Previously on Keep the Dream Alive.

I was at a friend's house when I was in seventh grade,

and my friend played me a Kinks record.

I remember flipping the back of the record over

and seeing Ray Davies from the Kinks leaning over a Neve console.

That's when I first started thinking that recording studios were potentially very, very important to artists.

And that was the beginning for me.

I started playing in my first band when I was 24. I'd never been in a band before.

So I was 24. I'd never been in a band before.

So I was working in restaurants,

and I eventually decided that I needed to get a warehouse with my friends and make it like a rehearsal place.

I basically said that art is sacred,

and art needs patrons, and she said, I've decided to rent you the space.

Well, that was like, if you give me like an open door, I'm in, I'm fucking there.

And so we slowly started building the infrastructure of a recording studio.

I remember thinking, I can do this.

This can actually be a business.

I was asked by a noise pop, which is like a local San Francisco festival. So I said yes, and the Mountain Goats were the third band.

I had a promo copy of Mass Suicide Occult Figurines.

There was a song on it called Bill Gates Must Die, which by the way, he actually must die. After the show, Darniel came up to me from Mount Goats, and he was like, hey, that was really good. He said, hi, this is John VanderSlyce in San Francisco. I said, okay, look, that is not your real name. But that was the beginning. But yeah, so we went out on a pretty punishing tour, and those punishing tours are places where people want.

Hi, this is John VanderSlyce, owner of tiny telephone recording and musician. So my first tour was opening up for the mountain goats.

And that, for me, was just like mind-blowing.

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