June 16 2007: The Mountain Goats, Peter Hughes, Perry Wright - Farm Sanctuary People Barn, Watkins Glen NY

A couple years ago I spent the day hiking roughly twenty miles through the Sisters Wilderness in central Oregon, but I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the magnitude of nature surrounding me because all I wanted to do was sing “We Shall All Be Healed” songs (“Mole” especially – the “out in the desert” verse rings so true when you’ve been hiking for three weeks solid) to myself and fantasize about getting to the library in Bend the next day and hopefully finding news of an upcoming Mountain Goats tour on the internet. And in the same way, I miss the natural world when I spend a week or weeks of my time solely in smoky rock clubs in cities. So this melding of the Mountain Goats and a beautiful farm in the middle of New York State was pretty much where it’s at as far as I’m concerned.

Left Northampton at 10am with a couple of folks whom I’d not met before and, like our fathers and our fathers’ fathers before them, we headed west. It was a beautiful drive, I-88 from Albany to Binghamton remaining perhaps my favorite stretch of interstate highway. Arrived around four and before we even had the car unpacked Peter Hughes saunters over, gin and tonic solidly in hand, and before I know it I’m getting a great big bear hug. Of note: I’m pretty sure that over the next 36 hours the only time I saw Peter without that glass in his hand was when he was playing the guitar. And even then it was never further than an arm’s reach away. It was that kind of weekend.

And, as expected, after a few hours of drinking beers, visiting the farm animals (Huge! Pigs the size of midsize automobiles! Cows the size of midsize elephants!), drinking more beers, shooting the shit with folks at neighboring campsites and just sitting around and enjoying myself, Perry got things started by playing a set that was almost as pretty as the unbearably idyllic physical surroundings. He opened with “Ontothanatological” and “Rotation of Crops,” neither of which were ever my favorite Prayers and Tears songs and neither of which I’d ever heard sound so good. And somehow I can say this despite Perry’s use of a looping pedal. I’m not much for looping pedals and 99 times out of 100 am pretty positive that whoever’s using one would be playing a much better set without it. But Perry beat the odds. I tip my hat. The rest of his set was mostly old tunes like “Lessons Learned,” “Occasion of a Departure” “I am Morris Townsend” and ““Lisa.” Great to hear “Lisa,” as always, and he did a new tune that I recognized from Brooklyn last December that I really enjoyed too.

And then Peter! Peter Hughes! He played some songs! Songs like “Chiefs,” “The One Hundred Songs,” “The War on Sadness,” “Raiders” and “This Ain’t Going Away!” And I forget which song, but during one of them Melissa (one of the people I drove with, who seems to share my sense of humor and who is little and cute and full of energy and self-described as “utterly devoid of any grasp of the concepts of distance or time” – in all maybe the ideal stranger to spend a couple of days with) and I saw that Matt (the other person we drove with, who is 20 years of age and neither little nor cute and a self-described “Best Buy employee at the mall”) was, while pretty intoxicated on the beer we later found he had stolen from us and thus leaving us with nothing but Old Granddad to finish the night with, lying supine with eyes closed and playing some pretty serious air drums. While Peter's playing a quiet and introspective song on a Martin. Try to imagine this. Now realize that he was as front and center as it gets – that is, if he’d tried to reach for the air high-hat he might have hit Peter instead.

And then, as those of use with firm if sometimes blurry-eyed and stumbling grasps on time were anticipating, Peter wrapped things up and John came out to open with the Chiffons’ “One Fine Day.” He then played a bunch of songs. I’ve got a lot to say about most of them. So instead of my usual syntactically dubious narrative, I’m switching to bullets:

• “Song for an Old Friend” – Been waiting to hear this since I (a) learned of its existence, and especially since (b) I realized that I’d seen it played in Seattle at a time when I was ignorant to its existance. Oh do I love this song.
• “Big Yellow Coat” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – never heard it before but wow was it rocking. John Darnielle does the blues. Wow.
• “The Mess Inside” – Only the second time I’ve seen what has historically been my favorite Mountain Goats tune. It was beautiful.
• “Keeping House” – I was so so so so very happy he played this one. I’d never seen it and have been listening to it on repeat for the past few weeks.
• “Get Lonely” – I never appreciated this tune like it should be appreciated until after the “Get Lonely” tour was over. And he played it as perfectly and as quietly as you could have hoped for. It was almost inaudible. It was perfect. It was one of those performances that I’ll be thinking about long after the crazy rock and roll tunes recede from my memory.
• “Shadow Song” – Hands down the best performance of this I’ve ever seen. Halfway through John just gave up on the microphone. Things were just as quiet as they were during “Get Lonely” and five times as touching. The atmosphere went from rock concert to communal silent prayer in an instant. It was amazing.
• “Pigs that Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph of” – One of my all-time favorite Mountain Goats tunes, and one that I’d never heard played before. Peter came up to sing the “I come from Chino”s and a part of my life is now complete.
• “Terror Song” by Furniture Huschle – Oh this song. I’ve been waiting to hear it again since seeing it in Baton Rouge a couple years ago and simultaneously realizing that going to Mountain Goats shows, even if just for the chance of hearing them play it, is perhaps a reasonable cause to devote one’s life. I cannot describe what it was like to hear this. People who were there or who have seen it played know what I’m talking about. People who weren’t there and who don’t know the song can try to convince themselves that ignorance is bliss. And while I really truly believe that ignorance IS in fact bliss, it’s not in this case. Bliss is watching Peter shoot his hands up for a split second in time with the “Cancer in your hands” line, and without missing a beat be back riding on whatever chord that gets ridden there for the “TERROR SONG!!!! TERRRROR SONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”s. Jesus Fucking Christ.
  

And then the show ended and Melissa and I discovered our beer missing but that was ok because the Granddad is 100 proof and we hung out at the huge bonfire and at one point I had the Granddad in my left hand and someone passed me a bottle of Old Crow for my right and good times ensued.