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Since 2014, Vanderslice has been a full-time record producer at Tiny Telephone and has worked with Frog Eyes, Samantha Crain, the Mountain Goats, and Grandaddy. He has previously worked with Sophie Hunger, Bombadil, Strand Of Oaks and Spoon.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Vanderslice stated that a near-death experience while on tour prompted him to quit touring and making records. In 2014, the van that he was touring in almost flipped on Interstate 80 in Ohio. Surviving the incident was a life-altering experience: “After that happened, maybe a second later, I was like, I’m done. I don’t want to die in a van. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t celebratory. It was just like, eh, I had a good run.”

In January 2012, Vanderslice left his record contract with Dead Oceans. Vanderslice created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to start his own label. He reached his $18,500 goal within hours of starting the campaign. The project funded on March 21, 2013, after 1224 backers donated over $79,000. It is currently one of Kickstarter's top 60 most funded projects in Music.

In conjunction with Dagger Beach, Vanderslice released his own full cover version of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs. The idea for the cover album came in August 2012, when Vanderslice performed Diamond Dogs in full at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, followed by a screening of Michel Gondry's cult classic, The Science of Sleep. After intensive rehearsing for a single show with a limited audience, Vanderslice decided to channel his creative efforts with Bowie's original material into an entire cover version of the album. It was released on limited edition vinyl in June 2013. Using the original album as a backbone to experiment and improvise in the recording studio with collaborators, Vanderslice altered lyrics, song structures, chord progressions, and titles of many of the songs.

A full album, White Wilderness, was released on January 25, 2011, on Dead Oceans. Here, Vanderslice forwent his usual meticulous process of manipulating and heavily over-dubbing tracks in the recording studio, in favor a pared-down production style. He recorded the album live with Minna Choi and the 19-member Magik*Magik Orchestra, the house orchestra of Tiny Telephone, in three days at Berkeley’s historically-renowned Fantasy Studios. Vanderslice wrote acoustic versions of each song, while Choi wrote all orchestral arrangements. The collaboration resulted in a looser sound that maintained the structural complexity and pop sensibility of Vanderslice’s previous songwriting. Lyrically, Vanderslice reflects on his trajectory as a musician and performer and draws inspiration from the California landscape. "The Piano Lesson" recounts early memories of learning to play the piano as a child, while "After It Ends" imagines a performer destroying and escaping his venue at the end of a show. The romping "Convict Lake" is an autobiographical account of an overdose on LSD during a camping trip at this Sierra Nevada, California lake. It was produced and recorded by John Congleton.

In 2010, Vanderslice released a free EP called Green Grow The Rushes.

In 2009, with Romanian Names, Vanderslice broke away from overtly political lyrical content characteristic of previous albums and turned his focus to personal reflections on romance and a modern person’s relationship to the natural landscape. Maintaining his commitment to fully analog production, Vanderslice recorded guitar and piano tracks for this album in his analog basement studio of his San Francisco home. He completed further instrumentation and production at his own Tiny Telephone recording studio with producer Scott Solter.

Vanderslice was a contributing producer on the Spoon album, Gimme Fiction, and also produced The Mountain Goats albums Heretic Pride, The Sunset Tree, and We Shall All Be Healed. In March and April 2009, John Vanderslice toured alongside The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle in the "Gone Primitive Tour". These shows featured Vanderslice and Darnielle each playing acoustic sets and then performing material together.

He is influenced by film and is a fan of David Lynch, whose work is referenced in his song "Promising Actress". Vanderslice is a prolific amateur photographer, doing publicity photo shots for Thao Nguyen, The Mountain Goats, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, and Mirah. He has also had his work used in album artwork by Matt Nathanson, Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes, Mobius Band, and Vanderslice's own 2009 release, Romanian Names.

The title of his 2007 album, Emerald City, references the nickname of the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and The Wizard of Oz. "I was so beaten down after the 2000 election and after 9/11 and then the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan," said Vanderslice. "I was so depleted as a person after all that stuff happened, that I had to write my way out of it." Emerald City achieved a score of 82/100 on Metacritic. Entertainment Weekly called the album "a gleaming gem" that doesn't disappoint. Billboard's review of the record called Vanderslice an "always perceptive lyricist". Calling Vanderslice a "master story-teller", Matt Fink of Paste said that Emerald City was "vividly imagined yet subtle in tone, with conflicted character sketches unfolding around somber synth melodies, creaky electronic effects, and fuzzy acoustic guitar strums."

Time Travel is Lonely and Life and Death of an American Fourtracker followed in 2001 and 2002 respectively, followed by 2004’s Cellar Door.

Many songs on the 2005 album Pixel Revolt referenced the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq War and were more overtly political in their lyrical content. The album earned an 8.3 rating on Pitchfork and was cited for its "meticulous arrangements" with "everything in its right place", and declared an "excellent album". The album's ending resolves the narrator's struggles with acute depression ("Dead Slate Pacific"), suicidal thoughts ("The Golden Gate") with a love song to psychotropic drugs ("CRC 7173, Affectionately").

In 2000, Vanderslice released his first solo album, Mass Suicide Occult Figurines, and briefly gained some national media attention for the single "Bill Gates Must Die" after concocting a hoax in which Microsoft supposedly threatened legal action over the song; Vanderslice had trouble manufacturing the CD because the artwork resembled that of a Windows installation disc, and at least one manufacturer was wary of legal action. During the controversy, he was interviewed by Spin, Wired, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1997, he founded Tiny Telephone, a 3,000 sq. ft., two-room recording studio in the Mission District of San Francisco. Established in 1997, the studio was initially used as a rehearsal space before being developed as a full-time, all-analog recording studio. Bands who have recorded in the studio include Death Cab for Cutie, Sleater-Kinney, Okkervil River, Deerhoof, The Mountain Goats, The Magnetic Fields, Tune-yards, and Spoon. He opened Tiny Telephone's Oakland studio in late 2015.

Vanderslice grew up in rural North Florida before his family moved to Maryland when he was 11. In 1989, he graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Maryland, where he also studied art history. Vanderslice moved to San Francisco in 1990. While supporting himself as a waiter, Vanderslice took classes at University of California, Berkeley, with the intention of becoming an English teacher. Vanderslice then spent five years as a member of the experimental band Mk Ultra, with whom he released three albums in the 1990s. The last of these, The Dream Is Over, received a 9.2 from Pitchfork.