I was hoping to speak to John Darnielle this morning, the singer-songwriter behind the long-running, cult-favorite, Colbert-approved band the Mountain Goats. But seeing as it is release day for the band’s latest, Getting Into Knives, I suppose he was otherwise occupied. Among other questions, I specifically wanted to ask Darnielle about this lyric from “Picture of My Dress”: “I’m in the bathroom of a Dallas, Texas Burger King/And Mr. Steven Tyler is on the overhead speaker/He doesn’t want to miss a thing.”
The song itself has an interesting back story. It began with a tweet from the poet Maggie Smith, talking about a hypothetical photo essay involving a wedding dress. Darnielle responded that it would be a song titled “Picture of My Dress.” Eventually, he sat down and wrote it.
“Picture of My Dress,” of course, is not the Mountain Goats’ first foray into North Texas. Most notably, there is 2002’s All Hail West Texas, which featured songs such as “Blues in Dallas” and “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.” The latter served as the inspiration for Kimberly King Parsons’ entry into our annual summer fiction package a few months ago.
TL;DR Listen to the Mountain Goats.
