Not only is John Vanderslice a locally raised jack-of-all-trades, he's an all around nice guy to boot. It was evident to me on Friday, when we spoke and did the following interview, but JV proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt on Saturday night right before his set at Iota.

I arrived a bit after 10 p.m. and the doorman told me the show was sold out. "No problem, " I said. "I'm on the JV guest list." Only I wasn't. I was supposed to be, but my name wasn't there. And JV was due to go onstage at any second. It quickly became apparent that I wasn't going to get to see the show. I was bummed, but not too despondent. It wasn't the first time that I was supposed to be on the list but wasn't and it certainly won't be the last. Luckily, one of the door people at Iota said they would go get someone from JV's tour group to see if they could help.

Two minutes later JV himself pops out apologizing profusely and promptly gets me inside the packed room. Then, as if he doesn't have anything better to do, like play a show to a sold out room, he stays and chats with me for a minute or two. Totally unwarranted but completely appreciated. A few minutes later, he was on stage doing what he does best. The man is a dynamo and his reputation for being the nicest guy in indie rock is well deserved. What follows is the conversation we had last Friday afternoon.

So you lived in Potomac, Md. when you were younger?

Yeah. From when I was 11 until I was 21. I went to the University of Maryland, got a degree in Econ. I went to local schools for junior high and high school. I'm in many ways a products of Florida, where I grew up for the first 11 years of my life, and Maryland. I love Florida, I'm a huge fan of Florida, especially northern and central Florida, but it was great for me to see a different part of the country when I was growing up.

Do you have friends that are still in the area? Is playing D.C. a sort of homecoming gig for you?

Well, actually I would say no because so many of my friends have moved away. Two of my best friends still live there so I see them at shows all the time, but everyone moves. Last night I played the Mercury Lounge in New York, and after the show my old next door neighbor from Potomac came up to me and I was like, "Holy shit!" So, you know, people move, and they find you, that's the cool thing. People find you. There are a lot of people from my high school and college that find me, especially because I go under my name and it's a very unusual name.

Are you familiar with blogs and their role on the internet?

Oh absolutely. All I ever do is surf the internet.

Because that's how I found out about you and your music, from other bloggers. Many of them spoke highly about your shows, so it made me curious. How do you feel about blogs compared with the mainstream music media?

Oh man. This is my experience. On Pixel Revolt, I got a review in Spin. It was the first time I'd ever gotten a review in Spin, and we got a letter grade of "C." And I also got shit-tons of reviews on internet only sites, from Pitchfork on down. We got a really good review on Pitchfork. And usually when you get a really bad review, your hardcore fans write you and say, "Man, fuck this guy," and when you get a really good review, your hardcore fans write you and say "Oh wow, this was insightful or interesting, this is great, you should be excited."

When I got the "C" letter grade review in Spin, I heard nothing. Not from anybody. No one ever said anything to me. But whenever I got a good review from somewhere like Tiny Mix Tapes I would get emails about it. It was very clear to me then that all that print media shit doesn't matter anymore. It totally does not matter. I mean, no offense to Spin or anyone like that, but people right now, hard core music people that pay attention, they're online. The big national glossies just don't have that kind of impact anymore. I guess. I mean this is all anecdotal, I can't back any of it up, but the way people find out about us and find out things about us, it's all bloggers. It's all online 'zines. Whether it's Drowned in Sound or Tiny Mix Tapes or Largehearted Boy, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, the list goes on and on.

You know, it's weird, if someone posts something on Metafilter, I look on my website and all of a sudden, we're getting like 25,000 unique visitors in one day, you know. And we got a review on Pixel Revolt in Rolling Stone. And the day that that review came out, there was no bump whatsoever. And that was a good review. And we got no bump in traffic on the website. That's insane. I can look at where people are coming from and who's searching what, and what method they are using to get to my site. After that I was like, "Fuck paying a publicist to work your record, lets just email all the bloggers and send them a record or some MP3's."

A band will come up to me and tell me "Oh my god, we're getting a record review in Rolling Stone and what I want to tell them is, 'Listen, who cares, it doesn't mean anything.'" What means something is that a blogger with credibility has his or her own fan base, you know what I mean? People follow bloggers because they understand their aesthetic framework and what they like and their sensibilities.

I think bloggers are less agenda driven. Most of them aren't trying to be Lester Bangs or trying to explain the ills of the world in a record review. They just tell you their opinion if a record is good or not.

It's unfiltered. Everything that happens at a national glossy is being refracted through an editorial board, an editor or a bunch of people downstream, and I know that because a bunch of my friends are writers. And if a blogger writes about the record or the video, it's more like "This is what I like, check it out."

Speaking of Pixel Revolt, you're selling a two track version of that album on this tour, right?

Yes, it's a tour only, numbered, acoustic, very limited thing that we are selling on tour. We always try and bring a tour only record with us when we go out on tour.

You're also a producer and you own your own studio?

Yeah, I own a recording studio called Tiny Telephone and I have produced other bands in the past but because my schedule is getting so bad, I'm trying not to do anything besides my own records and touring, just because I'm really afraid that the things that I'm doing are really going to suffer if I don't focus on just doing one thing.

It's a strange time to be a studio owner, don't you think? Ever since the Pro-Tools revolution, everyone is doing things digitally now. And you're "Mr. Analog."

I was thinking about this the other day in terms of sexual fetish, like if you have one particular thing that you're into. Immortal Technique has this incredible line dissing record labels that says something like "If someone can sell scat videos on the web and make hundreds of thousands of dollars, then someone should be able to market my record." Whenever you stake out your own aesthetic area, your own niche, your own specialty, it doesn't matter if the world is against you or not. And the world is against analog. It's a museum piece, it's finished. Everything is going digital and I'm basically running an audio museum. But the thing is there are enough hard core analog people out there that come to the studio. We're not competing against all the millions of Pro Tools studio and home demo places.

So people come to you when they want something other than that.

Exactly. And it may only be one percent, but we get a solid one percent of the recording activity which means that we have a wait list to get into the studio every month. So it's almost like if you're going to open a business, just try to fill one very particular niche and be loyal to it, or you'll perish if you try and compete with everybody.

The old studio business model is as efficient as United's business model. They screw people on a sliding scale, people that are unprepared or are rich. Studios are predicated on screwing labels.

As I was reading through the lyrics of Pixel Revolt, I noticed a few references to 9/11. I thought that was kind of interesting because it seems like most American artists have shied away from that subject.

Only in indie rock though. Hip hop is always hyper political. I wish that the record was all about Iraq. I set out to write a record that was all about Iraq but I couldn't stick it out. It was too monochromatic for me or too morbid. I wanted it to be more political and more conspiratorial and more obsessive. But I couldn't do it. But people like Immortal Technique, who I listen to all the time, he is on it politically. Andrew Bird did some interesting stuff on his record about 9/11 but it's more metaphorical. It's a little undecipherable, you have to get in there and dig around.

Is it tough to sing those songs every night on tour?

No, for me they are more relevant now than when I wrote them.

The main reason I wanted to talk to you after clicking around your website, is your photography, which is pretty impressive. The first thing I was going to ask you about your work was if you shoot on film or digital, but I think I already know the answer to that question.

Yeah, I hate digital photography so much. For me, it's meaningless. My friend shot a bunch of head shots for me and she gave me a CD that had 3000 photos on it, and it was totally meaningless. I couldn't filter anything out of those images. It was an overload, an information dump. The next photo session I did, someone shot me on a Polaroid, a large format Polaroid, and they took two photos of me, it was for Paste Magazine or something like that, and they took two photos of me, and they were both totally bad ass. And that's digital in a nutshell for me, for both recording and photography. I understand why people shoot digital, but for my own needs, it just runs counter to everything for me. Also, I like the errors of hitting film, of saturating film, and what happens with light and especially low-light shooting. It just seems beautiful to me. I also like that I can't see the images for a couple of weeks.

So do you wait and develop everything when you get back from the tour?

I develop stuff all at once when I get off tour. Sometimes I develop it after successive tours because I won't have time to do it between tours, so I'll get back and maybe three months later I'll have a couple hundred photos. I take alot of shots on tour.

What kind of cameras and lenses do you use?

For ten years I had a Pentax K1000 and a 28mm lens. it's just incredible. Most of the photos on my site are from that one Pentax that my Mom gave me. Then that camera broke and I bought a used Leica M6 with a 35mm lens. It cost me about $2300, it was a huge jump for me. I gained and Iost. I love the camera. The last US and the last European slide show were both from the Leica. The color to me, is much more hi-fi and accurate. The lens is much more accurate. I can shoot at much slower speeds with color on the Leica and have the images be coherent. I can shoot at night for up to a second without a tripod and I couldn't do that with the Pentax.

I miss what black and white film looks like on the Pentax. With the Leica, it's a little bit flatter and it's just a little bit more sterile to me. So I have to hit the film so hard on the Leica. Sometimes I'm shooting four or five stops too hot just to get something to happen.

How did you learn photography? Are you self taught?

I just shot and shot for years without even knowing what an aperture was. I had no idea what it did. All I knew was that I liked what I did when the aperture was on a low number. That's all I figured out after five years of shooting. And I liked that the depth of field was so shallow. It was more of like an editorial decision making thing where you would see certain things in focus and other part of the shot were just blown out or out of focus, so it made it very clear what the photographer was paying attention to. I like the errors of shooting on film, it's the same type of errors I would get on analog tape when I was hitting it too hot.

I eventually learned enough to where I could ask other photographers, but mostly I would ask questions at the store where I bought my film. I would ask them one question everytime that I was in there.

Do you pattern your work after anyone?

No. I'm just shooting stuff that I like. I absorb some stuff from looking at from art books, things like that.

John Vanderslice is currently on tour in the US through mid-May. You can go to his website and download some MP3's or buy CD's.

Photos by Kyle Gustafson. More photos here.