The Mountain Goats

Run Away, Teach Self Chords, Tour Years Later

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:44:37 -0500

So, I'm going to tell you a sad little story about me as a kid. Don't get too sad, though, it has a happy ending, I love literally everything about my life and I have this probably-dumb-but-what-the-hell mystical sense that if even one small detail of my life had been changed, then everything would be different now, and who's to say that the things most dear to me wouldn't have to be traded away in the bargain? I call this conviction "The JD Doesn't Really 'Get' Physics Effect," though if I were in an instrumental prog-metal band, I might instead call it the Phalse Phenomenology Ephect. Then everybody would cry, except for me, because I would be too busy in the Locrian mode laying down the sickest two-part solos you're ever gonna hear in this town, bud.

Anyway. Kids in junior high used to wait until after school to fuck with me, but I guess they didn't mind waiting, because I walked home by myself, and some of the kids most eager to fuck with me lived on the same block as me, which, I probably don't have to point this out, really sucked. It got worse every day; I was a scrawny dude with no illusions of toughness or any desire to sharpen my combat skills. I liked to hang out with girls and read science fiction books. Eventually it became clear to me that even if I ratted these dudes out to the school, any relief was going to be temporary; it was fight them or avoid them, and they moved in packs of three. So one day instead of walking home (south, down Mountain Avenue, past the little league diamonds and through a vacant lot, which was usually where the beatdown occurred), I cut left at Harrison Avenue and hoofed it all the way downtown; my tormentors followed me most of the way there, but I was bold enough to look behind me and see that the further out of the neighborhood they got, the less comfortable they looked. It was cool to feel a sort of power in flight: they weren't sure where I was going; that made them uneasy.

A few things happened as a result of me being too terrified of my bullies to face them. One, I ended up volunteering for work at the library. I filed books and microfiche, and cleaned vinyl LPs with water and a cloth. It felt weird not telling my supervisor "I'm here because the people who want to kick my ass won't follow me in," but that passed. Two, I ended up spending more time downtown, because that's where the library is. Downtown in Claremont there's a place called the Folk Music Center, it's been there forever; they have a lot of guitars. I only knew piano, but I used to go in and look at the chord charts and teach myself one chord at a time. D. D. D. D. Half an hour of what was probably the worst-sounding D ever. G. G. G. G. Really had to stretch that little left hand to make the G. I pity the people who worked the counter at the Folk Music Center when I'd come in.

If there's any point to this story, and I'm not sure there is but, it's that the songs I sing, which are often about finding ways to call a dark dungeon a glittering castle & really mean it, have some of their genesis in me being a fearful young kid with just enough presence of mind to turn to music as an escape. The fact that I'm able to play them on guitar certainly owes much to my finding a path home that other kids on the block didn't want to take. All this stuff occurs to me because I'm finally getting around to doing a West coast solo tour, whose dates are off to the right on the yellow post-it note, and which dates conclude with me playing a show at, where else, the Folk Music Center. Most dates (not that last one, though) I have the pleasure of Dustin Wong as my opening act. Dustin's music is so awesome, you guys. I am really excited to hear him every night, and to finally, after years of wondering when I was going to get around to it, be embarking on a solo West Coast run.

Please note, in case you hadn't, that these rooms are a good deal smaller than the ones we usually play out west, so, you know, not to be blunt and presumptuous or whatever but in towns where we sometimes sell out a room, these rooms may sell out faster, so act accordingly and don't say I didn't warn you. Because I did warn you! Just now! OK this update has gotta be like 3,000 words nobody asked you to write the whole history of the world JD c'mon. See you soon!

Stephen Would Answer If He Only Knew How

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:39:28 -0500

Yes I'm playing two solo sets at Hopscotch, why wouldn't I? The first will be the thing where I stand there and try to force blood to shoot from my eyes while singing about people who used to love each other but who now tread the earth under the heavy curse of Cain. The other one, the "metal covers" set, 1) probably won't ever happen again, and 2) will probably be the only "metal covers" set that also includes songs by Rich Mullins & maybe one from Aoxomoxoa, if recent trends around here continue. I want to say how proud of am of the internet for not asking, during the ten minutes since the program was announced, whether I will be wearing corpsepaint. The answer is probably "no," but at the same time, it's one of my better-kept secrets that I look awesome in makeup. I also used to look awesome in taffeta, but I think it's safe to say that those days are behind us, much like the days of the vikings, whose ghosts I bet I end up invoking from behind the piano at least once that night.

The other thing I'm doing, much sooner, is playing a benefit to defeat the latest "deny people who love each other the right to marry" bill. We can actually beat this bill, and in the wake of Citizens United, the way that happens is if we raise enough money to do it. Dollars buy requests at this show, anything in my catalog is game. If I don't know it I'll improvise something. Mac McCaughan'll be there, Greg Cartwright, the amazing Tara DeFrancisco emceeing and moderating, it's going to be a proper Durham party so dress how you please and prepare to holler some. It would mean more to me than I can say if my adopted home of North Carolina could say to the world "you love who you want here, all are welcome." There is nothing I won't do to try to help this happen.

See you at the shows!

2012: Putting the Cyborgs On Notice

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:33:32 -0500

I want to explain something to you. On the day when the last of the undead cyborgs lies in the wet red clay of the camouflaged pit that trapped him, and the smoke rising from his circuits indicates in vanishing Morse code that he truly was the last hominid to walk the surface of this late planet, that will technically be a lie, because there will still be three hominids left, and they'll be called the Mountain Goats, and they will still be touring. On that day, may the fates delay its coming, we will announce a tour of the network of bio-pods underneath the ruins of the former cities, and it will cost you a quart of whole blood to get in. In the present day, let's enjoy it while it lasts, what we're going to do is tour down south, because the American South in January is evidence that the universe loves us deeply and holds an abiding concern for our pleasure and well-being.

January
19 - Antone's, Austin, TX
20 - Fitzgerald's, Houston, TX
21 - Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA
23 - Club Downunder, Tallahassee, FL
24 - The Social, Orlando, FL
25 - Crowbar, Tampa, FL
27 - The Original Cafe Eleven, St. Augustine, FL
28 - The Earl, Atlanta, GA
30 - 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA
31 - Visulite Theatre, Charlotte, NC

February

2 - the Grey Eagle, Asheville, NC
4 - the Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw, NC

One small word about these shows. For years bands have been pretty judicious about playing unreleased new material, because much of it becomes available online immediately, even when the new songs are still in fairly raw form. We, too, have gotten into the bad habit of holding new stuff back. We are done with that whole philosophy, though. I miss playing stuff that's unreleased & unrecorded, stuff that still stings fresh. So we got together and decided to tour the new songs before we even record them. I don't guess that we'll be touring all ten of the new songs I've written for the next album (eleven if you count one that's presently being herded back and forth between its cell & the chopping block), but be advised that if you're the sort of person who wants as many surprises as possible when you hear a new album, you should tread lightly around recordings of these shows, because we're not going to be holding the best ones back for the album release like people tend to do now.

We will be supported on all dates by Nurses, who have forever endeared themselves to me by calling their album Dracula! Links to the venues all on the post-it to the right! See you all soon!

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:26:55 -0500

Affairs in order? House tidy? OK, then. Let's wrap up the last year before the winged serpent comes and consumes us all in his radiant fire! Tomorrow night, I'm in St. Paul for the Johnslaught at Wits at the Fitzgerald, where John Hodgman, John Moe, John Munson, myself, and Neil "John" Gaiman will, together, in story and song, spearhead the drive toward the end of this last year before the Quetzalcoatl Configuration becomes visible to those whose rods & cones bear the attunement. (NB: none of those other guys have signed off on this description, so for all I know, we'll actually just be arguing about whether the state of New York ought to grant Antonio Margarito a license to box.)

Then! As the time draws near! I will do like I do in December and play a couple of special shows! First, I'm returning to Second City's Letters to Santa. Last time I was there it was one of the most inspirational things I've ever been part of. Second City's incredible regulars do improv for 24 hours, and all proceeds go toward bringing holiday cheer to people who're short on funds. It is an awesome thing, the whole deal: Last time I ended up trading in on a sketch & improvising a verse and chorus for song before a live audience. Seat of the pants stuff. So cool. C'mon out!

Then! Toward the end of the year, and of this age! I will head out to my old home turf to play a benefit for Invisible Children at the Troubadour. I hardly ever get to play solo shows in southern California; to finish out 2011 doing one at the Troubadour for a great cause is about the best wrap-up to Known Reality that I can think of. As at Letters to Santa, I'm doing a full solo set. Because I grew up in California I think I'll premiere a couple of new songs there just for the hell of it.

I'll have one other piece of news soon - maybe next week - and hopefully most of the stuff it covers will actually come to pass before we're all compelled to kneel, singing, in the intolerable infinite glare of the New Pyramids, whose crystalline angles rise forever.

See you there!

Behold Our Transcendental Youth

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:30:58 -0500

I'm on the porch listening to Hatchback and the weather simply couldn't be more soothingly tropical, so you'll excuse me if I come off a little blissed here, but dig the news, everybody: I'm playing at the Ecstatic Music Festival in March in a program with Anonymous 4, and "stoked" won't take an intensifier deep enough to explain how I feel about this show, so gimme an extra paragraph to elaborate.

Anonymous 4 are among my favorite musicians anywhere, ever. I've been listening to them with wonder and gratitude ever since I was given this amazing album as a college graduation gift. Every A4 album is a journey into geographies of mood and tone that you simply can't find elsewhere; whether they're singing a 14th-century mass or John Tavener, their artistry is peerless. For me tell you that they're going to be singing the newest as-yet-only-heard-by-people-mentioned-in-this-paragraph Mountain Goats songs, the secluded trapped wet desperate yearning ones I've been working on since late spring, heard here in special arrangements for guitar, piano and voice by Owen Pallett in a gorgeous 400-seat hall is...well, it beggars description. So instead let me tell you this about myself. I am person who likes to eat candy. Every time somebody says "kid in a candy shop," I think to myself: "I wanna be that kid in the candy shop, after hours, with the go-ahead to have all the candy I like." Anonymous 4 singing my new songs in arrangements by Owen: this is all candy ever all at once for me. I simply cannot wait for this show.

More news about more stuff soon, quite soon really! See you here!

Insert Mandatory Banana Joke Here

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:22:10 -0500

OK, who here wants me to come play in their living room? Because that is what's up for auction, courtesy of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. The animals at CSNW survived medical studies, animal acts, and life in a windowless basement to finally find the light of the sun in the Pacific Northwest. I don't guess I need to tell people who know me how moved I am by this kind of story.

Wherefore it seems right and good that we have an auction about it. Once we've got a winner & a date hammered out, I'll hop on a plane and grind out a blistering (or tranquil, if that's your thing, I can probably do tranquil) invite-who-you-like show for you in your home. It'll be a solo set, to be played sometime next year as our schedule allows but I figure sometime between January and June will work. Perhaps the stars will line up and I'll be able to cross "play a set in a stranger's living room for the express purpose of helping chimpanzees" off my lifetime to-do list at the same time as somebody else is striking "have some stranger play songs in your living room in order to help some chimps" from theirs. It could happen! Bid early and bid often right here! I'll see you at your house!

Sitting in a Rosemont Hotel Listening to the Holy Sons

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:14:06 -0500

I'm right up the street from O'Hare and we're going to get a van and some backline and drive to Buffalo en route to the first show of our tour with Bright Eyes as we both loops back toward Lollapalooza. I'm listening to these guys, whose records seriously punch every last one of my buttons and are, bar none, the best late-night listening proposition going right now. (It's morning here. You always have to test the great late-night records against the halogen glow of the morning to see if they hold up. This one does.) I'm doing vocal warmups so that while we're rolling through Buffalo I'll be able to continuously yell from the van window, "Ani, I will forever defend you against all enemies foreign and domestic, because your song 'Hypnotized' has saved me from the fire more than once and seen me through hard times," even though I think if you're going to yell things from windows concision is probably a virtue. I'm working on two things for next year that are starting to take shape like the monster in the Edison Frankenstein when the reverse-flames really get going & give him form, and this, I don't need to tell you, is way exciting. And I'm stopping by here to point out that Pitchfork has the video for "Estate Sale Sign", by the people over at Awesome and Modest. The video features animals, monsters falling into biomorphic pits, Viking ships, wormy dudes in the desert, and people trying to kill each other until they discover they have a greater need for intimacy than they usually care to admit, i.e., it visits several themes dear to my heart. Imaginary bonus points &/or sympathy if you spot yourself in it - meanwhile & otherwise, see you on the road!

Rolling Rolling Rolling Though the Streams Are Swollen

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:30:08 -0500

Thanks to Dublin, Glasgow, Newcastle, London, Manchester, Leeds & Brighton for showing us such a good time last month! Having been home for nine whole days, we note that it time to ply our fortune-telling trade out on the west coast. The west! The eternal dazzling lure of the bottlebrush! That coast whose final northern terminus is located in the netherworld! Whose final southern stop lies in the far-beyond, the endless void! The west! People get totally carried away talking about it and say crazy stuff! We are bringing some friends, is what I stopped by to tell you. I would have mentioned it earlier but we spent the spring not sleeping much. And now it's summer. West coast, meet our neighbors, Midtown Dickens, whose last album was recorded at Baucom Road with prophet of the dub caverns Scott Solter and who will show you a stomping good time! They'll be with us from Seattle on down through Santa Barbara. See you all there!

Tour Is A Feeling

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 08:22:28 -0500

We would like, to the point of feeling almost all-caps about it, to thank everybody for making our first tour of the year an incredibly fun time night after night after night. Just a nightly source of creative and emotional renewal for us. You guys! It was so much fun!

So, like, what the hell, is our opinion: why not go to go over to Ireland & Scotland & England and do the touring we already talked about & then come home, have a couple peanut butter sandwiches, break skin on a project that won't poke its head above ground 'til next year, and then high-tail it to the west coast?

June
14 - Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN
16 - The Showbox, Seattle, WA
17 - The Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver, BC
18 - Aladdin Theater, Portland, OR
20 - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
23 - the El Rey, Los Angeles, CA

And then, who's it gonna hurt, why not play Lollapalooza?

August
5-7- Lollapalooza, Chicago, IL

Did I mention we're playing some dates with Bright Eyes, too, who I last crossed paths with in Grinnell an age ago? Those dates are clearly visible on the yellow post-it to the right. I'll know who's keeping us company on the west coast before long, too, so keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, hope to see everybody out there! Not "everybody" literally, though. If absolutely everybody shows up at every show there will be all kinds of logistics problems.

Bid Hard: With A Vengeance

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:33:23 -0500

Help Doctors Without Borders, who assist in crises around the globe and are universally acclaimed as your on-the-spot people when disaster strikes. Win yourself a Mountain Goats item that even JD doesn't have in the process, because he's giving the only copy he has to the auction: a cassette with a song on it, technically a "demo" since that's how I marked the spine of the tape. I am not archiving a copy in any way. Only one exists. If the buyer wants digitize the song and share it free of cost with the world I have no objections, and if the buyer doesn't want to do so I also think that is cool, since I believe in legends and think that things you never hear are sometimes even cooler than the things you do. But none of this is of any consequence. The main point is: an edition of 1 is up for auction.

The song, which if I do say so myself has a catchy little chorus, is about doom & disaster, about which I feel a little weird given the circumstances, but what can I tell you: doom, disaster and a sunny disposition is what I do. The song features a spoken intro giving play-by-play information about the muted Cubs vs. Reds game I was watching when I got the idea for the song.

Keep your head up & your spirits high Japan! Your country has given so much to the world and we're all pulling for you in this crisis! Much love from your friend in North Carolina & New York, the Mountain Goats

Sending This One Out to Japan

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:10:08 -0500

The Mountain Goats would like to step into the pulpit for a second here and say that if there actually were a devil, his name would be Compassion Fatigue. We must resist the devil, even though 1) there is no devil and 2) the devil is all kinds of cool. Wherefore, tomorrow, as soon as I get the link myself, hoping to increase compassion and show love to Japan, I'm going to put up a link to an auction that the good people at Tannis Root are running with a bunch of artists whose online stores they host.

I always try when asked for an auction donation to come up with something special. My donation for Japan is a tape I found in a box today. The tape is dated 5/27/01, and is labeled "FRENETIQUES demos" on the spine, but that plural is deceptive: it has only one song on it. The song's called "Eugene Sue." I spent today trying to figure out why it's called that, but no luck. Quick math tells me that this is the tape I had planned on making the next work-tape before I decided to write Tallahassee instead. I'm not going to make a copy of it for myself; whoever wins it will have something that nobody else has, including me. There is one in the world, and this one's it. If you want to digitize it and give it away to everybody, that is fine with me, and if you don't, that's fine with me too, and probably even more fine with some of the French continental theorist types I adore.

The song itself is completely inappropriate to the occasion at hand; in it, a man washes up on shore and calls down curses on himself & the entire world. He sees a guy with a gun. He foretells trouble for everybody. He whistles. What can I say: it's a Mountain Goats song; some degree of doom and paranoia goes with the territory. Still, it seems hopeful in its peril-ridden way. Happy doomed guy singing. Painting smiley faces on the walls of his open prison. And a spoken intro that indicates that I'd been watching the Cubs play the Reds into extra innings.

It looks like this, and I hope you feel called to bid with both hands when I put up the link tomorrow. My goal in putting up something irreplaceable is to raise as much as I can for people who need our help right now. See you here tomorrow when the link goes live.

Our New Tape

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:33:03 -0500

Yea verily, the hills echo with the cry of the people, and the people cry, what is up with the preorder, JD. And lo, JD has heard the richly echoing cry of the people, or at least of the one or two people hitting him up about it on his Twitter. So here is the deal, and when I tell you it was hard to keep this stuff under wraps, I mean that somebody should totally give me some candy or something, or hire me to keep their secrets, because I have now totally proven that I am Good At That.

So: anybody wanting to order the new Mountain Goats album, All Eternals Deck, can now do so right now, here. You have your choice of formats; while supplies last, each pre-ordered CD or LP comes with a free copy of All Survivors Pack, an audio cassette in a hand-colored sleeve old-school style, containing 12 songs that make up the surviving demos for All Eternals Deck. A couple of these songs aren't on the album, and a couple of songs that made the album don't survive in demo form; the tape's tracklisting is available at the link. This is our first tape since Yam, the King of Crops. Typing that last sentence has given me more raw pleasure than I can faithfully detail. A few select independent record stores will also have copies of the tape-and-album package, and my clairvoyance is indicating that somebody's getting ready to ask me "which stores?" but the spirits are mute on this question. Fellow vinyl hounds should be advised that clear vinyl in small numbers, and blue vinyl in very very small numbers, will be randomly mixed in with the first thousand copies of the LP, divvied up between mailorder and retail.

We are so excited for everybody to hear these songs. Feel like we're emerging from a cave with glowing alien rocks we found hiding in a reflecting pool. Time to step outside soon and test the hills for echoes. As Number Six used to say: Be Seeing You!

Third Bowery Show Added

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:53:10 -0500

By now some of you may have noted those tour dates off there to the right. Tour dates! With more to follow! Accompanied by Megafaun on this first leg: who, if you don't know about them, let me assure you are so completely 100% awesome and cool and put on the best show. Their love of music is an irresistible contagion, they battle unnecessarily harsh vibes on all fronts and always emerge victorious, you are going to love them like I do I just know.

New as of this morning is a third show at New York's Bowery Ballroom, which has been added because there are very few tickets left for the other two shows. About this I should like to link to a clip of Ozzy screaming "I love you all," but evidently Ozzy has recorded a song called "I Love You All," making it needlessly labor-intensive to link to a clip of Ozzy screaming "I love you all." (Yes, I did find the one where he's saying it all mellow and inside-voice, before you ask. A proper Ozzy "I love you all" scream remains elusive.) At any rate: we're in rehearsal & there's more news about stuff coming up & some of it is totally eating a hole through the adamantine secret-keeping-shield that I had cybernetically attached to the nerves that govern the behavior of my lips, fingers, & tongue, so I'll shut up now, and see you all in various places quite soon, and I totally LOVE YOU ALLLLLLLL

Paging Jean Noblet

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:25:25 -0500

Hi everybody. Hope you have all been well and are keeping warm as the colder months close in. So yeah: as you may have learned yesterday, we spent much of 2010 inside recording studios, safe from the vitamin-giving rays of the sun. I wrote a bunch of new songs, and then we recorded them all and set some aside because they didn't quite fit in with the others, and then there were thirteen survivors when we were done, which are now ready to claw their way to the surface.

The album is called ALL ETERNALS DECK, and if you have ever watched say a 70s occult-scare movie where one of the scenes involves a couple of people visiting a storefront fortune teller, getting their cards read, and then trying to feel super-hopeful about what they hear when what they're visibly actually feeling is dread, then you have a pretty decent idea of what the album is all about. If you know the feeling of exultation that comes with having recognized the oncoming train of fate, then that's the other thing the album's about. JD, wouldn't it be easier to write an album of, like, love songs? Probably, I would not know, my focus is mainly death scenes and downtown Portland. It's not like there aren't people in love either dying or getting arrested at 3rd and Yamhill, so really, if you can stretch your definition of "love song" we can all be happy. Other possible points of reference include Burnt Offerings, Go Ask Alice, and that one scene in The Warriors where they're on the train and the sun's coming up and they're safe but you know the scars are permanent now. Reversals of fortune and faces at the window and sudden unexpected screams of triumph here and there. Possible exits from the long-locked basement. These sorts of moments.

As with the last album, we treated the recording sessions as commando raids on several studios with a few different producers: at Fidelitorium with John Congleton; at Q Division with Brandon Eggleston; at Mission Sound with Scott Solter; and, as I said yesterday and am still jumping up and down about, at Mana Recording Studios with Erik Rutan. The album's coming out on Merge in the U.S. on March 29th, 2011; Moorworks has got it for Japan, and our good friends at Remote Control in Australia are holding it down down under, and will release it on March 26th. I hope we get to tour all those places and more next year!

Here are the songs on All Eternals Deck. Their names, I mean. It would be totally premature to just post all the songs. See you soon!

1. Damn These Vampires
2. Birth of Serpents
3. Estate Sale Sign
4. Age of Kings
5. The Autopsy Garland
6. Beautiful Gas Mask
7. High Hawk Season
8. Prowl Great Cain
9. Sourdoire Valley Song
10. Outer Scorpion Squadron
11. For Charles Bronson
12. Never Quite Free
13. Liza Forever Minnelli

Last Two Shows of 2010

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 21:43:16 -0500

Hello all - how's it been? Here, you wouldn't believe, all kinds of action, you'll know soon. If you're the kind of person who likes to know things early you might want to keep a close eye on the Twitter feed this week.

First things first, though: I am playing two more shows this year. The first is live accompaniment for the film Sir Arne's Treasure, which is a Swedish silent from 1919. I'll be joined by John Vanderslice, Jamie Riotto, and Jason Slota at various points throughout the evening, and I was going to print up a whole program to explain what the whole deal is with what I'm doing but rehearsal took priority and so I'm telling you here instead: to accompany the Swedish film in which bad intentions come to bad ends, I thought I'd play and expand and elaborate on some songs from Sweden. One thing led to another, though, and I ended up synching up a few Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg songs, which I how I got the idea to start excavating a bunch of old Sweden-era notebooks, which is how I ended up finally setting to music a good handful of long-orphaned lyrics from the Sweden cycle: abandoned side-stories, extended soliloquies, muttered curses. So that is what we'll be doing: not all of Sweden, but a version of it, live, as accompaniment for Mauritz Stiller's gorgeous Swedish tale of lost treasures.

After that I'm flying home and playing Brome's totally awesome benefit for autism. And then, as you'll learn more about later this week, I'm going to put on the full armor, as the evangelicals would have it. Because in 2011, I am going to be raging through the fields like some kind of crazed comic book warrior from an imaginary ancient land, and stuff. We will see you there!