Black Pear Tree ¹

Black Pear Tree was written and recorded with Kaki King, a remarkably talented guitarist who toured with John in 2008, the tour in which this EP was released. ↩

This line, as well as the last line, are directly from the lyrics to Black Pear Tree. ↩

"Stockholm emergency room" refers directly to the story behind Black Pear Tree, see this footnote for more information. ↩

John has said that this song was written in an ER in Stockholm that he visited thinking he was going to die from a heart attack. For example, listen to the banter at Somerville Theater, Somerville, March 25, 2009.

"We were in Sweden in the back of a very small tour car... and then I start wondering why my chest hurts... I went to the ER and I'm sitting there waiting to talk to the doctor, well, waiting for the doctor to tell me that I needed to get right with God and my friends and family because I only have seven days or something like that, and I wrote down some lyrics. And then I put them away, you know, because when I got finished he told me I had Lutheran syndrome, as he said... 'You think you have to pay for the things you did before.' And I would take issue, not that I'm a doctor, but it's 'I know I have to pay.' Anyway, the better part of a year passed, and I had forgotten about most of it, I'm flipping through a notebook looking for something to do, and I ran across the lyrics I had written when in my gut I was pretty certain that I was going to have to go home and tell my wife that I was sorry I smoked for so long, better go find somebody cute 'cause I'm going to rot in the grave."

See also this banter: "I wrote this lyric in an Emergency Room in Sweden when I was having chest pains... I went through a period of a couple of years there where I would say that I don't know what was wrong with me, but I do... at the time I was in a pretty hard place, and I was landing in the hospital pretty regularly, and this is called Black Pear Tree." — Swedish-American Hall, San Francisco, June 27, 2012 ↩

"When a young man begins to write indie rock songs, he often thinks there are few figures more romantic that he could cut than that of a lover who has been wronged and who is wearing his pain like a great mask with which to torment the woman who he once loved... One generally, with noteworthy exceptions, outgrows this writing tendency on account of it's juvenile. But every once in a while you want to go revisit that tortured lover whose torturedness is so massively tortured that no one could really comprehend the extent of the torture... This is the first song I've written in that voice in a long time." — Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, November 8, 2008 ↩

John states on a number of occasions that this song was written unusually in that Kaki King wrote the music and then John wrote the lyrics to the music, as opposed to him writing a rough idea of the music along with lyrics and sending it to someone to arrange it. See for example the banter at Republic, New Orleans, November 3, 2008, and Theatre of the Living Arts, Philadelphia, November 11, 2008. ↩

"This takes place a little further west than that [referring to Atlanta], and it's called Bring Our Curses Home." — Bluebird Theater, Denver, October 17, 2008 ↩

I can think of two potential origins of this name (which are probably just as likely as John making it up without knowing of either of these connections — I have no evidence that these inspired the song title):

1. In J. R. R. Tolkien's superb novel The Hobbit, the story opens with Bilbo Baggins involuntarily entertaining the wizard Gandalf and a company of thirteen dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield, who are attempting to convince the reluctant hobbit to join them on their quest to recover their kingdom and riches from the dragon Smaug. In explaining this to Bilbo, Thorin tells him:

   "But we have never forgotten our stolen treasure. And even now, when I will allow we have a good bit laid by and are not so badly off" — here Thorin stroked the gold chain round his neck — "we still mean to get it back, and to bring our curses home to Smaug — if we can."

   Tolkien, J. R. R. (1937). The Hobbit. Reprinted 2007. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0618968636

2. As John is an avid metal fan, it may relate to the 1998 album Bring Our Curses Home, released on Sound Pollution Records by Ann Arbor metal band .Nema. Although this feels to me like something of a stretch, even given John's love of death metal, stranger references have happened in the Mountain Goats canon.

However, as neither of these clearly connect to this particular song, the title is perhaps most likely unrelated. ↩

I have been unable to find any more descriptive banter or interviews than the above regarding this song. However, given his description of where this takes place and the content of the song (including the Jumbotron, Superdome, flooding, evacuation to Houston, and so on), I can't help but assume that this song describes the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. ↩

Assuming my interpretation of this as a song about Hurricane Katrina is correct, this could easily refer to the evacuation of the New Orleans Superdome to the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. ↩

A genericized trademark referring to a large television, usually in a sports arena. ↩

The Superdome is an extremely large sports arena in New Orleans. During Hurricane Katrina, it was used to shelter New Orleans citizens that were unable to evacuate the city. Disastrous conditions, violence, lack of clean water, sanitation, supplies, medical staff, or other essentials contributed to the catastrophe. The Superdome was eventually evacuated when it flooded and those sheltered by it were moved to the Astrodome in Houston. ↩

"This song is a song sung from the point of view of the serpent [in the Garden of Eden] shortly after he gets his walking papers." — Republic, New Orleans, November 3, 2008. See also the banter at Park West, Chicago, October 13, 2008, and Theatre of the Living Arts, Philadelphia, November 7, 2008. ↩

Supergenesis is part of the informal series of Biblical references. ↩

A.K.M. Adam links this song together with other songs describing serpents and in one occasion alludes to it being religious in nature. This latter description happens to be correct (see the above banter), but I don't agree that the song necessarily refers to the same thing as snakes in other Mountain Goats songs. Adam, A.K.M. (2011). 'What these cryptic symbols mean': quotation, allusion, and John Darnielle's biblical interpretation. Biblical Interpretation 19: 109 – 128. ↩

Roger Patterson was an influential bass player for the death metal band Atheist. He was killed in a tour bus crash in Louisiana on February 12, 1991. ↩ ↩² ↩³

Kelly Shaefer is the vocalist and frontman of Atheist. ↩

John's relationship to this song has been told many times. For example, see the banter at the Swedish-American Hall, San Francisco, June 27, 2012, which has a particularly brilliant version of this story.

This song in some ways is related to Enoch 18:14, being the other Mountain Goats song known to be written from a video game line, and which also is told with great emotion despite its source. ↩

This title is a direct quote from Super Mario Bros. When Mario, the protagonist, defeats a decoy of Bowser, the antagonist, at the end of World 1–4, he believes that he has completed his mission of finding Princess Peach but instead discovers Toad, who tells him, "Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!" This occurs at the end of every castle in the game until Mario finally defeats the real Bowser at the end of World 8–4. ↩

This seems to best describe Magikoopas, a magic-wielding version of the turtle-like Koopas who are a major enemy in Super Mario Bros. However, these do not appear in a Super Mario game until Super Mario World, which was released in 1990. ↩