An Interview with The Mountain Goats’ Peter Hughes

The Mountain Goats play Tulsa’s Cain’s Ballroom on Monday, December 3, touring in support of their October release, Transcendental Youth.  Despite the plural name, the band’s original line up in 1991 included just one member, John Darnielle. Currently, the band consists of Darnielle, bassist Peter Hughes, and drummer Jon Wurster.

I recently had the chance to speak with Peter Hughes about the band and the upcoming Tulsa show. Hughes lives in New York now, but he grew up outside of Los Angeles in the same general area as Darnielle, whom he met after college. “In our twenties, basically there was a musical scene going on in this area we all called the ‘Inland Empire’ where we lived. It’s this region that’s east of LA, a very grandiose name for really a lot of undistinguished suburbs, bedroom communities. But it was this weird little incubator for a lot of cool, weird stuff.”

“We would go to LA to see shows, but nobody who lived in LA would ever come out to where we lived,” Hughes explained. “So we had access to the good parts of being near a big city, but we were also kind of apart from that and isolated in a weird way and it gave rise to an interesting community of just people making weird music, and that’s how John and I met.”

The Mountain Goats’ music is often described as “folk-rock”, a term which is somewhat deceptive. “I mean it’s tough,” Hughes commented. “I always just tell people it’s rock music. There are elements of folk music, I guess, to it. The most obvious just being that traditionally it’s been based around an acoustic guitar, and the lyrics and the vocals are the primary focus. In that sense, what the term folk music has come to reference for most people is this idea of a 60s singer songwriter, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing. In the case of the Mountain Goats, that’s both kind of true, but it’s also really misleading. In a lot of ways, it’s pretty radically opposed to the traditional notion of ‘guy with acoustic guitar’ thing. It’s tough to pin down.”

Some listeners might detect a hint of New Wave influence in the Mountain Goats’ music. Hughes laughed when I asked about that. “The thing is, I love hearing that. You can attribute that mostly to me because John is really allergic to anything kind of 80s retro, even though we both spent a lot of time listening to a lot of the same music and listening to the same music in the 80s. But for him, he doesn’t like anything that smacks of retro and what’s become that fashionable nouveau 80s thing, which I agree with him in that regard. But for me personally, I still love that kind of music and a lot of my bass playing draws from it. I’m a huge fan of New Order and  Joy Division. When I started playing bass, that’s the sound I wanted to make.”

While you’ll hear many influences in the Mountain Goats’ music, for Hughes, it’s Darnielle’s sound that is the hallmark of the band. “One of the things that we’ve learned is that John’s guitar playing is really distinctive and his voice is so distinctive,” Hughes commented. “We can almost do anything behind him and it’s still us, which is really kind of liberating and really great.”

Hughes is enthusiastic about Transcendental Youth, their latest release. “We’re really excited and happy about it. I think it’s the best album that we’ve made, and yeah, I probably shouldn’t be saying that,” he laughed. “But I really feel like that. It’s just a bunch of really great songs.” 

The new album features horn arrangements by musician Matthew White, who will be opening for the band at the Cain’s. “He’s pretty amazing,” Hughes said of White. “He has this kind of crazy avant jazz ensemble thing in Richmond, Virginia that he plays with and he also has this more baroque pop thing that he’s touring now…. they did all these really amazing and beautiful horn arrangements (for the album). One of the great things about having him out on tour with us is we steal his horn players,” Hughes laughed. “So the show is really, really fun playing those songs live with those guys.”

Although the band has toured for years, this will be their first time in Tulsa. For more information and tickets to the upcoming show, visit The Cain’s website.