But that's a possible-but-you-can't-say-I-promised quality. Actual real-life promises are as follows: I'll be there; Peter will be there; we'll be playing solo sets, and on the second night, I'll be taking nothing but requests; and that registration's limited. So sign up, act fast, and I'll see you there; without wanting to get maudlin, the last Zoop! was for me one of the absolute highlights of ten-plus years as That Guy From The Mountain Goats.

Dudes! We're gonna have Zoop! again!

The auction is here. Bid what you can and I'll see you on the road!

the Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice: Gone Primitive
a night of amplified acoustic guitar & voice

We are going to light out for the Territories in a van with two acoustic guitars, some notebooks, our soundman Brandon and a pouch full of charms against ill omen. We are going to get elemental. We are going to stomp our feet and hammer at the strings until we get what we want from them. We, a couple of guys named John, are going to tour, is what we're going to do. We're going to stand alone onstage and play our guitars and sing old songs & new, and then we'll probably play together. We are going to sit side by side with our acoustic guitars like two out of the five guys on the Five Man Acoustical Jam album, only with fewer Tesla songs. Because the whole point of playing an acoustic guitar is not to unplug. It's to get raw and draw blood.

Here's where we'll be:

March
18 - Asheville, NC, the Grey Eagle
20 - Norfolk, VA, Attucks Theater
21 - Washington, DC, Sixth and I Synagogue
24 - Northampton, MA, Pearl Street
25 - Somerville, MA, the Sommerville Theatre
27 - New York, NY, the Society for Ethical Culture (part of the Wordless Music series)
29 - Gambier, OH, Kenyon College
30 - Oberlin, OH, Oberlin College
April
1 - Chicago, IL, Epiphany Episcopal (tickets here)
2 - Champaign, IL, Courtyard Café at University of Illinois
3 - Iowa City, IA, the Mill, Mission Creek Music Festival
4 - Richmond, IN, Earlham College
6 - Bloomington IN, Buskirk-Chumley Theater

Is that the end of the spring news? No my friends it is not. There will be one or two morsels of news after these. In the meantime, if you've never seen me do my thing solo acoustic blood-and-spit style, and if you wanna hear some new songs & some old ones, c'mon out during the early thaw, and JV & I will help you fling curses at what's left of the snow.

Swedish American is a small room, and it's been a while since I played a solo set in San Francisco, so if you think you might want to see it, you might also want to act fast. Every penny I get paid for this show will benefit the Family Violence Prevention Fund, an organization whose cause is close my heart.

Is this the end of my first-quarter news? Hell, no! I got so much more news coming you're gonna need a separate feed for it!

Our dance card is filling out nicely for the new year, and there's lots of exciting news. For now, we have two shows to tell you about:

February
1-6 - Ships and Dip V

It's a cruise that the Barenaked Ladies do once a year. The Weakerthans will be there. Christine Fellows will be there. Sarah McLachlan will be there. Maybe some of y'all are of the type to hate on Sarah McLachlan and crack wise about the Lilith Fair, but give me a plaintive piano ballad and a mid-tempo arrangement to get all weepy about and I'm a happy man, so if you want to be the person who uploads the file "John Darnielle crying over 'I Will Remember You' aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean" to YouTube, I encourage you to buy tickets now. This whole thing is going to be a blast. "Golden Boy" bonus possible if somebody gets Wurster to luau.*

24 - San Francisco, CA, Herbst Theater

This is part of City Arts and Lectures - Tobias Wolff, who is to the short story what pre-Miami Sonny Liston was to the jab, will be chewing the fat with me, and I'll also be playing some songs. Those of you who are familiar with my vocabulary probably know how I feel about this whole deal - the word rhymes with "stoked" and is also spelled exactly the same.

More news to come! Spring will rule for all of us this year, even those of us whom 2008 tried to break! So get excited, fellow doomsayers! Good times are coming for sure!

*"Golden Boy" bonus not redeemable aboard ship, on land, or at any time prior to the return of Quetzalcoatl to Earth

Your servant

jd

1) Of course we're playing San Francisco on the Last Happy Night of Your Life tour. How would we skip San Francisco? San Francisco has treated us like kings over the years. It would be rude not to go there and bang our heads like front-row residents at Fender's Ballroom circa 1986. Here's where we'll be:

October
23 - San Francisco, CA, The Independent
24 - San Francisco, CA, The Fillmore

2) Remember when I used to release a lot of EPs? Like, one or two a year, even? And how they weren't album tracks, but self-contained kinda deal actual EPs, as God intended? Perhaps you do not remember, on account of that was a long time ago. It doesn't matter whether you remember or not, really, since I am telling you now, just so we'll all be on the same page. The point is that I was thinking about how much I used to like making EPs. Writing them, recording them, releasing them. So I went out to Baucom Road, which is Scott Solter's studio in western North Carolina, and I recorded four new songs. And then I sent them to a pressing plant, where they're being turned into a double-7" in a hi-gloss UV gatefold sleeve with covers designed by Horse and Buggy Press featuring artwork by Aeron Alfrey. This record will be available in a limited edition of 666 copies. It will only be available at shows.

"But wait!" I hear some of you saying. "If I send you some money will you send me a copy?" Let me answer this question once, and once only, and for all time: no. What you will be able to do, though, is download the whole EP from a dedicated site that we're setting up right now. I hope/expect/pray that the site will be ready within a month or so. The songs will be available in both MP3 and AAC formats at high resolutions, and also, if I can figure out how to make and seed a torrent, as AIFFs, which digitally speaking is the best way to hear them, since Scott Solter is an awesome producer. The downloads will be open to everybody, with no hoops to jump through, though there will also be several options available for those who want to pay me for my work, since part of the point of the exercise is to see whether that's a viable route for smaller-potatoes-than-Radiohead dudes like me. But we'll cross that bridge when we drive the frightened horses across it. With their covered wagons behind them on fire. And the devil, scrawny and crazed, riding behind them on an Italian greyhound.

For now, to sum up this overlong post: 1) San Francisco; 1a) two shows added; 2) Scott Solter-produced single.

Sssssee you ssssssoon!

September
14 - Dorset, End of the Road Festival
15 - London, ULU

Then we're touring America with one of the most gifted artists alive.

the Mountain Goats and Kaki King present: THE LAST HAPPY NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE

October
13 - Chicago, IL, Park West
14 - Milwaukee, WI, Pabst Theatre
15 - Omaha, NE, The Slowdown
17 - Denver, CO, Bluebird Theater
18 - Salt Lake City, UT, In the Venue
20 - Seattle, WA, Showbox
21 - Portland, OR, Wonder Ballroom
25 - Los Angeles CA , Troubadour
26 - Los Angeles CA, Troubadour
28 - San Diego, CA, the Belly Up Tavern
29 - Tucson, AZ, Club Congress
31 - Lubbock, TX, Tequila Jungle

November
1 - Austin, TX, Antones
2 - Dallas, TX, Granada Theatre
3 - New Orleans, LA Republic
5 - Chapel Hill, NC, Cat's Cradle
6 - Washington, DC, 9:30 Club
7 - Philadelphia, PA, Theatre of the Living Arts
8 - Brooklyn, NY, Music Hall of Williamsburg
9 - New York, NY, Webster Hall

When I try to talk about Kaki my usually reliable fund of superlatives seems insufficient. She is just the best. I am so excited about this tour. We can't wait to play music with her every night, and we can't wait to see you all there.

Full fall tour dates will be announced on this site, by me, on Tuesday morning. Right before it happens, a dude with a thick mustache whose ends are nicely waxed into points will appear at the gate and read a proclamation - "The Announcing of the Fall Tour, by John" - and then he'll blow a bugle, but not even I am sure about where said gates are or who is paying the bugler guy.