John Darnielle Goes Back To The Boombox
John Darnielle thought he had a solid plan for the first half of 2020. In January, he and the members of the Mountain Goats, his band of almost 30 years, would convene at a studio not far from his home in Durham, N.C., to run through songs he'd written for their next album. A month or so later, they'd bounce between two famed studios in the Deep South, recording the meat of that album. And finally, a month or so after that, they'd reconvene for a three-week spring tour of large rock clubs and theaters, stretching from the Blue Ridge Mountains west to the Rockies.
But from the start of their sessions, the headlines had Darnielle worried. A psychiatric nurse through much of the '90s, and a songwriter and award-winning novelist who had summoned images of apocalypse, plague and upheaval for his entire career, he saw in the news the warning signs of a major problem: bickering governments, bungled science, bad communication. The rest of the band wasn't convinced. When Darnielle scrapped a whip-smart album opener that once felt like a hit because it now felt morbid and crass, some members scoffed.
By the time Darnielle began a long drive from the recording studio back to North Carolina on Sunday, March 15, one day before his 53rd birthday, the encroaching crisis was clear. Donald Trump had declared a national emergency. The NBA had suspended its season. The United States was on the cusp of 3,000 confirmed cases. Darnielle was supposed to fly home, but, for fear of exposure,
