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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to Jokerman in Conversation. I'm Ian here today with the man behind the Mountain Goats, John Darnell, back after a prolonged absence, an extended lengthy two years since the last Mountain Goats record. This Friday with. Let me see if I can get this right bit of a mouthful through this fire across from Peter Balcon, the rare double preposition title. John points that out in our conversation. Great record, dense record, but beautiful, fully realized. Catchy as hell record as well. Sort of a song cycle concept album about this character, Peter Balkin, who just came to John in a dream. He gives us a full rundown of how exactly he sort of worked his way backwards towards this entire song cycle from that title alone. It is, as Mountain Ghost records so often are, chock full of witty wordplay and lines that come so fast. You know, you just. You gotta listen back and back and back. Always something to discover. We also touch a little bit on a couple other things coming in the Mountain Goats greater universe, including a lyric book, the first of its kind from John, which, of course, course, he does a very John Darniel take on. You'll hear him say a little more about that. And then, of course, the 20th anniversary reissue representation of one of the seminal entries in the Mountain Goats discography, the Sunset Tree. Plenty of topics to hit here, along with, of course, some delightful deep cut Bob convo there. Towards the end, the man has. Just wait till you hear which of all the Bob Dylan records John imprinted on as a young man, the ones that he listened to and fell in love with as a lad. It's not what you would. Not what you would expect. Here he is, John Darn. John Darnell. Thank you so much for joining us here on Jokerman.
- [02:48]
B
Yeah, good to meet you.
- [02:49]
A
Good. You know, acquaintance. Pleasure is all mine here. I told my wife that this interview was going to be happening. She was over the moon. She's a huge, enormous, longtime Mountain Goats fan. So making dreams come true over here.
- [03:02]
B
Thank you for that.
- [03:03]
A
Absolutely. And I will, I'll confess to you in advance, this is going to be a little more kind of fly by night shoot from the hip type of interview than sometimes we have, because I just listened. I think we're taping this the day the new record was announced. And I have been listening to it.
- [03:20]
B
For what I've been doing with my day today.
- [03:21]
A
Yeah, I've been listening to it for maybe 48 hours, so I feel like I've crammed as much as I can, but I'm maybe not quite as bulletproof on the material as I am.
- [03:32]
B
You have the whole album, right?
- [03:33]
A
I do, yeah, absolutely. And it's a dense record that, you know, takes some. Takes some listening, I think, to get. To get to the bottom of it. Would you mind maybe just telling. Telling us about what is. Because, I mean, this is. This is a concept record. Tell us the concept.
- [03:52]
B
I will, but I just want to say I always wish I was the kind of interviewee who's good, who can just sort of lie about something and write it, you know, maybe even months or whatever. Because first. My initial response was, you know, I actually only first heard it for the first time 48 hours ago too. I sent some lyrics off and then I let the guys do the thing. But no, that's not true. I had. It's funny. So you're only the second interview on the cycle, like sort of notching this that. I am not yet tired of telling people about this. Right. So I'll take it, but. So I had a dream. I've been this morning when I made. When we made the announce, I looked up the date of it. I don't have it committed to memory, but it was in late 2023, I think, possibly before then. But I had a dream and the dream was just that I was writing an album, right. And that the album was called through this Fire across from Peter Balin. Right. There was no details about the album. Like this was. Some dreams have a lot of action and visuals. This was more of a like, you know, like a background quality to whatever else was going on. The dream that I didn't preserve. Because when I woke up, I grabbed my phone, I used an app called Bear for note taking and I wrote down the title, you know, making an album. It's called this. And did that. I think I went back to sleep. When I got up, I looked at it and I thought. And I said to myself, and I said this, I have said this at least once today. I said, oh, it'd be funny if you actually made that the next record. I actually wrote a whole record to explain the time. And that is usually my ticket into doing a record with some big underar. Like when I wrote Goths, I was. I was sitting at like the piano in the office, which is a. An electronic piano with it with a Fender road sound and an organ sound and a piano sound and a harps chord sound and has these preset rhythms. And I played the roads and I went, oh man, wouldn't it be great if you just use that tone for everything on the next record? And then I wrote 13 more songs using that tone because I liked it and none on the guitar. So. So, yeah, so with this one, I had a title, right. And I wrote the title down, and then I very quickly wrote four or five song titles. And I also, you know, by this time, my brain works pretty fast. It does this sort of improvisational comedy thing of saying, you know, do this and then this and then this and then this. It's very sort of hierarchical in a fun way. And. And so I said, okay, well, the first time, you're fishing boat, because where's the fire? The fire's on the beach, Right. There's people on a beach. Okay. How'd they get on the beach? Boat wrecked. Right. And so forth I'm doing. It's very. Yes. And if you've ever done improv comedy stuff.
- [06:35]
A
Sure.
- [06:35]
B
You know, okay, we're in a restaurant. Yes. And the restaurant's closing next week. Yes. And it's because the owner's going to jail. All this kind of stuff. Right. And so shout out to Tara DeFrancisco, who I learned what improv shops I have from. But. But, but. So, yeah, so I. But I've been doing that, you know, also with any storytelling I do, it's always sort of like, you know, I ask a question about what's practical, right. If I set somebody on a beach, my first question, how do they get there? When I write a novel, I have a character. My first question to myself, not on purpose. This isn't like an ideology. It just is how it is. I go, well, how do you. How do you pay his rent? How does he have a house in the first place? And so, you know, where's he. How does he afford the space he lives in? That's how Wolf and White Van becomes. What it is is like trying to explain how this person with a damaged face makes their living. Right. Well, they make it by doing this play by mail game. So in this case, I had the song title. Right. Or the album title. And then I needed to. To work toward that, to explain, like, well, what is remarkable about this name that my dream brain fed me? Right. You know, why is this person being named? Why is he a figure to the narrator? Right. All this sort of questions get answered. Now, the actual plot is 16 men set sail on a fishing boat under the stewardship of Captain Peter Balcon. The tiny ship was tossed, as the theme from Gilligan's island would say, and. And they wreck, and 13 of them die. And 13 are washed ashore on a sort of a sandbar. You can't really call it an island. There's not food to sustain them. Peter Balin the Captain begins to have apocalyptic visions with himself as a sort of savior figure. But he's actually just dying and. And he does die. And that leaves two. And one disappears and the other is left to reflect briefly. We're not there for the last death, but we assume it happens. Kind of a positive feeling, kind of.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah, sort of a bright, for optimistic type of taste. It matches this, the. This. The mood in the country these days, quite frankly.
- [08:35]
B
The thing is, because I'm me, because I write a lot of stuff in major keys and because my stuff, you know, tends to have a lot of energy in it, people will frame it as positive anyway. Like, I have a rep for like, oh yeah, John's talking about this thing that seems like it'd be super dark, but yet I come away feeling, you know, happy about it. Some of that is a function of writing in major keys, but also some of it is a function of my working energy. Right.
- [09:00]
A
Well, I mean, I think that, that. I think that can't. That, that can't help but shine through. I mean, I read the press release on this record before I listened to it for the first time. When I got it, especially again saying, I got this two, three days ago. I was like, oh shit, this is, this, this is gonna like. There's a lot that I'm gonna have to unpack here in the space of just a couple days before I talk to John. And again there is. But it's also just like. It's catchy.
- [09:25]
B
How.
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A
I guess maybe it just comes natural to you. But the ability to write such just, you know, kind of. I don't wanna say effortless. Cause obviously a lot of effort goes into it. But very just natural sounding pop song, you know, with hooks and choruses and stuff. But also tell this story, I guess. How do you do. How do you reconcile those things?
- [09:43]
B
Well, I mean, I think I'm getting better at melodies is the thing. I mean, you, for me, I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm always learning as I go. I'm always looking at older stuff and saying what was good about that. What, what didn't I know how to do then? And I think around 2007 or 8, I noticed that. That I could, you know, that I could push myself more to develop my ability to write a melody. To consciously be thinking about where the melody is going. Because the way that I write is usually just to sing whatever first comes to mind as I'm playing and then however it comes out is how I keep it. And now I, I develop that a little further. It was just a matter of focus, you know, to, to think about, you know, okay, what's the melody going to be over this? How is it going to sit on the rhythm? Right. And the rhythm, they come into being. Usually the first line of a song and the music happen at the same time. Right. I'll be playing and then I'll improvise a line and keep that. But I will also work around it and try and push it a little bit. Most of these were written on piano, except for, I think, Cold at Night and Fishing Boat. I think we're both guitar numbers. I think after that it's all oh, and rocks in my pockets. But after that, I think they're all written on. No, wait a minute, one more. No way. I think that might actually be it. So, so the real piano where I, I'm, I'm a much better. I have a lot more facility with picking out melodies with my right hand on piano than I do on the guitar.
- [11:07]
A
Right.
- [11:07]
B
So I could play with stuff. But yeah, I mean, I'm always pushing myself. I listen to a lot of music and I'm very restless in my listening, which is a way that you can, I mean, if you believe as I do, that no matter what your talents are as an artist, you have room for growth. And the goal is to get as far with it as you can before the last day of your life. Right. Rather than to acquire a skill set and just polish that. Right. But to keep growing and challenging and stretching. Right. That's. That's for me, right. That's what I want to be doing. Not because I want people to praise me for it. That's like a personal goal, right. As an artist. Right. And so, so, so I'm always listening, listening to new stuff and I have this. A lot of Broadway stuff the last ten years or so. And. But I didn't really consider myself to have the facility to be reaching for that until the last album when I wrote Fresh Tattoo, which was pretty much a broad Broadway style song. And then for this one, I was like, well, how. How close can you get? Now I listen to a lot of Sondheim. Nobody is on Sondheim's level like you. You're trying to write like Sondheim. Good luck, you know, and so. But at the same time, I was trying to. And Stephen Schwarz, though, you know, I listen to Wicked a lot and Godspell a lot, and I was, I was Think, well, I might not, you know, I'm not gonna write, you know, one of the most successful, successful Broadway musicals of all time. But, you know, I can learn stuff from how. How to set up a dramatic scene in a song in an economical way. That's the one thing is like, you know, it can be real hard to do, is like to get the action moving without it being too. It has to be in this middle space between being too obvious and not obvious enough. So. Yeah, I don't know if that answers your question.
- [12:48]
A
No, I think it does in large part. And that concept of, you know, kind of continuing to further yourself as an artist rather than just, you know, kind of developing that one skill set and polishing that until the day you like that is exactly what we love on this show about all the people that we tend to cover. Bob Dylan, obviously, most significantly, who spent the last however many years of his career mostly singing American standards music. And then obviously rough and Rowdy Ways a couple years ago. That's just. That's what it's all about. You're in North Carolina, right?
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B
Yes.
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A
I can't help but wonder, and I mean, I know you just mentioned a moment ago the title came to you in a dream, and then you kind of had to work backwards to figure out what the hell it was actually about. But the floods last year, I can't help but wonder, is that consciously, subconsciously, you know, informing anything going on here?
- [13:39]
B
When I looked up the note, it was from 23. That's. I got it in sometime in late 23, right. So, yeah, so that was before the flooding happened. I mean, the thing. It's pleasant here all the time. Before that, it didn't get as much press, but Lake Lure flooded out there in that region and destroyed a lot of beautiful stuff. But I don't know. I mean. I mean, the thing is the flood, right, is a. Is a universal human image, right, that, like, you know, it. There's. There's tales of a global flood in every. In every major religion, I think. But. But no, I. I don't think that did. I think. I mean, I think the main thing for me is like. Is this is the stuff where it's like. It. I think it's much more interesting to me than it is as a story to present for others. This, this, this. You know, again, it sounds less fascinating to other people than it is to me. But. But here's the thing. I had the title through this Fire, right? What does. Through this. How's that going to make any sense, right? Either or it's through this fire across. So it's got two prepositions, right. So it's already. It's not. No one's walking through any fire. Someone is standing on one or sitting on one side of a fire, facing another person who's been identified. So I had to fire someplace, right? It can't be in a fireplace. Nobody's on the other side of a fireplace. It has to be a fire pit or something like that. And these sorts of practical considerations for me are very fertile ground for finding stuff because what they are is world building stuff. It's like, it's setting parameters. It's like rolling stats. Right. It's like you're saying, okay, so fire on beach, number of people. No fewer than two. Right. Well that's. To me, that's a really effective way of setting up a dramatic situation. Again, it's like improv that, you know, okay, there's two of you, there's a fire here, you're on the beach, nobody else is around. Go. And then the people would start to say, wow, I can't believe you did it. You built a fire. One of them might say, and the other. And you go back and forth and tell a story that way. What I do with songs is sort of like that, but then I write the song that emerges from sort of the imagined scene.
- [15:42]
A
I mean, it sounds similar also to the concept of like DMing, you know, dungeon mastering, which I know. Obviously Dungeons and Dragons is something that has its place in the Mountain Goat. It's constellation of influence.
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B
Although I haven't played any since. Since 2020. Shut our game group down. I haven't the only game really played much of his magic. But yeah, it's, it's. Although I have a, a one, a two person game that I bought called Tether. I think that's supposed to be a letter writing game that I'm hoping to play on the next tour with a friend.
- [16:16]
A
Okay. Well, you know, it's like riding a bike. It's a skill, that skill that never leaves you even if you're not doing it so often. What was the process of actually putting, I mean, sequencing this record and mapping this story out? I guess because again, it sounds like you've kind of worked backwards towards meaning and towards the narrative arc. Is there a big three act storyboard on a bulletin board in your house that you're working from and then the songs are kind of plugged in there all throughout? Or is it more, I don't know, ad hoc than that?
- [16:49]
B
Well, it's sort of at the in between place. So on the piece of paper where I first wrote down. Because again, I had it in my notes app, right. Then I transferred it to. You read comic books?
- [17:01]
A
I've read comic. You know, I've read Watchmen and Batman and stuff.
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B
Have you bought comic books?
- [17:06]
A
Yes.
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B
So, you know the little cardstock thing that they put in the plastic bag to hold the.
- [17:13]
A
Yeah. In the Mylar bag.
- [17:16]
B
So I have a bunch of those. And from having bought comics, although I don't keep up with anything, but I have tons. And for years I've used those to write down chord charts. Right. So I had one handy at the piano that was blank. So that's what I transcribed the title from my notes app to. And then I wrote one, the number one. And then I wrote the word Fishing Boat. Okay. That'll be the first song. And then for the longest time I was go. I was planning on writing the entire album in sequence. Just as a. As a fun. You know, why not? If I'm already trying to do this fairly bizarre thing of writing in order to explain a title, to give life to a title. And every song has to sort of be in service to that. That's. Oh, maybe I'll write it in order. Right. And that'll, you know, then that'll. That will be kind of fun and challenging.
- [18:02]
A
Make it even more difficult for yourself.
- [18:04]
B
But fun, right? I mean, that's what it is, is like. I like to work. I really do, you know, I love it. And so, so. And the more work I make for myself, the happier I am on this stuff, you know, I also go a little crazy, but. But it's great, you know, so. So, yeah, so I. I wrote down Fishing Boat. And I wrote down, I think the next three, Right. I think for the longest time I had four. And then if I came up with. And then as the process was going on, you know, if I came up with it, I wrote it down. And then at one point, and I was doing pretty good with it, I was like, okay, maybe you actually write the whole album in sequence and you're, you know, your other side of the job brain goes, oh, well, this would be something I talk to interviewers about when that comes, you know, but. But then I wrote one that I knew I wasn't going to keep, right? But on the master piece of paper. And this is a very sort of. I'm like this, right? That, like, I do. I don't want to transcribe that piece of paper to another piece of paper to Keep it clean. And I also don't want to cross things out on it. Right. I sort of. It's the. It's. It's the. It's the article, it's the. The artifact.
- [19:03]
A
Sure.
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B
Yeah. And so, so, yeah. So that one didn't really work out. There was one. What was it called? It Will Be Harder. It was a song was going to be called It Will Be Hard on this Latter Generation or something like that. And I didn't. The more I looked at it, the way I said, well, no, you already did one that has that mood. So then it sort of. From there it became more of a traditional. Like I'm writing songs and fitting them in. But the first four or five were written exactly in the sequence that you hear them in. Well, waiting for the armies of the.
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A
Lord.
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B
Even if we found the world.
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A
Again.
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B
Haircuts and clean clothes and what then Saw ourselves clean back into the fall Remember Till we don't and then won't not ready to go that way what would our old friends say who goes without we'll find some great reward Waiting for the armies of the Lord.
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A
Probably the only record, or certainly the first record and probably the last one to feature both star of major Broadway success, Hamilton, as well as a member of the Replacements. Can you talk a little bit about how you roped your collaborators, your very unique set of collaborators into this record?
- [20:49]
B
Well, they all. They all come from different. Came in in different ways. Lee Manuel and I have been sort of pen pals and we're friends, but I've been running demos past him and for a while, since around the time he beat the champ. Right. And. And I don't share my work in progress with many people. I. It. I just don't generally like to. But. But it can be really fun, you know, if you have like a co. Co conspirator that you go, you know, somebody who you occasionally exchange. Like, check this one out. I think it landed on something this morning, you know, and it's fun, you know, and something I've generally not done much of. So we've been doing that for a long time, right. Since 2015, I guess, or earlier. And. And I was sending him these ones and he was saying, you know, I remember when I sent him army to the Lord, because I was really happy. And he said, oh, yeah. I said, I think I caught one this morning. He said, hey, you landed on a Whopper. And so Orlando Whopper. And so. So I got the idea to ask him, you know, you never. You miss 100 of the shots you don't take. And.
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A
Sure.
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B
And so. So, yeah, I was like, hey, no pressure, but if you were around in January in New York, we'd get you up in studio and sing. But please don't feel obligated, you know, and. But the thing is, he's in theater. And theater is a place, I have learned over the years where to be open to singing a certain way, to acting a certain way, to letting the production inform you. Right. Is part of the process. And talking with people in theater has really opened me up as a writer. It's like, really, the openness of theater, which I knew in high school a little, but I didn't go on to stick with it, is really one of the most fertile places in the arts. Right. Because songwriters can get pretty rigid. Songwriters. I wrote this song. Here's how it Goes. I have all the parts in my head. So you're trying to realize the vision I had in my head in theaters is like making something magical happen. Right. And so having Liam on. Well, on board so opens that space up for me. Tommy. We were, you know, midway through the writing for the album, my longtime bassist, our longtime bassist Peter Hughes, decided it was time for him to pursue his own vision, which is, you know, great. His album actually just came out last week, is totally great. But. But, yeah, so we needed somebody to play bass, and we started kicking names around, and John Worcester said, you know, Tommy Stinson lives up that way in upstate New York. So we hit him up, you know, and. And we had a long list of other bassists we might call, but Cameron Ralston, who we toured with in Matthew E. White's band, is a Richmond guy who. Who Matt knew. Matt Douglas, who produced this, My Woodman's guy. And I knew Cameron from the Tresno Youth tour. It's like, I saw that guy play every night, and he's super great, so. And he showed up fresh from a Mary Chapin Carpenter session. And I worship the ground that she walks on. So that was very cool to me. And. Which is also where Josh Kaufman, who plays that sick, sick guitar solo on Broken to begin with, some other stuff at our Age of Desolation. Josh was on the same Mary Chapin session. And so who else is there? Oh, and Michaela, who I've toured with, who also lives not too far from there, she's in Rochester. And. And I just. I mean, touring with Michaela. Michaela is like an amazing musician and just a great hang. Just really just great to be around in a musical setting. So. So, yeah, so that's how. That's. I think that. I think that's most everybody. Well, there's. I mean, Matthew Barnhart, who engineered. Who I've known since he was the TM and soundman for the Baptist Generals when we toured with them in 2001.
- [24:25]
A
Quite a, you know, quite an eclectic crew of collaborators there, but, you know, would expect nothing less. The record is coming out soon, I think. November, right here towards the end of.
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B
The year, if I remember correctly. I am very bad at knowing when release dates are, which is very funny because I used to not be bad at that. But what do I see here? I don't see it on. I think it might actually be November 7th.
- [24:51]
A
Yeah, that's what the press release is saying, at least.
- [24:53]
B
This is November 7th. There it is.
- [24:55]
A
Yes. Which.
- [24:58]
B
That's the night before Ulcerate plays in Raleigh, according to my own personal calendar.
- [25:02]
A
All right, well, clearly you've got. You've got your date, your priorities in terms of the dates you remember and the dates you don't. But it is what it's been two years. Over two years. A little bit over two years since the last Mountain Goats record. Right around two years.
- [25:18]
B
I don't really keep track, but that seems about right. I don't know when Jenny from Thebes came out, but I feel like it was 23.
- [25:24]
A
Yeah, it was sometime in 20. I don't remember the exact date. Anyways, it would have been Fall.
- [25:28]
B
I remember the tour, so it would have been fall. It's about two years. That's a long gap. Yeah.
- [25:32]
A
Yeah. Well, that's the line of questioning is this feels like, you know, a rel. Two years is, you know, quick turnaround for a lot of bands out there. But for you, for Mountain Goats, this is, you know, kind of a longer time. Was there something about this record that, I don't know, you spent more time on or worked at in a different way than actually.
- [25:52]
B
I mean, I wish I could again. I wish I was better at going. Well, Yes. I really had to go and revise. We were touring a lot, and I was also. My lyrics book is coming out in December. That's one reason I get the. The release dates mixed up. And the lyrics book is not just lyrics. It's. It's 365 lyrics, each with an annotation. Right. And I worked very, very, very hard on it. It's like. I don't know. I have a. For me, if I'm writing a book, I'm super conscious that there's some people who are Going to buy it because they like my music, right? So. But that's not satisfying to me. I don't want to sell you a book unless it's a good book, unless you can read it and say, even if I didn't like your music, I would enjoy this book. The value for me, right? And so this compels me to work as hard as I. And if I'm writing this lyrics book, whereas people who like the Mountain Goes is going to want to buy the Mountain Goes lyric book. So I have to work extra hard at it. And I've been working on that one for five years now. So a lot of that time was getting that one to the finish line, right? And that's a daily thing. That was like. It was 365 lyrics. So. So every one of work I'm having to. I mean, they're short descriptions. The descriptions are only a paragraph or two or three. But I polish and I sand, you know, and I. And I work and we toured a lot. So. But having said that, I mean, I have a whole album's worth of new songs in the quiver already. It's like I. I've been.
- [27:16]
A
I've been working clearly a lot of balls in the air. Can you. Can you tell me a little bit about the lyrics book? Just what these. Because I mean, it is a fascinating concept. It's, you know, it's called 365. It is literally one a day, right?
- [27:31]
B
A book of days, right. This is an old thing that in the pre printing press days when manuscripts were illuminated, right. And all done by hand, people would have these books of days where there would be a Bible verse for each day or whatever. It's like a calendar, but it's a book, right? So that you're reading something. And this is not. There's meditation books like this, mindfulness books, you know, quotation books. And I was just. When my agent was the one who said, you know, don't you want to do a lyrics book? I think people would like that. Well, I don't know. When people do that and I see them, it's just the words on the page. I think, you know, we have the Internet. You don't really technically, that's like. I mean, it is. It's like saying you like me, so you'll buy my thing and you'll enjoy it. Like you'll feel ripped off. But at the same time, for me again, I like to work and I like for my work to. To feel worth it, you know. And so, so, so, yeah, so he Pitched the idea and I thought, well, what if it was because there's so many songs, you know, one lyric for each day of the year. And it would be like, and I've always liked calendars, you know, tear off the, you know, daily calendar forever. You know, I like writing stuff down in physical calendars. So, so, yeah, but, so I got that idea. And also that was a way of limiting the number of lyrics in the book. Although for the longest time my editor was like, no, no, we should do complete. Right. And so I actually did hire somebody to collect all the ones I didn't have in my list of 365 and send me a giant document. And I went and I formatted all that and I thought, this is a stronger book without all that. Without an appendix that has a bunch of uncommented upon lyrics. Sure. So wind up using that. But shout out to Amber, who did that work? I appreciate that. But, but yeah, so, so I did that and I also, it gave me a way of tracing because I'm never going to buy a memoir, but it did, it did get me a way of tracing from the beginnings of the project to the current day kind of, you know, it gives a little of that satisfying biographical thread without me having to do the, you know, what would be for me a self indulgent process of writing a memoir. So, so yeah, and the thing is, some of them are. There's jokes, there's a whole fictional arc at one point. Fun book. Yeah.
- [29:46]
A
What are these? Can you give me a sense of what these annotations look like? Cause I mean, I would imagine some of them are maybe a little more cut and dry. Like here's where I was at when I wrote this song. Here's some of the inspirations. But obviously it sounds like there's a little more creativity that goes into a lot of that as well.
- [30:01]
B
Let me see. I don't know if I'll get in trouble for this.
- [30:05]
A
Don't put yourself in a difficult position with your publisher here.
- [30:08]
B
I don't think they can get me in trouble. So I opened one at random from my copy of the draft. Right. It says May 20, Linda Blair was born Innocent, which is a song off of We Shall All Be Healed. Right. You know this song?
- [30:22]
A
I, I, I, I don't know that it's gone.
- [30:26]
B
Linda Blair was born innocent. And I'll just read the commentary after.
- [30:30]
A
Sure.
- [30:30]
B
Gentle hum of the old machines Here we come Scrubbed and scoured patches on our jeans when the drone sounds in the cool night wind we pick up the call kick all the traces in Hungry for love, ready to drown Tie down the sails we're going downtown Great big drain on the power grid. You may not like Tate's methods, but you've got to admit, she's a real nice kid. We walk light down the wires Higher than weather balloons Empty hearts on fire Hungry for love, ready to drown so tie down the sails Tonight we're going downtown. I love Tate because she only turns up as an aside delivered by a speaker who assumes you already have an opinion about her. According to my personal poetics, everybody already knows most of the details is a terrific starting point, a few beats down the line from In Media's race. Even today, if you go downtown, you might find a few staples with yellowed paper clinging to them stuck in an old utility pole or an empty cricket lighter wedged into a crevice on a fire hydrant. The things Tate left in her wa. The things that goad you to remember her name later. And then you probably get it wrong. Possibly. Possibly not.
- [31:40]
A
Beautiful.
- [31:41]
B
So that's just one. I mean, some are longer and some are shorter. Some are just quotations of other poems. So, yeah, they go a number of ways. Some are reminiscences of my life or the composition of the song or the recording of the song, but not so many of them that it just becomes me talking about myself, which is my least favorite position.
- [32:00]
A
Yeah, I wanted to ask about that. You just mentioned a moment ago that this is kind of your way around writing a memoir, which I think you said for you would have been a self or would be a self indulgent exercise.
- [32:12]
B
Well, I think it's. Self indulgent is a silly term, but, yeah.
- [32:15]
A
What. What is it about, you know, kind of personal excavation like that that doesn't appeal to you the way that, you know, the way that you typically write songs does.
- [32:25]
B
So it's because I don't wish to center it myself, right. When I write songs. I'm not trying to. To say, how clever am I?
- [32:34]
A
Or.
- [32:35]
B
Or. Or pity me for the things that have happened in my life or any of those, or. Or anything like that. I'm trying to tell a story. I would like to be as absent from that story as I can feasibly be without taking my energy away from it. And my energy is a thing, right? It's. It's a formidable force. Right. I don't. I'm not. I'm not running myself down when I say I want to decenter myself. I just don't want to be the Subject. Right. Any more than I want to read a piece of art where I feel that the narrator, that I'm supposed to be engaging the person who wrote it. Right. I don't want that. I want to be told stories. I want to be taken into a world where. Where if the writer were disappeared from the equation was by Anonymous, I would love it just as much. Right. And that's what I really want is I don't want to be writing a thing where somebody likes it better because it's by me. Right. And I sort of. I think. I think for. For me again, not for everybody, because there's brilliant memoirs out there. Pulling the Chariot of the sun is one that I blurbed recently. It's absolutely, unbelievably great book, but there's plenty. But. But for me, I'm always trying to get myself as far out of the equation as I can. That's one reason why when I started playing guitar by myself in a room, I called it the Mountain Goats because I don't want people to have to be thinking about John Darnell, in a sense. I don't care about John Darnell. Right. No, I like him fine. He does his best. I've known him a lot of.
- [33:51]
A
A lot of people do.
- [33:53]
B
Well, he's always trying to get a little better, you know, but not. Not a perfect guy by any. But I'm not trying to put him at the middle of things. I'm trying to put the visions that he. That I have into play in a place where they're useful to other people. Right. And that is something that I enjoy. Right. But I'm not trying to tell the John Darnel story. I don't have a terrific. I have. I have a personal stake in that story. I'm very interested in it in my day to day. Right. I'm not interested in it as something that I want to, you know, share slash force upon others.
- [34:26]
A
Interesting. Well, I mean, speaking of telling or not telling the John Darnell story, one of the records, one of the Mountain Goats records that does do that, you know, to a greater extent, is also being reissued, I think in the next couple of weeks.
- [34:39]
B
It's very. There's an irony in the fact that I'm always trying not to be too autobiographical. And the biggest record by some yardstick, is the one where I said, well, right now I have to talk about.
- [34:48]
A
Myself just this once.
- [34:51]
B
I mean, I did it more times after that is the thing I learned. Here's the thing. I'm not rigid on this. Right. It's Like, I'm not. I sound rigid when I sound, and I have been more rigid. But here's the thing. If when I did that, it was the right move for me artistically because it was my instinct. It was like, that's what. When I sat down to write, that's what was there.
- [35:09]
A
Right.
- [35:10]
B
And I wasn't going to have some, you know. No, we don't do autobiographical here. It's like, plus we shall all be healed. To really set the stage for it by being a much more veiled kind of autobiography. So I was interested in it also. It was transgressive for me to do.
- [35:22]
A
Right.
- [35:22]
B
When you set yourself up some rules that I do this or I don't do this, right. Then when you break those, you get the thrill of transgression. Sure, you may have to be Catholic to really savor, but. But I am and I do. Right. So, you know, setting up any arbitrary boundary allows you then to. To breach that boundary, you know, and, and experience the, you know, if you really. If you really, you know, make that choice mindfully. Right. And so, but, but, but, yeah, so that, that one, you know, that was a. There's. There's outtakes from the album you can hear like Collapsing Stars and the Daily Aliens Came that are much more storytelling that were in the writing where I was trying to sort of cheat it. And then at the end of the day, I said, look, if you're going to do this, you should do it, you know, with chest out, actually do the whole thing. So. So, yeah.
- [36:14]
A
And so is there. I mean, you said when you sat down to write the Sunset Tree, I don't think we've even, you know, clarified that what record we're talking about, although I'm sure everyone is aware you said when you sat down to write that record, that's. That material is what was there is. Is it sort of the same thing with the, the. The reissue that we have or remaster that we have this year? Just like this was. This was the right time to come back to this record or something else that compelled.
- [36:37]
B
It's. It's the 20th anniversary, right. And so, so reissuing records on. On anniversaries is a thing. And it's. And the thing is it comes out at the same time as the lyrics book where I'm like, I am averse to looking back too much.
- [36:49]
A
Right.
- [36:50]
B
But at the same time, that's another thing I'm challenging in myself lately. It's like that's been a very reflexive stance for me, you know, in Part because musically I'm, like, voracious and infinitely curious. Right. Whereas if you are on Facebook and you're my age, Right. You learn that a lot of people who you still love and respect, but their musical explorations ended sometime around senior year in college.
- [37:16]
A
Right? Yeah.
- [37:17]
B
And then you become persuaded that that was the time of the good music. And I'm reactionary about. And I'm very like, no, there's always amazing amounts of great new music and you will die without having heard a hundredth of it, you know? And so. So I'm not, you know, and I don't romanticize the music that I loved when I was a teenager. It was special to me because those were turbulent times. Right. I don't think of it as better in any way. So this is a big, tiresome shtick that I roll out and that I kind of like wind up carrying around in my gut. But then I want to challenge that. I want to say, well, look, I'm. You know, I have fewer years left to live. Right. Than the ones I've lived. There's no doubt about that. I'm not going to live to be 100. And what would that be? What's 58 times two? I don't even know, like 116.
- [37:57]
A
16, yeah.
- [37:59]
B
So I'm not going to live to be 116. It's not going to happen. So. So I have lived more years than I am going to live. And it is sort of, you know, I've been asking myself, well, allowing myself sort of like. So get a little. Do a little backwards looking now you can allow yourself this much of it. So. And the thing is, it works just like all my other transgressive stuff. Well, if it's been something you've been denying yourself on some grounds or another, when you do it, you get extra out of it. And so. So it's a real indulgence. Some of the songs I'm working on right now, I indulge in that a little more, and I'm enjoying that.
- [38:34]
A
Fantastic.
- [38:37]
B
There is no sign of land. You are coming down with me.
- [38:44]
A
Hand.
- [38:44]
B
In unlovable hand And I hope you die I hope we both die.
- [39:05]
A
Would you have you ever. Nothing is leaping to mind immediately, but I must confess, you work so fast and have so many spinning plates at any given time. I may have missed it, but you say 20th anniversary. That's what. How we mark records and reissue them and stuff. Would you ever do one of those I'm gonna play the Sunset Tree in its entirety type tours, type Thing. Cause that's a very popular.
- [39:33]
B
Oh, and I have had. There has been pressure to do.
- [39:35]
A
I'm sure there have been offers for that.
- [39:37]
B
Oh, yeah. No, I don't. And again, this is one of the things where younger me would have been very prescriptive about this. But, like, whatever makes people happy and whatever they enjoy, they should do that. Right?
- [39:46]
A
Right.
- [39:46]
B
It's for me, in part because an album is a discrete event. It's like. It's not. It's not a live show. A live show is something different from an album. Right. And so I don't. I wouldn't be interested by playing it in sequence. There's been a lot. I've been. When I tell you there's been offers about that, it's like there has been pressure. There was pressure because wouldn't you think maybe just one show? And I'm like, I don't. It feels calcified to me. It just doesn't feel. It doesn't feel restless, you know? And like I say, I'm giving myself permission to do a little looking back to reckon with the past. Especially given that my songs from the earliest ones. The notion of a person grappling with their own past is a central theme of a lot of my stuff. Right. The word, the phrase I remember, it crops up from the earliest songs. Like, memory is a big theme of mine. Right. But. But to play it in sequence, I mean, it's not. That's not a good show to me. Like, to end Pale Green Things, that's not. Nor do I want to run through all those songs. And with Pale Green Things, and they go, well, here's some other uptempo ones. We're gonna go offstage. We'll be back.
- [40:48]
A
We'll be right back.
- [40:48]
B
I don't. To me, that's not a good show, you know, and so maybe it's a better show with other people's albums played in sequence, you know? But I really love the way that album ends.
- [40:58]
A
Right.
- [40:58]
B
I think the ideal condition for hearing that album end is not communal. I think it's by yourself.
- [41:03]
A
Right.
- [41:04]
B
You know, and so, I mean, it would be different. It would be something. But it's not. I'm just much more. And also, our shows are fairly free. We have. We now do have usually a master set list that I consult every night, but we always trade out at least two songs per night. One from the top and one from the back. And then the middle section where I play by myself. I just play whatever comes to mind, or I write it five minutes Before I go on stage, I don't like, you know, like to tour something where I have to play the same 15 songs in a row every single night. By the end of that tour, I would be filling out applications to nursing school.
- [41:43]
A
I think that makes perfect sense. I mean, I come back to this theme often in interviews. You know, the concept of recording, you know, having written the songs and then recording them in a studio, that's one thing. And then playing them live in a concert, you know, it's the same songs and it bears some relation, but they are different practices, you know, and just because.
- [42:03]
B
Also, it's like you're a Dylan guy. Is like, if there's. I. I love Bob Dylan. I can't consider myself like a giant fan. Like, there's giant gaping holes in. In what I know about his work. But I do know enough about him live to know that he's a guy who calls numbers on the fly. Maybe the band has. Maybe they practice it, maybe they haven't.
- [42:21]
A
Maybe they haven't.
- [42:21]
B
Yeah, he just got a wild hair to do Silvio, you know, and then. And, well, he's got badass enough musicians that they know he's not going to be suddenly, you know, jumping into three, four out of four. It's going to be in four, almost, like, almost surely. And the changes will be predictable within the. You know, within how the songbook goes, you know, And. And he's always like that, right? And when, like, the one time I saw him, my favorite story from it is, like, he starts playing a song, I'm like, I don't know this song. What is this? Well, lyrically feels a little more dense than this more recent stuff. Oh, oh, it's blowing in the wind. It's like, no idea what it was till I got to the chorus. Like, I wasn't picking up the lines. I don't know that song all that well. And I wasn't catching the. How many years is. And I was like, God, that's what I want. I want to play a song everybody in the room knows. And half of them don't know what it is for the first couple of lines, right? To me, that makes the go exciting. And it means. It tells you that whatever we do or don't know about Bob Dylan, we know he's engaging the material seriously enough to be thinking about it. He's not just going up there and going, well, now I got to play Blown in the Wind. No, he doesn't have to play it at all. He may Skip it for 10 years, you know, And. And that, to me, that's like. That's hashtag goals as a performer. It's like you'll be that strong to say if half this room goes away mad because they didn't get to hear the one they wanted to hear. That's not really my affair, you know, I'm here to make a show that is special right now. Having said that, I also am a person who has a pathological need for people to be happy and who really enjoys feeling that people are happy around me. So you do. The chances that you're not going to hear no Children this year to mount Good show are extraordinarily low. But. But. But on the other hand, we've. We've routinely, like, toured new albums and somebody in the band. So, John, this is a great set list. There's only one from the new album.
- [44:14]
A
Yeah. How did it feel on the note of no Children? How did it feel to become an overnight TikTok sensation when that blew up?
- [44:24]
B
It was weird and very satisfying because we didn't do that. Had nothing to do with me.
- [44:28]
A
Yeah. Never even entered in your mind, I would imagine.
- [44:31]
B
But that's what's great about that is as a musician, what I was talking about is if you already like the Mountain Goats, you come to something of mine ready to like it in some way. Right. But your dream as a musician is that somebody who's never heard of you in their lives has no stake in what you're doing at all. Right. And maybe listens to an entirely different type of music. Here's your thing. And goes, oh, I like that. It's like, that's the best. That is the best as an author, too. It's like, you know, it's just the best. If somebody reads your thing, had no expectations or. Or any other reason to be sympathetic to it, and they say, you got me. Right. With no Children, it was like. Well, part of it was that people were doing a dance. But the song caught on. You know, it's like we were. And it was very. It was. It was really amazing. And because we had nothing to do with it, it was just crazy watching, you know, my management would go, so, okay. No Children plays tripled over the last two days. It was really crazy. It was cool. It was like, you know, it's. But it is the sort of thing like you don't want to be. Steve was sent me with the skateboard going, well, here I am doing the no Children Dan. Now, you stay out of the way. Let the kids who are enjoy it. It's really not my business in a way. We kept playing it, but we'd been playing it already.
- [45:40]
A
Yeah. I was combing through just the discography the other day on Spotify just to have everything in front of me on the page. And I realized no Children has orders of magnitude more plays than everything else in the Mountain Goats discography at this point.
- [45:55]
B
Because that was the thing. It was like this year was number one for the longest time and we were watching it when that whole thing was happening. I was getting interviewed by Variety about it and stuff. The. And we're going, wow, is it going to pass this year? This year is the song Is the Mountain good song that you know. You know, that many people know who don't otherwise have any particular interest in what I do.
- [46:14]
A
Right. And yeah, no, it's passed at this. It's no children. 74 million this year, 46 million. So it's. It's handily pasted.
- [46:23]
B
Wow. I didn't realize it was like it's not just passed but. But. But firmly passed. So. So see, this is why I have to reissue the first cassette digitally because it has running away with what Freud said on it. And I'm certain that that will pass the both.
- [46:37]
A
That's a joke.
- [46:42]
B
But. Yeah, that's wild. I mean. I mean the thing is I got to assume that that's because it was a tick tock thing and TikTok is so big. Right. And that people then I mean, are those spins. Do you know whether TikTok is talking to the streamers in terms of feeding data?
- [46:58]
A
I don't think so. I think those are. That's Spotify exclusive stuff.
- [47:02]
B
Wow, that's. Well, God bless.
- [47:05]
A
Yeah, thank God for a short form video, I guess. I want to go back to Bob for a second just on that note because in my preparation for conversations like this, my research which often just consists of typing in the name of the person I'm interviewing and Bob Dylan. One of the first results for John Darniel. Bob Dylan. I love that it was from a Tumblr site, I think from some number of years ago. And someone had asked. I think you were answering a question on Tumblr that someone had asked you about. What do you think of Dylan? How does he influence you? And I don't have the response in front of me to read verbatim. But you talked about how Bob couldn't help but influence you in the way that Bob influences anyone who writes rock songs at this point. But that you're much more focused on bridges, I think than Dylan is. And that that's a distinct kind of way of songwriting that Bob practices. And then actually, Leonard Cohen, I think you considered more of an influence on your personal style than Bob himself. This may have completely changed in the time since this was written whenever it was back in the days of Tumblr, but I wonder if you can just tell me a little bit about that.
- [48:18]
B
Yeah, let me spin out on that a little because, like my Franklin Bruno, a better songwriter than I, when I said, you know, Dylan doesn't really do bridges, said, no, you're completely wrong. Right. And. And I think he was at some point working on a book about the bridge and Bob Dylan. Right. Because. Because Dylan, as we know, especially from his recent interests, and I don't think it was really a revelation. I mean, it's obvious any of his generation grew up on, you know, Lerner and Low and all the great songwriting teams of, you know, from both Broadway.
- [48:49]
A
And popular music, Tim Penley, Brill Building.
- [48:53]
B
And Erling Berlin and Irving Berlin and all these guys. And. And so. But I. I haven't. I haven't dug deep. But. But a guy who I know to be a better songwriter than I says that Dylan actually is. Is very interesting on the bridge. And I want to think of it, I think, well, does Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts have a bridge? Not. I don't think. I don't think so. Idiot Wind. Is there a bridge? Are there any bridges on? There's no bridge on. Oh, there is a bridge on. You're going to make me lonesome when you go. Right. And it's actually not uninteresting when I think of it in memory. But I'm really. Over the years, I've become very, very interested in the bridge as the place where the song kind of lives. Right. Like where. And it's also where you're freest as a writer, you know, because nobody's focusing on it. It's like. Whereas with a chorus, you do have to think a little about your course. I mean, you don't have to. You do whatever you want.
- [49:44]
A
Sure.
- [49:45]
B
But if you're gonna bother to write a chorus, right. A chorus is something that should be the catchy and the most catchy and memorable part of the song. That's what it's there for, right. And one story I tell is that when I wrote this year, originally, there was going to be a rhyme line or a second line to the chorus. The chorus, if you don't know the mountain goat says, I am going to make it through this year. If it kills me if it kills me. And I wrote it and, and, and I said to Peter Hughes, my then bassist, you know, so I'm. I'll fix this chorus when we get to the studio, but song seems pretty good. And he overdubbed some bass onto. He sent it back and I said, it sounds amazing, so don't get too married to the chorus. I'm gonna fix that. And he said, well, and the thing. This is a very fond memory for me because when you work with somebody for a long time, they learn, you know, what's, what's going to be the most effective way to communicate with my partner here. Right, sure. And with me, people learn is like, if you tell me, you know, don't do that, I'm. I'm not going to be a dick about it, but I am going to probably go, well, what if I want to do that? So, you know, so he said, look, hey man, it's your song. You can do whatever you think is right. I know you'll do something great, but I sort of feel like it's done. And I could hear it's like, you mean don't do that to this song. Right? It was a great way of saying that to me. I was like. It was so gentle, you know, And I still was like, oh, no, I could probably get a good rhyme line in there. But he was right, you know, he was like. He was dead right. My wife also does this a lot where I will say, you know, I'll have a good line. And she'll say, well, now the songwriters who's, you know, whose second homes you are jealous of, would that line four times, you know, and, and so, so that's that. So, so. So that's where the chorus is. But the bridge, right? The bridge is the place where you get to show off a little how good you are at straying from where you are at melodically and getting back there, right. You can modulate in the bridge and then you can mod back or not mod back. It's just, it's. For me, it's a very. It's. It's both. Formally, it's a little restrictive. It tells you you don't have that long. It needs to be shorter than the verse. Most likely, you can long bridge, you do whatever you want. But, but, but most likely it's four or eight bars, you know, and, and, and it's a little space in the Tin Pan Alley stuff. It's always a little corny like, like always that one. And let's call the whole thing Off. You know that song, uca. Potato. I say potato.
- [52:18]
A
Oh, sure, yeah.
- [52:20]
B
Potato, potato, potato, potato. Let's call the whole thing off. And then the. The bridge goes. But, oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must.
- [52:28]
A
Right.
- [52:28]
B
It's very. It's like. It's just sort of sketching. Okay, what we got the next potato, potato part. But it's. It's very charming, you know, and. And it leaves a lot of space for. For stuff. So that's what. That's what I like in those. But then I always. You know, but I also don't think.
- [52:44]
A
Super.
- [52:45]
B
I tried to. To dwell on it because I think the way that I write, if I'm having those thoughts foremost, I won't do something as interesting as when I just sort of get there by, you know, just by sort of fumbling around with my hands in front of my. To see what I can get.
- [53:02]
A
Just seeing where you can get to in a dark room. Well, I can't help but ask. Kind of circling back to the matter at hand, the record, and obviously with your. You mentioned you've been listening to a lot of Broadway stuff and your familiarity with these songwriting factories and obviously Lin Manuel appearing here. Is there ever a world in which this record would be staged on a. On a stage as a. As an actual piece of musical theater?
- [53:32]
B
I mean, the thing is, I can totally imagine it, but I also know how much time and effort goes into that stuff, and I'm kind of a control freak at that end of things. Like, I couldn't really just let it go and say, okay, well, you. You write the script for this and it'll be great, and let's all make a lot of money. I'd say I. I'm really protective. I work really hard on my stuff, and when I. When stuff. When my stuff gets turned into a script, I often find myself having to bite my tongue and go, eh, that's not what I would have done. But, hey, you know, it's like. And so. So. But I can imagine it. It's like, you know, I wrote it that way. I wrote it with an vision. But it's hard. It's also very hard for you to imagine dialogue. Because I've just got the songs right.
- [54:11]
A
The dialogue is in the songs. Exactly.
- [54:13]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of. So. So, yeah. But I'm curious about the idea, but it's not, you know, I like to write songs and write books. That's what I do. Yeah.
- [54:22]
A
Yeah.
- [54:23]
B
There's nothing to plumb. Hey, I had an idea. And I'm just gonna. Because you didn't consent to this, but John Wesley Harding, overrated or underrated?
- [54:31]
A
Ooh. I mean, it depends on who you're asking. Very highly rated in my estimation. So I would tend to say underrated in terms of, you know, the general public out there. That was actually our first ever episode with the show. We started with John Wesley Harding. We skipped all the stuff before it because we said this is where Bob Dylan begins. This is where the actual kind of interesting material lies instead of all the canonized 60s shit. As great as that is. John Wesley Harding, that's where we're super.
- [54:58]
B
Interesting record. Street Legal. Overrated or underrated?
- [55:01]
A
Oh, underrated. That's my underrated. Street Legal top three all time Bob Dylan records for me.
- [55:06]
B
World Gone Wrong.
- [55:07]
A
World Gone Wrong. Fantastic record. Also underrated.
- [55:11]
B
That's the one I'm most. That's the one. I'm preachy about that record. And the thing is, he did two of those and the other one isn't even in the same neighborhood as, well. World Gone Wrong. World Gone Wrong is. Is a masterpiece in my opinion.
- [55:22]
A
I. Well, so the other one. Good as I've been to you, I. I have actually become, I think even a. A little bit more fond of good as I've been.
- [55:29]
B
I might have to go back to it. World Gone Wrong is mind blowing to me. It's like, it's like just so. The playing is so good. Yeah, the, the vocals are so. I mean, so I think really when he's first starting to reckon with, with how his voice is growing, you know, he's changing age, as happens, you know, and, and I think he's really, you know, as Leonard Cohen did. He's going, okay, well, you got to use this to your advantage. You got. It's like you have. It's like having, you know, it's not like your instrument has degraded. It's like you have a different instrument, you know, and, and so, so yeah, it's. I, I just liked it. He's got such a big catalog that it's fun to name albums and think, you know, does this one have a bigger rep than it really deserves in the catalog or lesser? I think you're right about John Wesley Harding, that. That is like an absolute anchor point. Right?
- [56:12]
A
Absolutely.
- [56:12]
B
Yeah.
- [56:13]
A
And frankly, I mean, I guess if I'm going to point to any Bob Dylan record as a John Darniel reference. Reference point or influence, I feel like John Wesley Harding, these kind of smaller, quieter, but kind of character studies that he puts Together in that record. Like that. Again, like I said, if I got to point to one or a couple records that make themselves apparent throughout the Mountain Goats catalog, that would probably be top of the list.
- [56:39]
B
So that is super interesting. I didn't hear that 1 until 2000, 2003, or 4.
- [56:43]
A
Interesting.
- [56:44]
B
All right, well, so the thing is, with these guys, when I started writing songs, which I was like 23, when I started writing my own songs, I started avoiding the, The. The names that were extremely well known. We talked about the conversation. So I knew some Dylan, but I. I made a point of not learning too much more at that point, Right. Because I had noticed when I was first writing lyrics for my own project, I was super into Leonard Cohen. And if you listen to Leonard Cohen on a given day and then you try to write, you wind up sounding like bad Leonard Cohen. Now probably now that I have established my own voice over the decades, right, I could probably risk a Leonard Cohen thing. But at the time I was like, I didn't know anybody who was a Dylan fan who didn't write bad Bob Dylan songs, right? And like. And I was like, boy, that just seems like the worst thing could happen to you as a guy with a goose guitar. Oh, he's trying to. So I avoided it. The only album I had that I, like, I was already neck deep in, so I. I didn't. There was no point in not. Not doing it was Blood on the Tracks, right? That's the one I had known since I was. But I didn't explore Dylan at all beyond Blood on the Tracks and World Gone wrong until my 30s.
- [57:50]
A
So those are the two. I love that. That's fantastic.
- [57:53]
B
I think it's like, so. So it's. I mean, that's part of why World Got Wrong so big for me is like, it's just this almost contextless. I mean, I know who he is, but I was like, God, I heard. I saw the video for Blood On My Eyes. I was like, oh, man, this was made for me. Did you also hear the David Johansson of the Harry Smith's records?
- [58:10]
A
I don't think so.
- [58:11]
B
So if you like Good As I've been to you A World Gone Wrong. David Johansson, the singer from the New York Dolls.
- [58:16]
A
Yeah.
- [58:16]
B
May he rest in Peace, who died, I think just earlier this year. He made records in the 2000s with musicians he called the Harry Smiths. Right. The. The. The guy who did the. The Anthology of Folk Songs.
- [58:30]
A
Harry Smith.
- [58:31]
B
Yeah. So. And it's the same material. This is not the same songs, but it's from the exact same trove of pre war stuff that. That, that Dylan was mining, but with a little more blues with some. Some Furry Lewis and stuff like that. One record's called Shaker and the other is, I think, just self titled. If you have love for world gone wrong and goes up into you, these records will absolutely reach you. They are stunning.
- [58:56]
A
Wow.
- [58:58]
B
The. The first one, especially Shaker's good, but that first one, they're on the Chesky label and I don't. Chesky is not paying for me. I don't know if they have any, but like they're. They're in that zone of just incredibly deep readings of these rich, rich texts.
- [59:17]
A
I'm looking at the track list right now. Yeah, Delia's here. Okay, sure.
- [59:20]
B
Yeah. You know that one?
- [59:21]
A
Yeah, like the opening Furries Blues.
- [59:24]
B
This is one of the greatest opening verses of all time. I believe I'll buy me a graveyard of my own I believe I'll buy me a graveyard of my own I'm gonna kill everybody that has done me wrong Incredible.
- [59:39]
A
Well, I think we've. We've hit quite, quite a bit here. I appreciate you for going so wide ranging with me. This has been.
- [59:46]
B
I'm sorry that I talk so fast and so much.
- [59:48]
A
No, this is like. I am the fast talker on this show. So I'm thrilled to have someone who talks even faster than me. It's a treat, I guess. One last question I just want. I couldn't help but ask towards the end of this record, one of my favorite songs on it, actually. Penultimate track, lady from Shanghai 2. That's a reference, of course, to presumably lady from Shanghai 1, one of the great Orson Welles films. Is that right?
- [60:14]
B
Well, the title Lady From Shanghai is a reference to that. Absolutely. One of a movie you could watch with the sound down. Just such a gorgeous movie. But on my first 7 inch there was a song called the Lady From Shanghai.
- [60:29]
A
Right. Okay. I'm.
- [60:30]
B
I mean you. There's only 500 copies of that seven inches. But, but so, yeah, it more or less just narrates the action from inside the movie. Right. The chorus is we went down to the boat, which is this new one here. But there's a. So that. That's the connection between the two is, is they have the same chorus. Right. And so. And they both take place on a boat. Right. So. But yeah, so it's. You know, it was. I called it that. And well, also. And this is. I hadn't thought of this, but the demo for it, which nobody probably ever hear was in an alternate tuning. I was on electric guitar and the strum pattern was similar to my first lady From Shanghai from 90, I think it was. So. But then with this album more than most others, I was just very open to the song going wherever it was going to go in studio. So it was kind of an up tempo electric guitar, alternate tuning. It was kind of like Coyote by Joni Mitchell, right?
- [61:32]
A
Absolutely.
- [61:36]
B
Kind of strum pattern. We got to the studio, Cameron was there with his fretless bass, which I wanted so bad on the record. It winds up being this breezy floating on the ocean song.
- [61:46]
A
Yeah. But it's almost got like a bossa nova flavor to it or something. A little bit.
- [61:52]
B
We. We wish to live inside the groove of that song. It's a very.
- [61:55]
A
It's.
- [61:56]
B
The thing is I can't. I. You know, it's like it's the band that's playing. I'm not taking any credit for it, but. But, but it's got that steel guitar. I'm very fond of that number.
- [62:04]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. I hope that shows up on the. On the set list for this, this upcoming tour.
- [62:10]
B
Oh, that would be fun. The thing is like this be the challenge for the tour is that like we're not touring with an orchestra, but Matt Douglas, a member of the band, also produced this and wrote the string arrangements, which are big. Right. So we don't have an orchestra.
- [62:22]
A
So how do you shrink it down to stage and have it still come across?
- [62:25]
B
It's always doable. Anything you can do with 18 instruments, you can do with one. But. But you have to. It takes. It takes focus and. And openness.
- [62:34]
A
Sure. Let's leave it there. John, thank you so much. Thanks again to John Darnel, Mr. Mountain Goats again threw this fire across from Peter Balkan out this Friday, November 7th this year. John's lyric book out later this. This year, I think. December 2nd, I want to say. And the Sunset Tree 20th anniversary remaster out now. It's a good time to be a Mountain Goats fan, especially if you are a concert goer there on the road already playing some of this great new material. See you at one of the gigs, hopefully. Jokerman.
- [63:30]
B
Sam Sa.