Chords for Leave No Cross Unturned

_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [F#] John and I are here [N] in Chaz's Bull City Records to discuss All Hail West Texas, a Mountain
Goats record you made in 2000.
2000 I think is right, I'm pretty sure.
Which we are reissuing
on vinyl for the first time and _ on CD as well with bonus tracks.
Yep.
You recorded this
record on a boom box.
Yes, entirely.
It's actually, this is the sort of thing when you
are a small indie act, you read all your reviews and you get mad about the stuff they get wrong,
right?
Of course.
Especially if they don't like you and they get something wrong, you
don't even know what you are talking about.
Of course.
And one of them was they would
always talk about John Darnielle and his four track.
Didn't have a four track.
I recorded
on a boom box.
You had a one track.
That's right.
All the other so called low five people
were in fact high five by our standards.
We were it.
Sure.
So yeah, but this was the only
album that actually, the only full length that was all boom box.
Like Sweden and Nothing
for Jews were partly four track studio and partly boom box and then Silvia Loader Machine
was partly radio recordings and partly boom box but this is all boom box.
All boom box,
all the time.
All Hail West Texas.
Nothing but.
And there's a lot of references like
on all the Mountain Goats records to places, _ specific cities, states, other bands, other
kinds of music which I think is one thing that makes the song so interesting and people
connect with them in a certain way because they recognize things that they also have
a feeling about or a connection to.
So we are going to talk about some records that
maybe relate in some way to All Hail West Texas.
Heavy Metal in particular, the first
song is called the best ever death metal band in Denton but Heavy Metal in general
plays a role in your life.
Yes.
And this is actually Ground Zero.
You said that you once
owned this record, Heavy Metal.
This record which is not in fact a Heavy Metal record.
Allman Brothers Band, Black Sabbath, Blues Image, famous Heavy Metal band, Buffalo Springfield,
another treasure of Death Metal and all these guys are posing except for Iron Man is on
here which freaked me right out.
Well Black Sabbath is mentioned specifically _ on _ All Hail
West Texas.
Oh that's right on the bonus track.
The one with the witch on the front.
Was it just the name Black Sabbath that first? _
I knew who they were and it was supposed to
be all dark and everything but the big conflict for me had been like I had heard that Ozzy
was all wild and dark and everything and then I got Blizzard of Oz when you sign up for
the record club and you pick the four free ones and then you cancel your membership.
Did that, got Blizzard of Oz and I was like this is just rock music.
There's nothing
really that dark about it.
It's pretty poppy actually.
Yeah exactly.
So I was disappointed
but then you hear that first Black Sabbath album and that's weird.
It's like really slow
and he sounds like he's making up the lyrics as he goes along.
It really sounds like he's
going there's a witch out in the field and he's not actually saying that but it's like
this you know it really sounds like he's just trying to describe a movie poster he once
saw or something.
Very very very weird shit.
Waylon Jennings, Outlaw Country, Luke and
Bach Texas, those guys are all amazing musicians.
It's serious music.
It is and they're playing
at this time in history they're playing full of drugs like really really high and yet it's
like reggae.
They're all higher than you could stand.
Look how sweaty he is on the cover.
And they're holding down four so close you would be speeding up and slowing down and
certainly not playing two sets a night.
_ And they're just touring like six months at a
time and having songs like I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself.
All time song title. _
Okay so
let's go back to Texas.
Jandak is a Texas guy.
Jandak is in the improv community.
He
may be composing his songs but a lot of them seem to be he writes lyrics and then plays
whatever comes to mind and reads things the lyrics as he goes.
You get the impression
a lot of it is one take stuff.
Back then All Hail West Texas a lot of what you're hearing
is the first second or third rolling take but I've been working on the song for a couple
hours.
But back in those days I would often start recording before I knew for sure what
was going to happen.
Like the Hail Satan at the end of Death Metal Band that's an ad lib.
That's awesome.
I was playing the song.
The song's in drop D.
I'm roaring.
I get to the
end and I'm feeling this story about these kids in the hospital and I just yelled Hail
Satan and it felt so transgressive because I didn't really know I was going there.
And
it's like oh my god that is good.
It's the only take of the song that exists.
I didn't
record any other takes.
So Best Ever Death Metal Band from then is first take.
I think
it says something on the liner notes.
It's the first song on the side of the take which
also partly accounts for why it sounds so crisp because when you're recording on cassette
where you are on the cassette has a lot to do with how good it sounds.
Well it's a very memorable start to an album.
Thank you.
It's funny.
_ Mac and I have been through this.
My sequencing.
I'm always wanting
to save the bigger songs for later.
To reward the listener who stays with the record.
To pay the guy who was actually there for the long haul who's not just wanting to hear
the hits.
But on that one I seem to have had my head screwed on.
No, no this song goes first.
This is the new Dark Throne record.
Leave.
No.
Leave no cross unturned.
Leave.
_ No.
Leave
no cross unturned.
Obviously if you listen to a Mountain Goats record you don't say that sounds like someone
who's really into Dark Throne.
But do you feel like it is reflected at all in the records
that you make?
I mean the thing about heavy metal, especially about the move of independent heavy metal
that starts around the time of Death Metal.
A lot of them are inspired by punk and especially
by I think some of the_
Like Discharge or things like that.
Discharge and Raw Power from Italy.
A lot of those punk bands who are sort of just saying
well we want to make a record that sounds like this.
People with that Albini feeling
of like this is what we want to sound like.
It may not be what other people are interested
in but we're trying to sound like ourselves.
When I was making Boombox records I would be approached by people after a Knitting Factory
shows me, man some of these songs are really interesting.
What do you think you could do
with them in a big studio?
And I would go nothing.
This is exactly what they sound like.
Oh yeah but don't you feel like you want more people to hear them?
And I'd go get thee behind
me Satan.
_ Because they all would talk about, you'd talk to people and go well I want to
put out a record but it's like you re-record this song and this song and this song.
And
I would say no that song sounds like it sounds on the record.
That's what it's supposed to
sound like.
For a lot of people who are into that idea when we went into a studio that
was represented a kind of betrayal for them.
But once you're trying to put a bass on a
record you can't do that in the Boombox.
Because we did that in our practice sessions
and it just sounds like garbage.
Whereas All Hail West Texas it doesn't sound clean but
it sounds good.
Once you put the bass on it it does not sound good anymore.
It just sounds
bad.
Multi-track recording is always an attempt to create an illusion.
Whereas single track
recording you can actually accurately document something that happened.
Well I think All Hail West Texas is a great documentation of what happened in 2000.
So
I think we're done. _ _ _ _