John Darnielle and the legacy of the Mountain Goats

Speaking of the South, tell me what it was like recording some of your recent albums here.

If you are on TikTok, you’ve likely heard the Mountain Goats’ 2002 song “No Children.” The doomed-relationship anthem went viral on the app in 2021, but the band has been a folk rock fixture since the early 1990s.

Throughout those 30 years and 21 albums, John Darnielle has anchored the group as its frontman, founding member and at times, its only member.

Before embarking on the band’s 2023 tour, Darnielle spoke with The Daily Mississippian from his home in North Carolina about the South, eating plantbased on tour and art as labor.

THE DM: The past 30 years have been a gradual eastward migration for you. You’ve gone from California, spent some time in Iowa, and now you’re in North Carolina.

I’ll be in the ocean next.

You’re in Durham, sort of split between the coastal region and Appalachia. Do you consider yourself a Southerner at all?

I’m not. Not by birth, anyway. But I’ve lived here longer than I have lived any other place, so North Carolina is where I’m from now.

I grew up in California. But my grandmother was from Arkansas, and my grandfather was from Alabama. So there’s a sense in which I’ve come back, but you never fully shake the Californian identity.

I have lived in North Carolina since 2003. I’d been bumping all around prior to that. When do you get to start saying ‘“I’m from here,” you know? But I do say I’m from Durham now, because if I moved back to California, I would barely recognize it at this point. It’s like, oh, well, I used to live here, but everything’s different now. Whereas everything’s different here now, too, but I was here to see all the change.

I guess at the end of the day it’s up to you to determine which region you identify with the most.

I record mostly in Southern cities now, just because there’s a bunch of good studios here. One thing about the South is people outside it have a caricatured idea of it. It’s the same as with the Midwest. When, really, we have all the same stuff everybody else has. People, the same stores, the same access to everything.

I love to be in cities, but I also find them very high energy, even just going for a walk in the city. You get a lot of stimuli.

Yeah, the stimulation and the energy expenditure are totally different.

For me, the ideal recording environment is a place where I’m gonna see as few people as possible, where nobody’s going to recognize me.

We do tend to stick to the Southeast. Bigger cities are great to record in, because I can have whatever I want for lunch. Whereas if you record in Muscle Shoals and you’re vegetarian, your eating options are pretty limited.

I’m now wondering about your plant-based eating habits on tour. How do you manage?

Eating on tour is hard because for one thing, like a lot of other people, I’m kind of a comfort eater. You eat when you’re bored, you also eat when you’re agitated. As a singer, too, you have to watch out for your acid intake.

Right now we’re on a bus, and I often make overnight oatmeal. I have a special thing where I take a quarter cup of oatmeal, soak it in either milk or plant based milk — I’m not that particular — and then I add dates and cashews. That’s breakfast.

For lunch, I now have a tiny induction cooktop thing, and I will heat a Tasty Bite. These are Indian lunch things, like palak paneer. Or I make ramen with some vegetables. For dinner, my general rule is to be disciplined about breakfast and lunch, and I’ll have whatever I like for dinner.

I imagine it’s hard, too, to be away from your family for long periods of time. How do tours change your relationship to fatherhood or make you value it differently?

Fatherhood changes the relationship to the gig, really. It’s sort of yes and no. I was just talking with Matt Douglas, the saxophone, keys and guitar guy and close friend about this today. Because for us, the first week of a tour can be a real challenge. He has three children and I have two. We don’t have a nanny or anything. My wife is by herself doing this once I’m gone. But eventually on tour, you break free from home base, and your feet go. It’s like a physical feeling where you feel like you can’t go back and then you’re sort of in the zone. And that’s where you want to be because you’re not going to just go home.

Right. You have no choice but to immerse yourself.

This is something I think about a lot. It depends on the tour, but during the first couple of days, even if the shows are great, I’m like what am I doing out here? I’m supposed to be back home. If we could afford an extra bus, I would bring my kids and have somebody take care of them.

You bring up an important point because even with reaching a certain level of comfortability and success in your career, at the end of the day, it’s still a job that you must work. And touring is your labor.

It’s very true. People don’t like to talk about that. But I do on my private Facebook, just talking to my friends. It’s interview season and I’ve been bitching. If one more person asked me the difference between writing a book and writing a song, I’m gonna jump out of this window. From the creative end, there’s nothing really to talk about. But that’s what people always ask me. It’s like asking how it’s different to build an apartment, or car or an idol.

Considering your own rhythmic utterances, how many songs have you written under the Mountain Goats moniker? It’s over 600, right?

At least three songs, I think.

That’s a sound guess. How do you approach building a setlist from such a vast discography?

The longer you stick around, the more challenging it is to figure out what to do. But it’s good to have a rationale. If you’re a legacy act, like The Who, the list of songs that people expect you to play is long. With the Mountain Goats, there’s only a few songs that we fully expect to play in the body of the set. Other than that, I have a lot of leeway to build a set. We’re blessed to have people who come and see us over and over again.

You want to dig deep into people who have liked you for a long time and haven’t had a chance to see you yet, and my assumption is that they’d rather hear a song they’ve only heard once or twice. So you play a couple of songs that people really expect and some deeper cuts.

Will April 7 be your first time playing in Oxford?

We played there in 2019 in the summer. I actually gave a reading at Square Books for “Wolf in White Van.” And I saw the Faulkner house when I was in high school. Back then, there was a company called Historical Products that sold T-shirts of authors and composers. And they were very austere T-shirts. It was like a photograph in a frame with the name of the author underneath it. They had Sartre, they had Virginia Woolf. I had a William Faulkner T-shirt.

So coming to Oxford is a pilgrimage, in a sense?

It is, yeah.

The Mountain Goats will play at The Lyric Oxford on April 7.

Rebels

continued from page 1 the longest conference losing streak for Ole Miss since 1997.

Some might say the Rebels faced very good teams to start SEC play. Yes, Ole Miss played the No. 3 and No. 4 ranked teams in the country in Florida and Vanderbilt, respectively. But you’re telling me they couldn’t rally to get just one win in those two three-game series?

Conversely, the Rebels faced a Texas A&M squad that had an overall record of 15-10 and just 1-5 in SEC play heading into last weekend’s series. Ole Miss had plenty of chances to come out with a couple of victories. Instead, the Rebels came out of the weekend losing the series two games to one.

Yes, the SEC is arguably the best conference in college baseball, and head coach Mike Bianco is fully aware of that.

“This league is just so unforgiving and if you don’t play well, you don’t win,” Bianco said after last Sunday’s loss against Texas A&M. “This league, the teams are too good.”

So who’s to blame? The hitters? The pitchers? Or is it the coaching?

I think it’s a little bit of everything.

First, let’s state the obvious: Ole Miss has had bad

IAN SPARKS thedmsports@gmail.com luck with injuries this season.

Relief pitcher Josh Mallitz had a stellar 2022 season, holding an ERA of just 1.45, and he was expected to play a big role in the Rebels’ bullpen. But Mallitz underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery back in November. So it was evident that the bullpen needed to really step up this season to compensate for a major loss.

Hunter Elliott, Ole Miss’ No. 1 starting pitcher, sprained his UCL after his season-opening start on the mound and has been out ever since. Bianco said that he expects Elliott to return to game action in mid-April.

Then in March, Bianco said right-handed reliever Matt Parenteau was dealing with discomfort after suffering a slight tear in his UCL last summer. While visiting with surgeons, Parenteau has been out for Ole Miss.

Injuries are a part of the game, and that’s why it is important to have a lot of depth on your team.

The remaining Ole Miss pitchers have struggled this season. The team has an ERA of 7.73in SEC play, and opponents are batting a staggering .314 against Rebel pitchers.

In nine games against SEC teams, the Rebels have been outscored 75-47. Ole Miss’ pitchers have just been pushed around against these teams, plain and simple.

One reason for that: The Rebels have a lot of young pitchers. Grayson Saunier, Sam Tookoian, Cole Ketchum, Brayden Jones and JT Quinn are all freshmen, and these are guys Bianco regularly uses on the mound. So there are going to be some growing pains. But let’s be realistic, as well. Even ace pitcher Elliott’s return to game action isn’t likely to magically fix the Rebels’ problems. But it will help. Once Elliott is back in the starting rotation, Jack Dougherty will most likely move back to the bullpen and add some much-needed depth in that area. (Dougherty had been taking Elliott’s place in the starting rotation.)

In the end, it all comes down to consistency, and that hasn’t been the MO for the Rebels this season. Granted, there’s still a fairly long way to go in the season — the SEC Tournament begins May 23 — and we all remember what happened last year following a relatively inauspicious start. But the Rebels have to pick it up if they hope to reach the big stage again.