Is FILMguerrero a full-time job for you?

John: Not full-time if you mean paying the bills, but in terms of hours, yes, very close to that. I bartend part-time at night to pay my mortgage, and spend pretty much 40 hours a week working on the label. All of that is interspersed with recording as a musician. However, it is starting to get busier, and I keep checking the mailbox for more checks but they're not there. [Laughs]

How many other people are involved in the label's nucleus?

John: FILMguerrero is solely me. I operate it all by myself, but I have rounded up a friend who invested money in it and he did spend some time here in Portland. I've just recently gotten an intern, who's turned out to be great. That has been really helpful. And a good friend of mine who's really into radio just started doing all the radio stuff for us.

How many times a week do get into an angry shouting match with yourself and threaten to shelve the entire thing?

John: [Laughs] Not in terms of weeks, but at least once a month.

In some of our previous correspondence there's been mention of the fight between art and commerce. At the end of the proverbial day you've got to be able to balance the books. What keeps you inspired to do it?

John: I'm sure you would relate to this, but there's always this draw that sorta keeps me from having to get a nine-to-five job -- and that's a big part of it. The other part of it is that every time I threaten to shelve it a great record comes my way. Two months ago I had nothing on my plate for 2004, and now the whole year is booked. I'm amazed that at the times when I think things are grim some little light at the end of the tunnel comes my way, and I think, "Well, I'm going to have to find a way to dig up the money to put it out."

You can probably relate in the sense that you see little successes. It might not be financial, but things like a wider audience trickling in. The mentality that comes from getting someone to experience what you're trying to get across is pretty exciting.

I'm just a stubborn SOB. Love it, hate it, shelve it, save it. I could make some serious bank for a therapist if I could afford one.

John: I think that in a way, too, there would never really be a permanent shelving of FILMguerrero. There are days when I wake up and I think that my life's miserable, that I've been stuck in a basement for four years, and what am I doing with my life? So I won't go downstairs that day and work on the label. I can do that and come back the next day and have a little bit of extra catching up to do, but feel better about the whole thing.

Overall, FILMguerrero will never get shelved. There will always be an outlet for the music. When it gets discouraging is when you really think you've made all these steps for a record and you still can't get over the hump. Sometimes I feel like I do all these things and I still hit a major wall -- some kind of void where I don't know what to do next. But something new comes along.

Manta Ray is a really good example of band where I told myself that I have to put their record out. Estratexa is so great and, sales aside, I really want people to hear it because I think that they'll be really excited about it afterwards. Things can still be a big puzzle, however.

How have your expectations been tempered or changed over the years?

John: Uh...

Or, have they?

John: It's funny, because I'm not sure that they have changed much. I think that I've always been very realistic. My expectations on the label? That's a tough one.

Let me ask you something different. Do you find that you're able to do more now than you thought you'd be able to when you started?

John: I'm definitely able to do more, but I think that's purely based on experience. I didn't know what I was doing when I started, and now it's just that I don't know half as much. [Laughs] It's still a total mystery, but I think that now I have a much better idea about what goes into the process of releasing a record. And also, I think I realize how totally difficult it is to get a record to resonate.

That's a topic I wanted to ask you about. Being essentially a one person operation, how do you muscle your way into such a big market and have an impact that pays off for you, your label, and the artists involved?

John: I don't know if I have an impact. This would actually be a question I'd ask you. I imagine that you get so much music a month, and there's so many new bands and labels that you've probably never heard of. If there is anything that discourages me, it's that feeling of being completely minute in the large spectrum of things.

I get overwhelmed by just the quantity we receive, as well as the expectations that I have of myself and eP. We had this high ideal when we started that we would review every album that crossed our doorstep. That shortly got tempered by a strong dose of reality, and things changed to giving press to the things that we really liked, or the things that we really disliked. Mostly the former. There just simply wasn't enough hours in the day to give ink to every thing that got mailed to us.

Like you, we go through and listen to every package that comes our way -- the good, the bad, and the mostly middle of the road stuff. I feel like I owe that much to those who mail us material. They spent the postage, we can spend the few minutes and give it a spin. Besides, you never know what you might miss. Manta Ray, for example. I had never heard of them before and if, for whatever reason, I hadn't been in the right mood, or what not, and ended up not listening to it, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. I love that record immensely, and I feel obligated by equal doses of fear and respect to listen to everything that comes our way -- or try to, at least.

John: Do you think that most people operate with your method, or do you think they skim over stuff?

I think people definitely skim. I think that they have to, because it's an unrealistic expectation to expect to be able to keep up with every release that gets mailed out. We receive an enormous amount of submission mail on a weekly basis, and in relation to the Rolling Stones, NMEs, etc., of the world, we're not in that league. But we still receive a lot of material, and I'd like to think it's because we try to articulate honest opinions about what moves us, for good or ill, and not what adverts we're trying to sell, because we don't involve ourselves in the commercial aspect of the industry. I think that labels, artists, and publicists recognize that in us and seek us out because of it.

So we have our pile of incoming mail, and that gets divvied up into piles we like, piles we don't like, and piles we think we like but need to listen though again. Of the stuff that eventually ends up in the green light pile, things gets whittled down according to the schedule we have, the time and individual schedules of the writers, and other priorities that take precedence in our collective and individual lives, because we all have day jobs, and paying bills is not something Earpollution affords for any of us. I truly appreciate everything that gets sent, but as we discussed earlier much of it doesn't make an impact one way or another, and I personally feel that the large amount of mediocre music being released is one of the many problems plaguing the industry at the moment. I don't have any musical distastes -- I have specific bands I don't like, but I don't have any particular genre that I will avoid "just because." The music simply has to have that synergy, that certain something that grabs your attention and won't let go. That's what I look for -- that's what I'm always yearning to hear.

I'm always amazed by people like you because you're always fighting the good fight against overwhelming odds. The class of the material you put out, its presentation and musical quality is quite high compared to a lot of other stuff, and I can only give ink to a little of what you send our way. I always wonder how people in your position keep it going.

John: It's funny, in the earlier days of the label I'd do up these real careful packages to a specific press person because I wanted them to pay attention to it when it arrived. Now I'm giving away probably 500 promos of a new release. I started getting to the point where I realized I was handing a person a one-sheet and a record, which is what everyone else is doing. So, in a way there's a part of me that feels like I'm failing because I'm relying so much on a person like you who actually does listen to everything. I think, "If they just listen to it, they'll like it!" But I realize that's probably rarely the case.

Unfortunately, 500 albums gifted out with each release from a small label is an expensive way to keep an optimistic attitude about it all.

John: My feeling is that I want to give writers, especially writers familiar with FILMguerrero, a proper record, because I think that it's exciting and there's a lot of labor of love involved with it.

Yeah, it does get back to the overall aesthetic appeal we were talking about earlier. Speaking of promos versus finished releases, artwork versus just hearing the songs by themselves, how much of a difference has the Internet made for you?

John: In terms of...?

Marketing, promotions, people being able to access your label and its music.

John: I think that FILMguerrero almost solely relies on the Internet. The type of fan that I think we're trying to attract is definitely one that would find us through the Internet. An online 'zine like Earpollution or Pitchfork is read and respected, and I pay a lot more attention to that than I do to anything else.

I didn't do that until about a year and a half ago. Physical magazines are great. Resonance, from out of Seattle, is a really beautiful magazine in the way it's laid out, and their coverage is good, but in terms of an actual magazine that would help me, I don't think it would. I want to read it, but I don't think it would help me. If FILMguerrero could get a big artist interview in a magazine like that, it would make a difference, but I think that most of them pretty much exclusively do write-ups of bands who've been around, unless it's the Wire from the UK, or something.

So, to answer your question specifically: I think the Internet has greatly helped me, and I rely on it heavily.