The Might Be Giants: Darlings of Peel-Land

(NOTE: This feature refers to a pair of shows that were scheduled for last month but have since been postponed until November 2025 — bk)

They Might Be Giants have a long and fond relationship with Asheville. As documented on the fan-run “this might be a wiki” knowledgebase tmbw.net, the clever and musically adventurous group has played at least nine shows in Asheville; all of those have been at The Orange Peel. TMBG returns to town for a two-night engagement on March 25 and 26.

The group – led by the “two Johns” Flansburgh and Linnell – formed in Brooklyn in 1982 and became a high-profile touring act after signing with Elektra Records. They scored a major hit with a third studio album, 1989’s Flood. A single from the album, “Birdhouse in Your Soul” reached the #3 spot on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart. Another Flood track, a cover of the 1953 novelty tune “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” became popular on MTV. And while their major-label era ended in the late ‘90s, TMBG has continued with a creatively fertile and critically-acclaimed body of work as independent artists.

TMBG has always been a difficult act to pigeonhole. The droll subject matter and witty wordplay in some of their better-known songs suggests they’re a comedy act. Their musical inventiveness puts them in the progressive rock category. Critics often consider them alt-rock. And they’ve released at least five albums aimed at children listeners. For their efforts, They Might Be Giants have won two Grammy Awards, and received nominations for two more. They also earned a Tony Award nomination for their score for the Broadway musical SpongeBob SquarePants.

Always full of new and unusual ideas, TMBG launched Dial-A-Song in 1985; callers were treated to unreleased demos, mock commercials and other ephemera. They Might Be Giants took control of their careers with the successful launch of their own label, Idlewild Recordings in 2002. The group was again ahead of trends when they began their own podcast in 2006. Over the years, and beyond their own prodigious output, John and/or John has appeared on albums by Suzanne Vega, Frank Black, Meat Puppets, David Byrne and many others.

The band’s latest release – the pointedly-named Beast of Horns – is available as a digital download, on CD and on vinyl. Filled with quirky classics like “The Darlings of Lumberland,” one way it is not available is via streaming services. Flansburgh explains that TMBG isn’t fond of music “being owned by the delivery guy.” Characterizing services like Daniel Ek’s Spotify as “middlemen,” he says that his group “puts out enough music that we can hive off a little bit of it to these exclusive things.” Conceding that such a move eliminates a potential income stream, Flansburgh wryly notes that “it’s very easy to ignore the awesome lack of income from Spotify and beyond.”

TMBG’s inventiveness has continued apace; Flansburgh hints at an upcoming studio release. He says that the group’s 24^th studio album – their first since 2021’s BOOK – “may be a game-changer… or maybe it won’t.” Scheduled for release sometime this year, that album will feature a string section on some tracks. But for now, the group is focused on its tour in support of Beast of Horns.

While in the earliest days a TMBG show featured only the two Johns and a drum machine, these days They Might Be Giants is a proper group. A big one, in fact: joining Linnell (keyboards) and Flansburgh (guitar) are a bassist, drummer and second guitarist plus the three-piece Tricerachops horn section. That lineup is showcased on Beast of Horns.

Some touring groups – most, in fact – come up with a set list and then play the same songs night after night on tour, with only occasional and minor changes. That’s not the way TMBG operates; on the band’s current tour, they promise to serve up a radically different set each night, spotlighting a different album and drawing from their current repertoire of nearly 90 songs. More than a month in advance of the Asheville shows, nearly every scheduled performance on the 14-city tour had sold out; in response, TMBG added additional dates in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.

Flansburgh and his band mates place a high value on engaging with the audience. He says that’s been true since TMBG began. And long ago he established one metric for measuring success: “If you could get that guy in the back of the room – the one with his arms folded – to unfold his arms, that was a very organic improvement.”

At TMBG’s first-ever Orange Peel date in September 2004, the band introduced a new song, “Asheville,” with lyrics that named-checked the concert venue and mentioned the recent French Broad River flood that wrought serious damage on the Biltmore Village district. (The tune was re-titled “The Orange Peel” for inclusion on TMBG’s 2004 Venue Songs album.)

Last fall, They Might Be Giants were putting together the current 2025 tour, one that includes two consecutive nights at the Peel. Right around the same time, almost exactly two decades after the ‘04 flood, history repeated itself in more devastating fashion. In a conversation a few weeks after tropical storm Helene ravaged Asheville, Flansburgh expressed his desire to make a donation to local relief efforts. “We’re trying to figure out a good charity,” he said at the time. TMBG is donating a dollar from the sale of every ticket to the March Orange Peel dates; proceeds benefit Manna Food Bank.

“These things remind you how barely tethered to security we are,” Flansburgh says. “We’ll be there to cheer you up.”