They Might Be Giants’ John Linnell deep dives their catalog ahead of their Truman show
They Might Be Giants (l-r: John Linnell and John Flansburgh). // photo credit: Miranda Penn Turin
They Might Be Giants play the Truman on Tuesday, September 29. That show is sold out, but you can find details here.
What do you call a band like They Might Be Giants? Alternative rock is too vague, indie pop is off the mark, and “popular oddballs who have been making music to delight multiple generations” is a bit wordy. Suffice it to say, all of those descriptors only hint at what They Might Be Giants frontmen John Flansburgh and John Linnell have accomplished over the course of their four-plus decades as a band. They’ve made brilliantly weird pop records like their seminal 1992 album, Flood, written the theme song to the equally unique sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, and turned a 1959 children’s song entitled “Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)” into an unlikely hit for all ages.
All of this and so much more made us absolutely delighted to hop on Zoom with They Might Be Giants’ John Linnell, who spoke to us from Scotland about the band’s current tour of multi-night stands in certain cities, as well as They Might Be Giants’ lengthy history.
The Pitch: What do these multi-night stands offer you as a band as opposed to what it offers the audience?
John Linnell: I think maybe it’s more to our advantage in a way in that we obviously do less traveling. We’re probably a lot more refreshed. Being a bunch of old guys as we are, at this point it feels necessary to make the touring easier. We spent about 40 years touring on buses and playing very often six nights a week, different city every night.
We slept while the bus was moving so that the crew would arrive at the next place in time to get started getting ready. We did it. It was a lot, but we managed to do that for many decades, so now I think it’s incumbent on us as senior rockers to make the pace easier for ourselves, and I think we can put on a better show.
If there’s an advantage to the audience, it’s that, plus, I think playing three nights in a city in a particular size venue as opposed to playing one night in a larger venue is a more intimate experience, right? It’s one I would prefer if I were an audience member. I like being closer to the band. I like the band feeling more connected to the audience that way.
You did a tour several years ago where you played Flood in its entirety, and on this tour, on various nights, you’re showcasing albums. How is it for you all to revisit these past albums in focus? Is it nostalgic, or is it more a case of wanting to explore things that you haven’t in a while?
Oh, I think it’s both. It is really funny to come back and play a song that we haven’t considered or looked at in 20 years. It’s fun. I think for the guys in the band, it makes it way more interesting and fun. And yeah, there’s an element of John [Flansburgh] and I are going, “Oh yeah, this was the one that we did, under these circumstances.” And obviously, like a younger version of us. We’ve changed in ways I would probably find hard to articulate. We’ve grown up a bunch.
So yeah, it’s cool. I like doing it. And of course we’re doing different albums on each night. The other thing is that we’re mixing it up for the completely crazy fans who wanna come to all three shows, or both shows, as the case may be, depending on where we’re playing.
Additionally, you have a new record that came out in April. How do you find yourselves working the new tracks in alongside some of these more, more vintage ones?
Yeah, it’s what we’ve been doing all along, which is we don’t hit people over the head with the new material. We do understand that there are a lot of people–a lot of older fans–who really are there to hear the stuff that we recorded in the ’80s and ’90s, inevitably. But we’re also promoting the new album, so we do some songs from the new album, and we do a lot of songs that were the hits, and then we do a healthy amount of completely obscure material for the weirdos in the very front row.
What’s your favorite song off the new album to perform live?
Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have a favorite. It’s really like a collection of songs that complement one another. I think that’s the strength of them: they’re greater than the sum of their parts. There are all kinds of different music. We try not to repeat ourselves; I think that’s a nice thing about this album. But there’s some things that are probably sound different from anything we’ve done in the past, so that’s fun. I have to look at a track list to refresh my memory, ’cause we’re not playing all the songs off the new album, but we’re playing some of the sort of marquee ones.
Let’s see. Okay. The World Is To Dig. What do we have here? Yeah. Okay, “Back in Los Angeles” is an unusual track, and it was an unusual choice to start the album with, ’cause it’s not like a big hit single. It’s more vibey and moody. So that was cool. I’m happy that we put that one on top ’cause it’s just got a very interesting, different vibe to it. In particular, the drumming on it, I think, we haven’t really done a song like that in the past.
There’s a song in French.
Yeah, “Je Ne Pas.” I really enjoyed that one.
Oh, thank you. Are you a French speaker?
I am not, but based on the few phrases I know, I can fake it really well.
Yeah. Me too. I’m a faker. But that’s kind of my approach to language in general is. I love reading the first page of any phrasebook and trying to get the feel of it from just the very beginning part.
Didn’t you translate The Ramones into Latin?
Yes. It actually was “I Don’t Want to Walk Around With You,” but yeah, actually I didn’t do the translation. That was my colleague who’s a Latin teacher. But he held my hand for the whole thing and helped me with pronunciation and everything. I did a little EP of songs that were in Latin, just purely for the fun, just as a goof.
I have to ask about “Overnight Sensation” on this album because you all have covered dozens of songs over the course of your career, and even “Istanbul,” one of your biggest hits and best well-known songs is a cover. Why revisit The Raspberries, 40-plus years in?
I don’t know that there’s always a rationale for everything, and I think that one of the things John and I always enjoy is coming up with some project that’s indefensible. We don’t have a way of saying, “Oh, this is the obvious thing that we should be doing,” and maybe the more indefensible, the better.
“Overnight Sensation” is not radically indefensible. It’s a great song, and it’s a song that John and I loved when we were in high school. Nothing wrong with that, and we came up, obviously, with a different approach from The Raspberries, although we copped some of the good parts of their arrangement as well.
Your songs have been featured in a lot of things and I feel like a lot of folks such as myself were nerded out when “Istanbul” and “Particle Man” got used in Tiny Toon Adventures. When somebody wants to use your songs, what makes you say yes?
You’re probably intuiting correctly that we’re a little bit picky and nervous about stuff getting used and things that will reflect badly in some way, and maybe we’re a little nit too cautious about that kind of thing. But we were also lucky in a way to get mixed up in certain projects. For example, with Malcolm in the Middle, that show was not destined to be a, a, a big hit. It was an unknown cast and an unknown showrunner who just contacted us, and we got pretty deeply into it, considering it wasn’t obviously gonna be successful. So that was lucky. Nowadays, we often get requests to put our music in things that are ongoing projects that are like the things that we might feel friendly about, like Poker Face–that TV show–and things like that where they thought it was appropriate and we liked the show, and we didn’t have any particular work to do on our part. They were just using the song and paying us. Those are easy, I think, that kind of thing.
I’m hoping that Pluribus realizes that we’ve written a song that is pretty much tailor-made for their show. They haven’t contacted us yet, but the song “The Bells Are Ringing” is basically the entire plot of that show. Maybe somebody will notice and use our song.
The last time you came through Kansas City, one of your horn players was from here, if I remember correctly.
Oh, yeah. Actually, weirdly and coincidentally, two of our longtime trumpet players are both from Kansas City. It must be something in the water that produces They Might Be Giants trumpet players. I don’t have any other explanation. But yeah, both Mark Pender and Curt Ramm, both of whom have also played with Bruce Springsteen, are also the guys that we’ve played with over the years.
Given the width and breadth of the material, both new and old, what are the challenges in getting the band up to snuff? What do the rehearsals look like for this tour when you’re covering his many songs?
It’s mostly material that we know. We pretty much do full production rehearsals for each run. So there might be three or four songs that we’re doing in the fall that we didn’t do in the spring, but they’re songs that we may have already played. I think they are all songs we’ve played in the past. We do band rehearsals usually, a couple of band rehearsals in a small room, and then we do at least one full-on production rehearsal with the crew and all the gear that we’re gonna use on stage.
We’re pretty uptight about getting ready given that–I’ve complained about this in the past my memory is not what it used to be, and there’s nothing that bugs me more than forgetting the lyrics to a They Might Be Giants song that I wrote while on stage, ’cause inevitably I’m stumbling over the words, and I can see people in the audience who very much know the words to the song, so I’m having to try and read their lips to follow along, which is embarrassing. I’m trying to make sure I nail everything down before I presume to get on stage.
They Might Be Giants play the Truman on Tuesday, September 29. That show is sold out, but you can find details here.
