Press kit, The Mountain Goats · Press kit, official use
members: John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, and Jon Wurster - 2007-present John Darnielle and Peter Hughes - 1995-2007 John Darnielle and Rachel Ware - 1991-1995 occasional members 1991-1995: Rosanne, Amy, and Sara occasional members 1995-present: Franklin Bruno, Erik Friedlander, John Vanderslice, and a litany of drummers we stole from our opening bands The Mountain Goats began life in a Norwalk employee-housing studio apartment that had awesome deco tiling on the bathroom floor but little more to recommend the place as a living space. Still, you take what you can get, and it was ridiculously cheap. In this room, equipped with a dual-cassette recorder, John D. started setting some of his poetry to music, using a guitar he'd gotten for a few bucks at a nearby strip mall music store. His idea at the time was that eventually his day job would be "poet." Young men have all kinds of crazy ideas about what they're going to end up doing for a living. After a while the songs became more like songs than poems set to music, and John started playing them for his friend Rachel, who as it turned out, played bass. John and Rachel toured the eastern U.S. & Europe once, the midwest twice (if "Chicago, Columbus and Madison" count as "the midwest"), and played San Francisco a few times, and they recorded two albums and a couple of EPs. Then John graduated from college and moved to Chicago, and the Mountain Goats became Mainly Just John, except for a couple of European tours where John's friend Peter Hughes played bass. In 2001, though, 4AD called up and asked if the Mountain Goats wouldn't like to make records with them. John called Peter. They hit the studio.
