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The Mountain Goats' new record weaves a tale fit for Broadway

World Cafe/WXPN

John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats had a dream, and one of the few things he remembered upon waking was an album title: Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan. You can guess where this is going.

"I said to myself, 'Wouldn't it be funny if you did that?'," Darnielle says. "Lots of my ideas that I go through with start with, 'That would be hilarious'."

The Mountain Goats' upcoming album, out Nov. 7, is a full-fledged musical, and it features contributions from Tony Award winner and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Today, we're sharing live performances from The Mountain Goats, plus Darnielle talks about making the new album.

Set List

  • "Rocks in My Pockets"
  • "Broken to Begin With"
  • "This Year"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod.  Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe's engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).