So I thought I'd mention that! So excited to come out and play music for you all! Got surprises in store! People please do not let scalpers get to the tickets before you do in the bigger cities! I wish I could stop them from trying to fleece you, but I am not Bono! When I become Bono I will fully put the smack down on the scalpers but until then you are on your own! See you out there!

Seattle
Date - Monday, 10/5
At - Sunset Tavern - 5433 Ballard Ave. NW
Presented by - Sonic Boom Records
8PM - Film Screening
Admission is free / open to the public / first come, first served
Album will be on sale early at this event

all shows from 21 August through 15 October are John & his guitar & maybe a piano when he can wrangle one
August
21 - 2nd annual "Durham, Be Easy" here in Durham, NC

September
18 - Ithaca College Ithaca, NY

October
9 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, NL
10 - QEH, London, England
11 - Ruby Lounge, Manchester, England
13 - Point Ephemere, Paris, France
15 - Magnet, Berlin, Germany

all U.S. dates from 4 November through 2 December are full band shows, and all shows will be opened by the great & magnificent Final Fantasy, about which you can imagine how amped I am

November
4 - Ladies Literary Club (Calvin College), Grand Rapids, MI
5 - the Metro, Chicago, IL
6 - High Noon Saloon, Madison, WI
7 - Cedar Cultural Centre, Minneapolis, MN
10 - the Showbox, Seattle, WA
11 - Wonder Ballroom, Portland, OR
14 - the Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
15 - Henry Fonda Theater, Los Angeles, CA
18 - Antones, Austin, TX
19 - Granada Theater, Dallas TX
20 - Mercy Lounge, Nashville TN
21 - the Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
23 - the Social, Orlando, FL
24 - Café 11, St. Augustine, FL
27 - 9:30 Club, Washington, DC
28 - Theater of Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA
29 - Wilbur Theatre, Boston MA
December
1 - Webster Hall, New York, NY
2 - Bell House, Brooklyn, NY

Berlin, Paris, Nashville, Manchester, Madison, Orlando - it's been awhile! Be advised, as many other towns in my path will tell you, that if your local independent music retailers have New Age and/or vintage CCM and/or decent grindcore sections, I will clear you out.

Seriously cannot wait to see you all out there!

1. 1 Samuel 15:23
2. Psalms 40:2
3. Genesis 3:23
4. Philippians 3:20-21
5. Hebrews 11:40
6. Genesis 30:3
7. Romans 10:9
8. 1 John 4:16
9. Matthew 25:21
10. Deuteronomy 2:10
11. Isaiah 45:23
12. Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace
The Mountain Goats: The Life of the World to Come
release date 6 October 2009

The album was recorded between April and June: first at Electrical Audio with Brandon Eggleston; then at Sonic Ranch with John Congleton; and finally at Baucom Road with Scott Solter. Scott also mixed the entire album at Baucom Road. The band is still Jon Wurster, Peter Hughes, and me; Owen Pallett did string arrangments & played on the Electrical session. The third song in the tracklisting above is a link to the song itself - enjoy!

I guess the obvious question is going to be: "John, have you had some sort of religious awakening?" and while I guess lots of people might want to be coy about answering that, that's never really been my style, so: no. It's not like that. It's not some heavy-narrative-distance deal either, though, and it's not a screed. It's twelve new songs: twelve hard lessons the Bible taught me, kind of. More than that I'd want to wait to say until some people have heard it, which won't be long. Will there be more news soon, quite soon? Like, next week, even? Oh yes there will!

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