nyctaper Interview: John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats

[photo credit]

John Darnielle discusses the new Mountain Goats EP Satanic Messiah, live versus studio recordings, flac, DIY releases, and alternative forms of music distribution.

When nyctaper recorded the Mountain Goats in Brooklyn in May, it was a solo John Darnielle concert that featured a large assortment of older and rarer numbers, and one absolutely new debut performance. When a conscientious fan in the Mountain Goats forum suggested that John might not appreciate nyctaper circulating the new song “Wizard Buys a Hat”, John disagreed. In the nyctaper interview with John Darnielle posted in its entirety below, we now understand John’s position.

As the Mountain Goats prepare to offer Satanic Messiah, an EP to be released in a pay-as-you-please method through alternative distribution channels, John discusses the freedom to do “DIY” a release, along with the accompanying uncertainty.

nyctaper: I see that “Wizard Buys a Hat” is to be one of the songs on the new EP, is this the same arrangement as the version at Masonic Temple?

John Darnielle: No, not at all, the recorded version of “Wizard Buys A Hat” is actually very quiet – it kinda starts quiet and then gets super-quiet. It has a sort of Dario Argento build-up-scene feel. Guitar, vocals, a drum, some organ. To me it rules over the “I am nervous so I guess I’ll yell real loud version” but that’s just me. I go through a lot of internal drama about playing new songs live, because people like it when I stomp and yell, but I have no interest in making stomp and yell records, all those bands who try to sound like “yes we are in reckless abandon!” on their records sound silly to me. You know? Ben Harper when we were kids told me he thought a song should always be better live than on record, that live performance is about breaking the recording open, and while I’m not sure I agree 100% – I think I prefer recordings to live music – I do think that recorded music is a collaboration between the listener and the performer, and trying to treat it like it’s an attempt to recreate/emulate a live performance is a mistake. I think of recordings like little Easter-scene sugar eggs: look inside of them, squint, see all the little things hidden in there. A live show is more about everybody just gorging themselves on raw sugar. Both are nice, but they shouldn’t try to be like each other.

nyct: I think its great that you will be using new means of distribution of the EP (direct download, torrent, etc). Will the EP be offered in flac?

JD: Yeah I think so. The original idea was to offer MP3, AAC, AIFF & WAV. In any case, both major compressed formats and at least one big-size format. Still working that stuff out. It is exciting, putting this thing together, I have to say – getting all the stuff organized, thinking about how to do it, thinking about formats, arguing with people who don’t know how to use torrents about whether we oughta host the actual files instead of just seeding a torrent and pointing at it – when you really do absolutely everything yourself, which is what I’m doing with this record, you learn that a lot of the propaganda about being in control really is true. There’s beauty and power in making all your own decisions. At the same time, you know, writing checks to a lot of places and thinking “jeez I hope people actually pay for the songs or I’m gonna be eating ramen for a while,” that feels a little funny. Fingers crossed!

nyct: I’m not sure how one measures “success” on a project like this, but if all goes well, can we anticipate that this new method of EP distribution will be used again by tMG?

JD: I hate talking about money, though this is the second time in two paragraphs I’ve done so, but: the bottom line here is whether people who download the songs decide to pay for them. People talk about “exposure” as an intangible sort of reward, but exposure doesn’t count as payment as far as I’m concerned – most people with jobs will agree, if I tell you that I’m telling other people you’re awesome instead of paying you, you got a raw deal. So, this is an experiment – I already know how much I’d get paid if I did a regular pressing of the EP, I have a good sense of how many I’d sell and what the profit to me would be. I have to admit I’m a tiny bit skeptical about how it’ll go, though I’d love to be proven wrong – people always point to the big-marquee boys (Radiohead, NiN) as if small fish can hope to compare, but those are bands with massive fanbases built on the old model with lots of cash going into the process. If a tenth of the people who download In Rainbows pay, then Radiohead eats good for a year. Not so easy when your craft is tailored to a much smaller audience! If a tenth of the people who I expect will download this EP pay me, then I’ll lose a fair amount of money. So, who knows? Some days I think “hell yes, bold new world, looking forward to being able to release more music more often and put out all the EPs and weird projects I can think of, really be sharing all my ideas with everybody in nearly real-time, that’s gonna be rad.” And then other days I just wanna go back to making tapes. It’s not like I left my label or anything – I just wanted to see how something like this would work for me, and I did it with new studio recordings instead of half-assing it: went the full route from production through mastering and now I’m excited to see how things work out. And really, I’m happy no matter what happens, because think the EP’s good work from me – at the end of the day, all this stuff I’m talking about is just idle chatter: all that matters is the work, and that gives me satisfaction, and if people enjoy it, then that’s doubly satisfying. So, while this very long paragraph probably looks like I’m super-concerned with all this stuff, I’m not – it’s just, like, you asked, and as a working artist trying to make a living, this is the kinda stuff I think about a lot. You know?

The Mountain Goats perform twice in NYC in November as the final dates on a tour with Kaki King:
November 8 – Brooklyn, NY, Music Hall of Williamsburg
November 9 – New York, NY, Webster Hall