William Caxton Fan Club

My name is John Darnielle. When the wizard who dwells in the invisible castle by the sea dies I am next in line. Words, guitar and Fender Rhodes for the Mountain Goats. Author of Wolf in White Van, Master of Reality, and Universal Harvester, due February 2017. STR 17, DEX 10, CON 19, INT 12, WIS 9, CHA 19, come at me all you orcs.

[johndarnielle]

are you okay with people getting tattoos of lyrics from mountain goats songs? i really want a line from white cedar, that songs makes me feel at peace.

I am honored when people want to get tattoos of my stuff. I have a whole schtick about “let your tattoo artist help with the idea,” I believe in that, but whatever the case it is an honor for me to know that stuff I made meant enough to someone that they want to permanently have it with/on them. 

[johndarnielle]

The first time I listened to Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise I was really fascinated by how much it sounded like Mexican folk music like something written by Jose Alfredo Jimenez because of the lyrical content and vocal melody (and also a lot of stuff I can't quite put my finger on). I've always imagined a mariachi arrangement of the song and think I might make one soon, but I also wanted to ask you if there was anything in particular that inspired you in writing the song?

I didn’t write that song! It’s by Trembling Blue Stars. 

[artist-turner]

Wreckers Coast of Northumberland, 1834, William Turner

Size: 90.47x125.89 cm Medium: oil, canvas

[johndarnielle]

Over the past twenty years I’ve grown to like Turner’s paintings more and more and more

[comicstoastonish]

Fantastic Four #240 (1982)

Writer and Artist: John Byrne

[johndarnielle]

I’m stoked for everybody else who loves or loved comics if they’re excited to see stuff like this made into movies. Genuinely for real, if it makes people happy I’m for it

for me a page like this is so sufficient and so total in itself that no rendering of it by actors & set designers & cgi teams could possibly reach this state of perfection, like to even imagine a movie capturing a tenth of what’s goin on here is a zero-confidence proposition for me

there is just no way

[johndarnielle]

Hey, I saw you in a show at the Cats Cradle a few years back and I vividly remember you asking the audience to turn off all their recording devices so you could sing a song that was purely for the crowd that night. Which was SUPER cool, honestly it made me feel special being there. I can’t remember a good deal of the words, but I was hoping you could respond with the lyrics? The only thing that really stuck in my mind was the line, “sometimes we mosh”

Sometimes we mosh, sometimes we stretch, sometimes we dance

sometimes we need some help getting dressed

sometimes we put on our own pants

sometimes we’re at 100%

sometimes we need to rest a little while in the tent,

but sometimes we mosh

my name is Daddy, I mosh with Roman when the day is new

if you come to say hi, we could mosh with you

but maybe it’s naptime, and we’re sound asleep

neither moshing nor dancing, just dreaming of sheep

but when we wake up, it’s on once again

fire up the boombox

turn it all the way up to 10

‘cause sometimes we mosh

sometimes we mosh

sometimes we inside skate, sometimes we outside skate

and sometimes...we mosh

[thebestcomicbookpanels]

Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller

[johndarnielle]

♪ ♫ ♩ ♬ ♩ ♫ ♪ ♩all ye who en-ter here / abandon hope 

[johndarnielle]

Is it weird if people name their artistic endeavors after something in your music, like if a band named themselves after a lyric or song title? I'm curious to know what your reaction is when you see something like that.

There’s a storied tradition of bands naming themselves after lyrics from other bands/songwriters so that’s obviously an honor. The more obscure the better imo, like in the ideal situation it’s something nobody gets and so then when somebody says “Why is your band called the Mayers and do you mean Mayors?” you could say “no It’s a Sex Gang Children song called Mauritia Mayer, go listen to it it rips” only if the Mayers got really successful I guarantee the singer ends up wishing he’d picked a more boring name because he gets tired of giving this answer especially in an age where there’s Google. 

General rule “the more obvious and literal, the worse it is” applies here. If a band has a song that says “I knew the singer from Nebula Clubs,” then naming your band the Nebula Clubs is not so good, let fiction be fiction I think I’ve done this shtick here before but anyway. 

[profgrewbeard]

[oneterabyteofkilobyteage]

original url http://de.geocities.com/gehirntraining/

last modified 2001-12-08 16:36:19

[johndarnielle]

all memes are old memes and most of them can be traced to Geocities 

[johndarnielle]

Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play?

I don’t have a ready answer for this, even though I’m sure I do have one - I think Lear has some of the most stunning poetry he wrote, and like all past-and-future goths I love Titus even though it’s hardly top-shelf Shakespeare next to the heavier hitters. Of the historical plays, we dug deep on I King Henry IV in college so I have fond memories of that but Richard II, which I read on my own but didn’t make a formal study of, is one I remember fondly. 

Lots good to say about all the ones I’ve read, how can anybody not fiend for Hamlet, but Lear, you know…if you’re a Shakespeare person, I guarantee that if you make a practice of returning to “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” every five or ten years, it’ll hit you a little harder every time. Like,

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,You owe me no subscription. Then let fallYour horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.But yet I call you servile ministers,That will with two pernicious daughters joinYour high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a headSo old and white as this!

…the answer is King Lear. 

[ronaldcmerchant]

DADDY LONG LEGS (1931)

click to enlarge

[johndarnielle]

that single piano note at the beginning of Lakeside View has given me so, so much peace and comfort in the times I need it most, I cannot even. please pass on my regards to whoever proposed that, I thank them profusely

Well thank you so much! The way we usually work in the studio means that that wasn’t necessarily going to happen - I lost the ability to write musical notation (I could re-learn it I’m sure but it’d be a slog) when I stopped studying piano formally when I was young, so when I play in the studio, I’m playing from my own charts, which are chord names written in sequence on the cards they use in comic-book bags. Every take’s a little different, especially as a session progress - I’ll throw in different beginnings or whatever to keep myself anchored in the moment. (I envy the steely discipline and spiritual presence of session musicians who don’t need any of this romantic hoo-hah and who just keep playing until the producers get what they want.) I think that was a third or fourth take - or possibly a revisiting of one we hadn’t been able to nail the day before - and since the song starts with unaccompanied piano & voice waiting for the band to drop in, I had leisure to start it however I wanted. So I hit that note and it just sorta went I AM HERE, LISTEN TO ME and held it & I think the vibe of it translated to Peter & Jon too (the instrumental is live, I’m pretty sure the vocal is too on that one) and we got a take we liked.

So nobody proposed it -- it was spontaneous -- so according to me God gets the credit but if that’s not yr deal you can credit the band for delivering such a great take that the one with the opening note got the nod! 

[ronaldcmerchant]

the 3 STOOGES MEET HERCULES (1962)

[johndarnielle]

there is something profoundly lonely and sad about this still to me

[johndarnielle]

Is there any connection between The Grey King and the Stephen King story "The Road Virus Heads North"? Both feature young men with pointed teeth driving Grand Ams.

Wild! No, I haven’t read it. 

[johndarnielle]

Do you have a favorite dinosaur/prehistoric creature?

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-fossilised-skull-has-revealed-when-the-last-siberian-unicorn-lived-on-earth

[johndarnielle]

If you could take your songs now and travel back in time and play those songs for a younger version of yourself do you think past you would be able to identify them as your own songs? Do you think that some songs are just in someone waiting to come out?

No, when I was younger I was a three-chords-and-the-truth guy. It’s a great stance to take for a while and a great stance to reject when that while has passed. I don’t trust anybody who holds the same aesthetic values at 50 that they held at 24: the whole point of having any aesthetic at all is to be continually interrogating it, questioning it, refining it, rejecting it entirely, etc etc. One of the things I judge myself for is not doing the complete reboot more often, but life’s long and there’s plenty of time, right? Right? 

[johndarnielle]

Hello! My dad thinks All Hail West Texas is partially influenced by Outlaw Country (he specifically cites Jerry Jeff Walker). I was wondering if you'd agree with that. Personally, I think it's stays true to previous TMG albums, the story just takes place in Texas. That being said, as a Jerry Jeff fan I'm curious. Ignore if this is off base. Cheers!

You know, I didn’t know his stuff at all but I bought whichever one has “Hill Country Rain” on it at Zzzz Records in Des Moines....somewhere around the time I was writing AHWT & Tallahassee, so maybe? I don’t know his work ~that~ well, but some intersection might be there or not, I’m not sure!