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One day I had a poem and I thought it was good. I had a guitar, and I knew about four chords. I was messing around with the guitar and found a progression that sounded good. I didn't have any lyrics so I started singing a poem. It sounded good to me; really different from stuff I was listening to. So, I moved all my poetry writing energy over into songs, and a whole bunch of years later here I am. -John Darnielle |
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It just seems like an odd collaboration; you being in the folk/rock scene and him a part of the underground hip hop genre.
Really, I mean, this is gonna sound all blissed out, acid-comedown realization or something, but genre tags are only there for two reasons: one, to get people to have something they can feel like they're a part of - which can be both positive and negative - and two, to make it easier to talk about stuff. I don't know any musicians who're like, "I'm only into music from this one genre." Sometimes it's fun to limit your listening to one genre for a period of time; just to get really immersed and see how that feels. But, I don't think many musicians really think, "I can only work with people who play the kind of stuff I play." For sure, I prefer to work with people who do stuff that I can't do, who bring their own stuff to the table. That's where creativity really happens for me.
Your records involve a variety of artists, often varying lineups for each production. Who else do you plan on partnering with in the near future?
 John Darnielle by Eric Zimmermann |
Well, there's a horn quartet I have in mind, but I haven't asked them if they're interested yet, so I shouldn't name them. It's some people I saw singing and playing Christmas carols on a street corner last month. They're kind of mind-bendingly good; great syncopated jazz style horn quartet arrangements. And there's a friend of mine in Boston who's a real singer of classical music and so on, and he's got choral friends up there. I want to put together a male chorus for this one song in the next bunch. This morning I was listening to a Jeff Loomis album and thinking, "Wow, I would really like to try writing with this dude," but that's more off in dream world. He plays heavy metal [in the band Nevermore] and is an incredible soloist. Whereas me, I actually seriously have as one of my someday-in-the-future lifetime goals "learn to solo on guitar."
Can you describe why you often separate your music into series such as Alpha, Pure, Orange Ball, etc?
Well, it doesn't all go into series. The way it starts is that I'll be writing a song and often I write in character - through a persona - and I'll notice that something I'm writing sounds like it's being spoken/written by somebody from another song. Like, "That's something the guy from 'In the Cane Fields' would have said." And then I'll think, "Well, let's let that guy sing this song, too." From there, a broader, looser story will start to develop, and it really is a way of making any individual song take on greater depth, if it connects to other songs, if it's already got a history when you start writing. Then, if you're already writing inside of some loose framework of characters and stories, it can inspire you to be true to the characters and the little lives they have. When the songs connect to each other the core of each one seems to get stronger and more solid.
t5m awarded the recent album #7 on their "Best of" 2009" chart. What are your sentiments on awards and rankings in music? Do you appreciate them or do you shy away from such achievements?
It's impossible not to feel stoked when anybody names you best anything, right? Or seventh best anything, or tenth, or whatever. Everybody likes to be praised, I guess. It's impossible not to pump your fist and go, "Hell yes!" if somebody names you number one at anything. At the same time, I assume for most musicians it's kind of a joke. How can there be a best song? Fastest guitarist, okay maybe, but songs aren't like knives; there's no sharpest one. So, you can't take a position on a list too much to heart, but still, it's nice to hear that for somebody somewhere our album made some kind of difference in their year. If we're #7 on that list, what that means is, for somebody, our music made some kind of connection, probably an emotional connection, that was meaningful enough that they were still thinking about it at the end of the year. That, to me, is cool to know. It's satisfying, but it's not like being on a list puts anybody above or below anybody else. It just tells you how somebody felt about your music, which is nice to know.
The albums you write are fictional; however, one, The Sunset Tree, is autobiographical. Would you ever consider going back to a factual context when writing future content for poetry and songs?
 John Darnielle |
I think The Sunset Tree sort of broke the line between autobiographical and fictional for me. Much of my writing since then has been a blurry bunch of stories that sort of relate to who I am and stuff that's gone on in my past. I don't know if I'd ever write a whole group of songs that were mainly trying to tell true stories from my life - that's not my style. I have to be creating unknown worlds somehow to be really happy. But inside those worlds I try to express stuff that's real, that's really coming from somewhere down near the taproot. That's the challenge for me. There's this line I'm always quoting [from] Joan Didion: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." For me, in some sense, every story you tell has got to be autobiographical. I think I learned that best by touring The Sunset Tree, [and] seeing people take my stories and make them their own.
What should we expect from The Mountain Goats, as well as yourself, throughout 2010?
It's only January now, so I'm not sure. I'm wood shedding now - writing songs, playing guitar and piano, sometimes playing just for the sake of playing and hopefully getting better at it. I have this idea to take lessons here in town and learn finger style, since I'm a pretty primitive player, but I'm never home long enough to make it happen. Sometime this spring we're going to get together to start practicing the new songs I have. I'm always writing; I have a good-sized handful of tunes I really want to start working on. Hopefully we'll be back in the studio before long. The last couple of sessions, The Life of the World to Come ones, were really a pleasure for us. We actually started doing some writing-in-studio at one point, on the song "1 Samuel 15:23," and that was just incredibly exciting for me. So yeah, shows, writing, playing out when we can. There's also this film of a solo performance I did back where I grew up that Rian Johnson directed, and we're hoping to get that seen by more people. And that's what I got!
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