In The Studio: John Vanderslice

In The Studio: John Vanderslice

Vanderslice likes to go with the flow -- especially if it's not digital: Aidin Vaziri | John Vanderslice is having a crisis. Standing in the control room of Tiny Telephone, he says he just found out that the only analog tape manufacturer in the world has shut down operations. Surveying the odd assortment of outdated recording equipment with bulky knobs and multicolored dials crammed into the Mission District studio he opened in 1997, he sighs, "This place is turning into the museum." Rather than accepting the inevitable and buying a digital workstation decked out with latest production gear like Pro-Tools and Auto-Tune, Vanderslice has instead decided to max out his credit card with $7,000 worth of obsolete analog tape. The first thing anyone should know about Vanderslice is that he's a wonderful, eccentric songwriter. The second is that he's a terrible businessman.