hiwerethemountaingoats

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

I wrote this song in Colo, Iowa. That's in Northeast Story County. The Colo-NESCO Royals. I went and looked at where our house used to be. The city of Colo bought our house from our landlords so they could knock it down because it was a fire hazard. So that's how I wound up moving to Ames. We got a notice from the city, "You can't live - we like you fine, but you can't live here anymore, we're gonna knock your house down. May be a good time to check out the other parts of Story County." But, so, the little tiny toolshed wasn't really a shed, it was just a little tiny house behind the house, with a work desk that clearly hadn't been used since the 50s. That's where I wrote this song, it's called There Will Be No Divorce.

John Darnielle introducing There Will Be No Divorce (First United Methodist Church | Ames, IA | September 12th, 2015)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

This is a song very loosely about why I oppose abstinence-only education.

John Darnielle introducing Broom People (9:30 Club | Washington, D.C. | November 7th, 2017)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

This is our favorite song on the new record. It's not on the new record. It's a song about how sometimes you think “Man, I used to be a wrestler, but now I'm not hot anymore, I gotta rob a bank.” It's called Blood Capsules.

John Darnielle introducing Blood Capsules (Mr. Smalls | Millvale, PA | April 23, 2015)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

[lovely piano intro] I was playing a video game [audience cheers]. I love my job because at most people's jobs, at most jobs I've worked, if I said "Hey, I was playing a video game," no one would clap for me. I'd be standing there, before my shift at Beloit, a children's home I worked at, and if I showed up at 6:45 and said "Hey guess what? I was playing the third Super Mario Brothers one, the one where it really feels like someone involved was taking drugs. Where you open with people floating through space. And you pull up radishes to get hearts. Just like in real life." [Laughing] But this was later, this was a game, it's what's—ah man, the thing is, once I start talking, if you needed to go have a cigarette or something, you could go and come back, and I still won't have come to my point. Some Japanese video games have very long plot setup segments, much longer than what I'm gonna do here, just page after page of dialogue screens, impossibly complex lore. [someone shrieks, JD laughs] Someone who plays a lot of games like [piano stops] "He talked about the lore." I knew I had a friend in the Lore Zone. [piano restarts] Some of these dialogue screens get very emotional. Especially if you happen to be an emotional person, especially if you happen to be at a certain place in your life, where the reason you're playing video games 4-5 hours a day is to shut out the other stuff. [extended cheering] This is a song that I did not put on The Life Of The World To Come but was written during that time, which was an extraordinarily hard time for me.

John Darnielle introducing Enoch 18:14 (Ace of Spades | Sacramento, CA | October 7th, 2023)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

There was an animal called the Tasmanian tiger, Tasmanian wolf. The last one died in captivity a long time ago, and there is film of him, pacing around in his cage looking around to see if any other Tasmanian wolves come along. That's the fellow in the first verse of this song.

John Darnielle introducing Deuteronomy 2:10 (Woodland Park Zoo | Seattle, WA | August 8th, 2023)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

JD: Peter, what if we, like, contrary to all my impulses, did something with lighting. And after Dark in Here it went black and I said, yes, Peter, it's dark in here, and we did a thing? [cheering] Remind me of this. I'm slightly vulnerable to the possibility. Peter: I mean, we could do it now. JD: [cackles] Peter: I'm pretty sure these lights have switches. JD: It would be so amazing if Peter had, like, contracted with the lighting guy before this, you'll do a little banter, it'll sound really real, and then I'll wave my hands and it'll go dark. None of that is going to happen.

John Darnielle and Peter Hughes introducing Dark in Here (Ace of Spades | Sacramento, CA | October 7th, 2023)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

So, one tiresome thing that singer songwriters do, is that they will have a child, and within a year and a half, release an album telling you their insights about parenthood. And I have always, since I was a child thought, "What do you even know? You started writing this record before the child could even stand up, and you're gonna tell me what it's like." So I think it's cynical that they do this thing. I've had an attitude problem about this thing my whole life, and then I had a child. [JD laughs] Now I am not going to make the John's Insights About Parenthood Album, because there are so many of those by singer songwriters, that that corner is already worked. But if you think that a songwriter sitting around with a baby around the house, not sleeping at all, and the baby's very cute, doesn't eventually toss off one or two about the baby, you've got another thing coming. However, me being me, I framed the whole thing in the context of a wrestling match. Here's a very long story. The battle royale, is a type of wrestling match, it's a greater match than others, in fact, it's a royal match, that's why it's called the battle royale. It's not your daily, quotidian battle. It's royal. The battle royal we think was originated by kings, though its origins are shrouded in mystery. But in the battle royal, everybody beats up everybody else at once. You put about 18 wrestlers in the ring and they all start going completely ape on each other. You would almost think that they had gotten together and choreographed it ahead of time, it goes so swimmingly, you wouldn't believe, wow, to think that this is actually just being improvised in front of me, who could imagine, wow, but, uh, in the battle royale, you go over the top rope, if you get thrown over, you're out, and eventually only one will remain. And in the space of this heated battle, alliances are formed in the heat of the moment, you make friends with people you've never seen before, to help you overcome obstacles and demons in your path. This is about the battle royale and it's also about the labor and delivery room. It's called Animal Mask.

John Darnielle introducing Animal Mask (First United Methodist Church | Ames, IA | September 12th, 2015)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

I was actually - um, [JD laughs]. If I say the first part first, you will applaud it. So. I was having a pretty harsh year, in like, 2000… I wanna say 8? Coulda been… yeah, it was 8. That was the crying while awake year. It sucked. Toured a lot. Album came out, did the thing, y'know, and I was in really bad shape. I was drinking a lot in response to this, 'cause a person thinks, maybe that will help. Doesn't, as it turns out. But I played a festival, here in Colorado, that Kaki King uh, Missy Hagens... and it was really great, but I was not fit to be among people. And I drove from wherever the festival was, up in the country somewhere, to near the Denver airport, and woke up in the morning, and if — I’m guessing that if you're at a Mountain Goats show, when I say I was having a bad year, you are the kinda person who says, "oh yeah, I've had those." [audience laughs and cheers sympathetically] Y'know, I don't generally, in the midst of the hard times, try to squeeze it for juice. I usually do it later, y'know, 'cause in the hard times you don't feel inspired. People preach this gospel of art being useful for converting pain into something valuable, but when you're in the middle of it, you don't want to make something valuable at all, you just want the pain to stop. But every once in a while! Every once in a while you get one, right in the middle! I don't remember what hotel it was near the airport, but this was written in Colorado.

John Darnielle introducing Romans 10:9 (Gothic Theatre | Englewood, CO | April 17, 2024)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

This is a song about how when time gets a little rough, you can always fall back on round-the-clock boning. You can just, if things get hard in your relationship, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Man! Maybe you got nothing to say. Just have sex until it gets better. Write me if it doesn’t work after five or six years.

John Darnielle introducing Going to Queens (Pitzer College | Claremont, CA | December 2nd, 2006)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

I did a totally hilarious thing in, like, 1999. There was a new technology called Napster, developed by a guy named Shawn Fanning. And so I had recorded, this is going to be a very long story. So I had an idea for the next record that was gonna be like, half in a studio-studio, like letting a lot of people play on it, and half home stuff. But I took a Greyhound bus to Omaha and recorded with Simon Joyner and Chris Deden and a bunch of their friends, but I got sick on the bus. Who knew that a Greyhound bus is probably not the best thing to ride en route to a recording session? But I got incredibly sick, so most of what we recorded was unusable. And the version of the title track of the album had been among those. It went totally different. So I said, well, that didn't come out so good, maybe it won't be on the album, and then like I did a different version that was totally drone-y, that did make the album, that became the title track, which was The Coroner's Gambit, right. So, so then Napster happens, and I had this older version of The Coroner's Gambit. And you know, the Mountain Goats weren't really a big enough proposition, to say "Here's a single, it's the other version." So I went on Napster and uploaded it. But it wasn't getting any action, so I found some guy that had a lot of Mountain Goats stuff in his folder and I said, "You might want to check this out." He said, "Where'd you get this?" I said, "I dunno." That is how this version of The Coroner's Gambit winds up on YouTube fifteen years later. This is the original version of The Coroner's Gambit.

John Darnielle introducing The Coroner's Gambit (9:30 Club | Washington, D.C. | April 26th 2019)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

This is a song about the organ harvesting colonies on the moon that, uh, that men and women work on six months out of the year, and the other six months they live in utter secrecy in locations that they are not allowed to disclose. Without families, without friends, without other occupations than giant televisions granted to them by the government. I alone seem to be bearing witness to this phenomenon. This is called Surrounded.

John Darnielle introducing Surrounded (First United Methodist Church | Ames, IA | September 12th, 2015)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

So this is a song about a couple of people in a car, and uh, it's kind of hot in the car, though it's cold outside, and the reason it's hot in the car is the seething temperature of their hatred. And they're sort of like, you know, it's one of those situations where you really-- [pause] Let's say you're in this car. You have probably at some point, the odds are pretty good you've been in this car. And, uh, at one point or another you look over at the speedometer and it says 75, you're riding shotgun, and you think, you do this sort of quick calculation. You don't really know, you know, you're not a physicist, much less a criminal investigator, anything like that, you're just a person in a car that you wish you weren't in, but you think, "If I pop the door and drop and roll and I tuck my elbows in, between here and the bushes at the shoulder, what's the damage I sustain," and you picture your lifeless, unconscious body rolling down the beautiful hill, and you see yourself as though in a Japanese film and think, "You know, I might make it; maybe I will look up and I will see the last bit of the car speeding away from me and I will count that as a victory." This song, this song is about people who have chosen whatever the opposite of victory is.

John Darnielle, introducing Family Happiness (Wexner Centre | Columbus, OH | April 11th, 2011)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

So this is a revenge fantasy, right, uh, and, uh, and it's a song, um—you know, I mean, revenge obviously is bad, right? I mean, this is obvious, this is clear, right? [inaudible audience yelling] No, it's bad! It's not valuable. Justice is good and revenge is bad, it's, it's just -- and this is just obvious and true. Right now, on my side politically, we kind of got blood in our eyes and we're like, no, revenge is fucking good! No, it's not. Because—the whole, if you read Greek tragedy, right, the whole theme of Greek tragedy is that when you take revenge, you're gonna overdo it. And then the other person you've been taking revenge on is gonna have a legitimate gripe, uh, that you overdid it, right, that you killed one too many when you, when you came to their town, so now they have to come back and get one. But they don't get one. They get five, right. And then you're mad, right. And that's how revenge works, and that's the nature of revenge, that you always take too much and so you never get enough, right, that's the nature of revenge. Uh, which also makes it a great thing to inhabit if you have issues, right. If you have—if you have things you need to work out. I may talk a good game about revenge being bad, but what I mean is that revenge is wonderful. It feels fantastic. It fills you with delusions of power, right, you sit there, you sit there dreaming of your revenge fantasy and you see the person upon whom you are going to enact this revenge cowering, begging you for mercy, and you understand that you, you alone possess that precious gift of mercy which you're not going to impart, and that's, and that's all delusion, and, uh, uh, but it's a pretty potent one, and this is—and so what happens while you're in the grip of it is that you're not just thinking that you're going to take revenge, but how. And that's what this song is about. It's called Getting Into Knives.

John Darnielle introducing Getting Into Knives (September 23rd, 2021)

[hiwerethemountaingoats]

I would normally say that I try to discourage debauched behavior. But I would like to dedicate this to the drunkest person in the room. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. I beg you.

John Darnielle introducing Waylon Jennings Live! (Ace of Spades | Sacramento, CA | October 7th, 2023)