They say you shouldn't meet your heroes.

Hi, I'm Joseph Fink.

I'm a novelist and the creator of the fiction podcast,

Welcome to Night Vale and Alice isn't dead.

And this is I only listen to the Mountain Goats, the show where I meet my hero,

hang out with him in his basement, and have conversations about songwriting, art, and

life.

I've loved the band The Mountain Goats for years.

The music of John Darniel, singer and songwriter of the group,

has been with me through some of my toughest times and happiest moments.

And this is a show where I sit down with him to talk through his work song by song.

It's a show for fans of the Mountain Goats, or fans of Night Vale in my other work, but it's also

for anyone interested in what it means to be an artist or a fan or as many of us are, both at once.

This season we will be covering the 2002 album All Hail West Texas,

certainly the only number one talking about the first song of the album, each one by a different artist and recorded just for this show.

Let's go now to my conversation with John,

in which we will talk about the first song of the album,

the best ever death metal band in Denton.

So it's really weird in a lot of ways to be finally doing this podcast, because I think I told

you this before. This is an idea I had years ago and I'm honestly trying to remember how many

years? Probably at least three or four years ago. But with Deep Purple, it was a completely different

show in a lot of ways. It was also just like a scripted comedy show. It was called

...