Venerated artist plays the Pilot Light in support of ‘The Cedars’ on Saturday, May 4
By Luke Brogden
On Saturday, May 4, local indie-rock fans have a chance to catch one of the genre’s most critically acclaimed singer-songwriters (and, more recently, one of its most highly sought-after producers and photographers) when John Vanderslice makes a special diversion from his tour with Pedro the Lion to swing by Knoxville. He will be playing at the Pilot Light with his old friends, local rock vanguards George Middlebrooks (Stolen Sheep, Ampient Music) and Wil Wright (Senryu, Peak Physique).
“I wanted to play a show with George and Wil Wright, and it sounds like a blast,” Vanderslice says. “I love it there [in Knoxville]; it’s my kind of town.”
Vanderslice is touring behind his brand new record, “The Cedars,” his first full-length release since “Dagger Beach” and “Vanderslice Plays Diamond Dogs,” both of which came out in 2013. “I think it’s way more surreal, and I think it’s more abstract, and I think it’s a weirder record – for better or worse,” he says of “The Cedars,” citing combinations of drummers and drum machines, other sonic experiments and the influence of micro-dosing on the writing process.
At his Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco and Oakland, Vanderslice has worked with artists like Spoon, the Mountain Goats and St. Vincent on some of the most highly praised albums of the last decade. In doing so, he ushered in a renaissance of recording to analog tape with his trademark “sloppy hi-fi” approach. But a near-death experience on the interstate en route to a gig in 2014 coupled with the increasing demand for his production work had kept the longtime prolific songwriter from bringing his own work to the forefront for a while – something with which he says he was OK.
“You see people do crazy [stuff] on the highway, and you think, ‘I don’t want to die out here,’” he says. “But then … I don’t know, it’s amazing: You can make a decision about what you want, but it’s not necessarily stable. I produced over 60 records in between that time, and that was really what I wanted to do. I really just didn’t want to make another album; it just didn’t feel that important to me, You get all the fulfillment of making the record, but … you’re not responsible for the record, the promotion, the touring … But I started missing being responsible.”
Middlebrooks says he has listened to Vanderslice almost since the beginning of the latter’s career. “About 18 years ago, his ‘Time Travel Is Lonely’ album,” he says, “it just hit me and just stuck.”
Middlebrooks goes on to explain how he and Wright developed a friendship with Vanderslice. For an audience-participation event in 2011 around the time of the “White Wilderness” album, Vanderslice had invited fans to email him ideas for solos. In turn, the musician chose the best selections and had the winners actually get onstage and play the solo with him on a song.
Noting how Vanderslice had said “the weirder, the better,” Middlebrooks offered to play a kalimba (a thumb piano) through a delay pedal. The oddball idea was selected, and he and Wright had lunch with Vanderslice in Knoxville before later on driving to a gig in Nashville and performing the solo. Middlebrooks would continue to exchange emails with Vanderslice and attend more shows, and he and his wife even ended up visiting Vanderslice at Tiny Telephone in the Mission District of San Francisco.
“We’ve actually become friends through knowing him through his music,” Middlebrooks says.
Wright mentions his longtime infatuation with Vanderslice’s work, as well. Also citing that same sophomore release (“Time Travel Is Lonely”) as one that was “on [his] mood board from first listen,” Wright echoes Middlebrooks’ assessment of Vanderslice’s approachability. Speaking of collaborations the musician posited to him, Wright says, “I always feel like one of the lucky ones to end up pals with artists whose work challenges and motivates me. JV’s is a prime example of that.”
Vanderslice’s debut album, “Mass Suicide Occult Figurines,” came in 2000 after he served a successful stint in the indie band MK Ultra, and it made quite a splash with provocative, punk-infused, hook-laden indie-pop songs like “Bill Gates Must Die,” great beats and riffs, the introduction of Vanderslice’s melodic yet cutting vocals and a memorable CD cover that was reminiscent of the Microsoft Windows design. The title is named after a line in the Neutral Milk Hotel song “Songs Against Sex.”
Vanderslice went on to release eight more full-length studio albums, a multitude of EPs and singles, as well as the aforementioned collection of Bowie covers, which he performed in tandem with a select screening of Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep” at the Vogue Theatre in Sacramento in December 2012 prior to the album’s release the following year.
The break from recording occurred soon after. It wasn’t all that dramatic of a change, of course, as Vanderslice already was getting swamped with – and enjoying – all of the production work that was accumulating at Tiny Telephone in San Francisco. (The amount was what prompted the second location to eventually open in Oakland.) Now, though, the itch to record and perform has returned, and the result is “The Cedars” and the concurrent tour, both of which are either reintroducing him to many fans who first discovered him at the turn of the millennium or are kindling a love for his music in new fans just now learning about the artist.
Watching the treasure trove of live and in-studio videos that have been recorded over the years, it is apparent that Vanderslice can be quite the chameleon. One minute, he’s strumming an acoustic guitar and cooing a plaintive song by himself in a coffeehouse. The next, there he is with day-glo hair, leading a raucous band riffing rowdily (see the music video for “How the West Was Won”). In yet another video, from the making of “White Wilderness” with Magik*Magik Orchestra, he meditates on a song that grows to a crescendo, with anarchic strings building and breaking tension in beautiful ways. Finally, an in-studio segment from the making of “The Cedars” finds him wearing a geologist’s headlamp, tinkering with drum machines, synths and tape machines and building the setup for some jarring, spacey wildness.
So what version of Vanderslice can the crowd Saturday night at the Pilot Light expect? “It’s just me,” he says, but with electric and acoustic guitars and drum machines. “It will be very different than what I’m used to doing before; it will be very abstract,” he says. “It’s very, very different … I’m stoked.”
Fans can order tickets online through Freshtix or take their chances at the door. Tickets are just $12, and the show gets started at 9:30 p.m.
