Mountain Goats leader John Darnielle says he may not be the best person to ask for songwriting advice, or any advice for that matter:

“I don’t mean to be so contrary, but when people ask me for advice I say, ‘Well, consider that you’re asking a guy for advice who for years of his life thought it was really a cool idea to take a quarter gram of meth, split it in half and put half of that into a spoon, put water into it and jab it into his arm. For years, that was a fantastic way to spend my time. So if you’re asking me for advice on anything at all, always remember that’s who I am in many ways. I don’t trust me for advice.”

That’s certainly part of who Darnielle is, but the other part is one of the sharpest and most acerbic songwriters in modern pop music. He’s also become an acclaimed novelist (“Universal Harvester,” “Wolf In White Van”) and a family man. His songs, which have been released under the band name The Mountain Goats since 1994. Some of the albums have had an actual band and some have not. The current line-up is made up of Peter Hughes, Jon Wurster and Matt Douglas. The group's latest album is “Goths,” which is filled with songs inspired by the era when Darnielle was a meth addict living in Portland, Ore.

To go a little further back, though, Darnielle’s first musical inspirations came when he was less than five years old. When asked what the first piece of music that had a deep effect on him, Darnielle doesn’t hesitate.

“You’re about to find out how 15-minute interviews with me can be one question,” says Darnielle in a call from his home in Durham, N.C. “When people say ‘something that affected you deeply,’ it’s specifically emotions that reach a sadness center or something. But there are so many more ways that music touches you than that. I had a 78 (78-rpm record) of ‘The Muffin Man.’ It didn’t make me cry and it didn’t connect me to my pain or anything, but it had a really amazing little woodwind intro.”

Darnielle sings the introduction.

“I don’t have a memory of what the very first record was that I started playing, but it would be something like that. Another one was the soundtrack to ‘The Music Man.’ …’76 Trombones’ was a huge song for me.

He says there was a sense of fun in the song that really stuck with him.

“I actually just played ’76 Trombones’ for my two-year-old last weekend and it was amazing. Kids love show tunes. They’re some of the best of American music. Not only are the melodies easily accessible, but they also pack a lot of story in every song. You don’t have to have seen the musical to get some of the story that’s going on.”

While hardly any of his listeners would probably recognize it as such, those lessons learned from show tunes have shown up in Mountain Goats songs in how Darnielle creates stories and characters. A song on the album “All Eternals Deck,” “Outer Scorpion Squadron,” found Darnielle going to show tunes for inspiration in another way.

“There was a big moment where I started trying to write more complex stuff on piano,” he said. “If you want to learn how to do a good bridge, or if you want to learn how to go from a 7th chord to a diminished 7th, because it gives you a lot of emotional payoff, Lerner and Lowe, Rodgers and Hart, are good to listen to try to and figure out how they did that. Think about Rodgers and Hammerstein, ‘All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air, with one enormous chair …’ That ‘one enormous chair’ moment makes you want to cry.”

He says the reason has to do with the juxtaposition of certain chords that put the listener a little off balance.

That’s actually what most of Darnielle’s songs do lyrically. Darnielle can combine humor with bitterness and vulnerability, such as on one of his best-known songs, “No Children,” about a divorce.

Darnielle actually does give advice about writing. He says it’s good for everyone to find a balance between being too critical of your own work and valuing spontaneity too much.

And there’s a little more:

“Try not to think about yourself so much when you’re writing. Think about the work. That’s what you’re there to do, not explore yourself. When you find out what you mean by what you say, that’ll be when you’re reading it, not when you’re writing it. You’re building a house. You’re not showing people that you’re cool or flagellating yourself to show all your bad parts. You’re making a thing. Make the thing good and then you can look at it and see what it told you about yourself. That’s the way I do things. There’s the Robert Frost line, ‘What worked for them might work for you.’ … But that’s one reason I’m reluctant to give advice. This is how I do it, but that’s just me, and I’m kind of a moron in a lot of ways, and it may have only worked for me by accident. I’m a guy who has been known to literally bang his head against walls, just to see what it feels like!”

The Mountain Goats



WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 8

WHERE: Bijou Theatre

TICKETS: $26, www.knoxbijou.com