the Mountain Goats will be taking over First Avenue on Friday, May 20th!
At last it can be told: the story of how, when the Mountain Goats got together in early March, 2020, it was to make not one album, but two. That’s how many keepers our superhumanly prolific frontman, John Darnielle, had come up with since we’d recorded In League With Dragons in Nashville back in 2018.
The idea this time around was to work with Matt Ross-Spang, the dashing Memphis wunderkind who’d engineered that album and charmed us all with his gentle wit and old-school savoir-faire. (It’s hard not to be won over when you go to record a part and the voice coming through the headphones drawls, “You ready, Bubba? ”) Matt’s pitch was for us to spend a week at Sam Phillips Recording, his home base in Memphis, followed by another at the equally storied FAME Recording Studios down in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a plan that dovetailed nicely with John’s notion of corralling these songs into two complementary batches, a sort of yin and yang, one light, one dark. The Memphis album—Getting Into Knives, which came out last October—would be brighter, bolder, marked by rich and vibrant hues; the Muscle Shoals one—Dark in Here, set for release on June 25—quieter, smokier, but more deeply textured and intense. Something like that, anyway.
Will Sheff (who will be opening the show) is the frontman for the Austin, TX-based indie band Okkervil River (1998–present). Originally from Meriden, New Hampshire, he is also a founding member and co-songwriter (along with former Okkervil bandmate Jonathan Meiburg) for Shearwater (2001–2009), another Austin band. Sheff writes and performs many songs as a solo artist while juggling his commitments to Okkervil River and Shearwater.
Tickets are still available HERE!
