One of the things I find interesting is how a band like The Walkabouts are better known in a place like Spain versus the Pacific Northwest, where they are from. Have you found pockets in different global areas where your label and your artists fare better than you would have expected? Places where you think they wouldn't know about you or them?

John: I definitely think that Europe is far more receptive to our music than here in the States. My resources there are obviously very limited. Promotion and marketing is very limited, and the geographical area is vast. But for whatever reason, the dedication to our music is amazing, I would have to say. Easily half of FILMguerrero's sales come from over there. It's not a lot...

But it is half your sales.

John: It amazes me. I'm very fortunate that we have very good distribution. And speaking of The Walkabouts, we have a band called Transmissionary Six whose record did great in Europe because Terry [Moeller] is in The Walkabouts. There are things like that that for whatever reason get paid attention to. I think that the music has a different place there, or something. I'm not totally sure. But a record like the Tracker Polk record, for whatever reason, did pretty well over there. People write about it, and there's an appeal to it. Whereas here it's not done as well.

I think there are a lot of factors, like touring and things like that. If I could focus on it, Europe would be the area. At this point I just can't do that.

Do you ask people buying your records from another continent how they found FILMguerrero?

John: It's funny, this woman wrote me last night, and I asked her that question and she said she found us through CDBaby. There are websites like that where you can put in a search string like "find a record that sounds like Giant Sand" -- something really abstract -- or something like Calexico that is Americana at its deepest for Europeans, and there will be bands that pop up from searches like that. For whatever reason our bands fall into those categories.

It wasn't intentional by any means, but I think it's funny how the "Americana" label got pasted onto some of the stuff we've done. But it has helped.

I have a friend in Denmark who's a massive Bruce Springsteen fan. I mean, I think that's great. I just could never figure out why a Dane found so much appeal in someone whose music is so patently working class American.

John: Yeah! I remember when Grandaddy first came out, and they probably toured Europe four or five times before they ever toured the States. I was talking to Terry from The Walkabouts about that phenomenon, and she said that they toured the United States once as The Walkabouts and it sucked really bad. She said something like, "Why would we ever tour here [in the States] when we could tour everywhere in Europe without every having to drive more than a few hours between cities? You're centralized, and people go to the shows and are familiar with your music."

For whatever reason there's a much greater respect for music in that area. At least, that's the impression that I'm getting from where I'm at over here.

Shifting gears a little bit back to our discussion about the Internet, as both a small business and a musician who very much relies on every sale to keep afloat, what's your opinion on file sharing?

John: I don't think it's going to impact me greatly. At this point I'm pretty much for file sharing. But, to contradict myself, I remember awhile back when a good friend of mine heard one of the records we put out and said he thought it was a great. I thought "cool" and was amazed he'd go out and buy it, and he said, "Oh, no. I didn't buy it. I download it!" He had downloaded the whole album, and I remember feeling a tinge of hatred towards him.

It's surprising that a friend would actually admit to downloading material of yours.

John: Yeah! I think it's a really tough topic. At this point my goal with the label is simply to get people to listen to my music. Obviously I want the label to survive, and that's my primary goal, but just as important is the mountain for me to climb in figuring out how to stand out. If file sharing will help me with that then I'm all for it, even though I don't think it's necessarily fair. FILMguerrero is a label based on an artist-driven mentality, so the decisions I make are trying to be as fair as possible to the artists involved.

With all that's involved with the visual appeal of your releases, it's too bad people would download the music without experiencing that additional component -- or realizing that it was such an important element to include. But, obviously, that's not going to be enough of a deterrent to prevent someone from wanting to hear your music without paying for it.

John: I've always been an album person, and so music to me is not about a song, but about how it fits into an overall record. I think that so many things spell themselves out in the context of an album. Abbey Road, for example. "Here Comes the Sun" is a great song to have on your iPod to whistle along with on your way to work, but if you were to go back to when the record was released and realize that it was the first song on side two, following "She's So Heavy." The whole reason it's there is to create a balance -- to create a story -- and you can never replace that if you take it out of the context of the album as a whole. But in this day in age I don't know how we're ever going to change that back to what it was meant to be. I really don't.

On the web:
FILMguerrero

Inside Earpollution:
Manta Ray Interview (December 2003)
Manta Ray Estratexa album review
Peace Harbor Not Yet Fire album review
Tracker Polk album review