104: Jenny
I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats
Night Vale Presents
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2017
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Erin McKeown, incredible songwriter and former tourmate to both John and Joseph, joins to talk technique, showtunes, and how songwriting is like baseball.
Buy Erin McKeown’s cover of “Jenny” on iTunes, Bandcamp, or wherever you buy digital music. It supports both the artist and the show!
Buy the full cover album digitally or on vinyl today.
Learn more about John Darnielle’s two novels here. Listen to more music by the Mountain Goats, including their latest album Goths, here.
Check out Joseph Fink’s other shows, Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead. His second novel with Jeffrey Cranor, It Devours!, is out now.
Credits: Joseph Fink (host), John Darnielle (host), Christy Gressman (producer), Grant Stewart (editor), Vincent Cacchione (mixer). Rob Wilson (logo). Produced by Night Vale Presents in collaboration with Merge Records and the Mountain Goats.
http://ionlylistentothemountaingoats.com
http://www.nightvalepresents.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, it's that time again. Time for I only listen to the mountain goats. I'm Joseph Fink. I write books and I make podcasts and this is one of those podcasts. In it, I talked to John Darniel, singer and songwriter of the band |
| 0:16.0 | The Mountain Goats, and one of my own artistic heroes. Together we explore the constantly shifting line |
| 0:21.7 | between artist and fan fan and we also talk |
| 0:24.8 | about a lot of other stuff that comes up to. This season we are going song by |
| 0:28.7 | song through his 2002 album all-hale Texas, the only Billboard charting home-recorded album about |
| 0:36.1 | West Texas. |
| 0:37.1 | Today we discuss the album's fourth track, Jenny. |
| 0:40.6 | Each episode we also have a cover of the song we are discussing, recorded just for this show by a variety of artist. |
| 0:46.0 | And today we have a cover by an incredible musician and friend to both John and I, Aaron McYone. |
| 0:51.0 | But first, I take you to the basement of the Darniel home on a hot |
| 0:54.8 | summer's day in Durham. I am perched in a child-sized plastic chair and John is |
| 0:59.7 | sitting on a mattress on the floor. We didn't have a second pop shield to put on John's microphone |
| 1:04.5 | to allow us to maintain an absolute professional quality one expects from a podcast recorded |
| 1:09.6 | in a basement. So instead, he just put one of his old socks over the microphone, which it turns out works exactly as well. |
| 1:16.0 | I got a big stack of notebooks and this is one that my wife was doing alternate Pokemon in on the first page. |
| 1:24.9 | Prozac, one was called Prozac. |
| 1:26.5 | But then the second song ended |
| 1:28.6 | is called Total Rafflegia Overdrive, |
| 1:31.0 | which never got written. |
| 1:32.4 | What does it say? To what shall I compare your love, the love that made such |
| 1:36.2 | quick work of my nerves and my trust and my promise to quit smoking? That's good. |
| 1:41.1 | It's longer than that. And then absolute lithop's effect is on the next page. |
... |
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