All Hail the Mountain Goats

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In 1989, John Darnielle (dar-NEEL), a 22-year-old high school graduate from Claremont, California, started recording songs on a boombox that he had bought for about $100 at Circuit City. The boombox, a Panasonic RX-FT500 dual cassette player, was badly made, but in an interesting…
Geoff Sanborn
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[This is it! Thanks so much to everyone who has been reading this, I’m incredibly grateful to you.] You sometimes want the things that come last to bear…
Geoff Sanborn
The session drummer, Alex Decarville, gives us eight flat beats per line on a snare and sixteen beats per line on a hi-hat. Darnielle chops his guitar…
Geoff Sanborn
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In August 2001, Darnielle was driving from Ames, Iowa, to the airport in Des Moines and Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” came on the radio. “I was…
Geoff Sanborn
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The acoustic guitar stumbles a little on the way to the song’s three-note riff: A (open), B (hammer on), D (open). Back when Darnielle still played the…
Geoff Sanborn
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In September 2007, the Mountain Goats cancelled a tour date in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Darnielle flew immediately to Ventura, California, where…
Geoff Sanborn
“What Mountain Goats Song Should You Be Listening To?” the writer Emma Stanford asks in the title to a really funny list of life situations and the…
Geoff Sanborn
2
Heat and humidity somewhere near a lake in Minnesota and a house where some packets of seeds have just come in the mail. A sweet, melancholy sequence of…
Geoff Sanborn
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All Hail the Mountain Goats

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