By a certain point in their careers, beloved cult bands usually become a closed circle; everyone who might like them already does.
But the Durham, N.C.-based group the Mountain Goats, in the quartet’s third decade of existence, is almost as popular as ever. The group’s 2017 album “Goths” was one of only a handful of the group’s releases to debut on Billboard‘s Top 100, and the Goats are the subject of a new-ish podcast, “I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats,” from “Welcome to Night Vale” co-creator Joseph Fink.
The podcast is a song-by-song, week-by-week examination of the band’s 2002 classic album “All Hail West Texas,” hosted by Fink and frontman John Darnielle (a companion tribute album was released last month). The podcast — and the exposure to the massive audience of “Night Vale” — hasn’t hurt, but Darnielle has long been indie rock’s most beloved storyteller, and a bestselling novelist besides.
In a phone interview in advance of a run of local dates (three sold-out shows at the Old Town School of Folk Music, and a live taping of the podcast at Thalia Hall on Wednesday), Darnielle talked about the just-concluded podcast, which will likely return for a second season, Twitter fights, and his old life as a psychiatric nurse. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation:
Q: It’s surprising that more musicians don’t take advantage of the (podcasting) format.
A: When we did the taping of the podcast, it really consumed several weeks. During that time, I couldn’t play shows, I was talking all day, I couldn’t really write anything new. I think plenty of people would do podcasts, but to do a good one requires time and care.
Q: Are podcasts a whole new world for you, or had you been a listener?
A: Oh no, I know “Night Vale” from way back. I was at a show at Grand Rapids, Mich., and someone came up to me and asked me if I’d listened to it, and I said I hadn’t, and they wrote it down for me. At some point on tour I downloaded it, and Joseph and I became friends.
Q: Everything I’ve read discusses how modest you are, how much you don’t like praise. How has it been for you to do this podcast, where other artists are singing your songs, and telling you how great they think you are?
A: It is weird. The thing is, if you listen to it, every time we start talking about me, I change the subject. … To me, that’s really humbling, to hear someone take my song to some new place I couldn’t have taken it myself. But to talk about myself, that’s the weirdest thing about the whole apparatus of — I don’t like to say fame, but being public. I don’t think I’m a special person or in any way particularly interesting. I’m not as interesting as people who do important work. I’m making stuff I hope is cool, but I consider myself a laborer. What I do is work, and I hope it’s useful.
Q: The New Yorker once called you the “least self-conscious singer alive.” Do you agree?
A: I don’t know. I’m not a very self-conscious talker. You’ll notice you ask me a question and I just jump right in, and trust (that) my right thought will come out.
Q: I know. God bless you.
A: I’m so jealous of people who, you ask them a question and they pause for 30 seconds — philosopher types getting their thoughts together. I’m kind of like a circuit board, things just start bumping around. It has to do with a real desire to please, and being uncomfortable when silence opens up. It takes real maturity to sit in the silence.
Q: When you were working in psychiatric care, did they teach you skills for reasoning with irrational people that you still use today?
A: I don’t run into a lot of irrational people — well, I have two children, so there’s that. My stance as a nurse was to try to understand what my patients were going through, to be present to hear them talking about their stuff. That’s a skill that’s useful wherever you take it.
Q: When you’re writing an album, are you dying to get back to writing prose?
A: Writing songs is second nature to me at this point. Prose is what I want to be most doing most of the time now. I like to perform, and I love to write music, and I will always do it. One thing that’s good about creativity is it’s the opposite of ego. It’s the place you can go to disappear, to focus on this thing you’re building. When you’re focusing on a song, it’s short. It’s an hour or three when I do the hammering together, then I’m back in the world. When you’re writing a book — and this is so weird — you get to cease to exist for the entire time you’re doing it. You get to absolutely submit to the plot you’re writing. Once you’re done with that, maybe something of you comes through. When I write a book, I’m not John Darnielle, I’m just a guy writing a book. It has nothing to do with me in a sense, and that’s real freedom to me.
Q: That’s a very striking thing for you to say, isn’t it? That you like writing prose more than you like writing songs?
A: No, because I wrote prose before I wrote songs. I wanted to be a writer before I wanted to be a songwriter. I became a songwriter because I went from writing prose to writing poems, and I liked my poems, but not a lot of people want to listen to poetry. So I started setting my poems to really crude music, and that’s how the Mountain Goats got started.
Q: There was a fight on Twitter recently, when you talked about the correct syntax in “No Children,” and everybody chimed in to tell you that you were wrong. Is it possible you’re wrong?
A: No. Some people say, “Well, it’s open to interpretation.” I don’t think that’s true, actually. Lots of things are — the motivations of characters and the meaning of their behavior. That’s the sort of thing an author can’t pin down. All those are valid. But as far as the actual punctuation of things, no.
Allison Stewart is a freelance writer.
onthetown@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @chitribent
