or two backup vocalists or a bassist. "Palmcorder Yajna", when played in concert, is often played with the backing of members of one or more of the opening acts on tour with The Mountain Goats. The song "Cotton" was featured in an episode of the television series Weeds.
Bombadil is a four-piece Americana, folk-pop band from Durham, North Carolina with guitar, bass, piano, and drums as their primary instruments. The band is known for their creative and heartfelt lyrics, lush vocal harmonies, thoughtful arrangements, and engaging live show.
Michael Zapruder is an American musician and songwriter. He is a recording artist, and a co-founder of San Francisco's Howells Transmitter arts collective and record label.
Emerald City is the sixth album by American singer-songwriter John Vanderslice. It was officially released in the United States on July 24, 2007, after having been leaked to the internet on or around June 23, 2007.
Scott Solter is an American recording engineer, record producer, mixer, remixer and musician. As a producer and mixer, Solter has worked with numerous indie rock artists, including Maps & Atlases, St. Vincent, Spoon, Sarah Jaffe, Becca Stevens, John Vanderslice, Superchunk, Okkervil River, The Mountain Goats, Erik Friedlander, Pattern is Movement, Two Gallants, Boxharp, Lost in the Trees, Bombadil, The Forms, Broken Arm Trio, Michael Zapruder, The Caribbean, Centro-matic, Division Day, Alex Turnquist, Liam Singer, The Court and Spark, Charles Atlas, Tarental, Mike Patton, Derek Piotr, Fred Frith, and Zeena Parkins.
Volker Bertelmann is a German composer and pianist who mainly performs and records under the name Hauschka. He is best known for his compositions for prepared piano. He won an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for his work on All Quiet on the Western Front (2022).
Heretic Pride is the eleventh studio album by the Mountain Goats, released in the UK on February 18, 2008, and in the US on February 19 by 4AD, their sixth album on the label. It is the first to feature the band's lineup of John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, and Jon Wurster. The album was produced by Scott Solter and John Vanderslice.
Moon Colony Bloodbath is an EP released by the Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice while on tour in 2009. It was recorded by John Darnielle and John Vanderslice, with a cover art collage by Michael Pajon. John Darnielle had this to say about its status as a concept album:
"Some of the songs have something to do with a loose rock opera/'concept album' idea about organ harvesting colonies on the moon and the employees thereof, who spent their off months living in secluded opulence in remote American locations. Concepts like this are actually more fun when you abandon them but leave their traces kicking around, so that’s what we did.”
Samantha Crain is a Choctaw Nation songwriter, musician, producer, and singer from Shawnee, Oklahoma, signed with Ramseur Records and Real Kind Records and Full Time Hobby Records (UK/Europe).
Ragged Atlas is a studio album by Fred Frith's United States experimental rock group Cosa Brava. It was recorded in San Francisco in December 2008 and was released by Intakt Records in Switzerland on March 5, 2010. Ragged Atlas was the band's first album, and is largely instrumental with a little singing on five of the thirteen the tracks. Frith composed all the music, with lyric contributions on "Lucky Thirteen" by Rebby Sharp, a singer/guitarist Frith had worked with in Orthotonics.
The Caribbean is an American experimental pop group from Washington, D.C., primarily composed of Michael Kentoff, Matthew Byars and Dave Jones. The band has been critically acclaimed for its deconstructionist approach to pop music, its wry, literary lyrics, and its eclectic sound, which incorporates elements of American pop, indie rock and experimental rock, cool jazz, folk music, lounge music, and even Brazilian music.
Gem Club is an American chamber pop band formed in Somerville, Massachusetts by singer-songwriter Christopher Barnes.
Ben Opie is a classically trained oboist and artistic director from Victoria, Australia.
Dagger Beach is the ninth album by American singer-songwriter John Vanderslice. It was self-released on June 11, 2013, financed by a Kickstarter campaign.
Herriot Row is the musical moniker of New Zealand songwriter Simon Comber who has also recorded and performed under his own name. The moniker references the street Heriot Row in Dunedin, which in turn references Heriot Row in Dunedin's counterpart, Edinburgh in Scotland.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
