{"id":29114,"date":"2025-04-03T05:30:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T09:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=29114"},"modified":"2025-04-01T09:32:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T13:32:52","slug":"the-might-be-giants-darlings-of-peel-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/03\/the-might-be-giants-darlings-of-peel-land\/","title":{"rendered":"The Might Be Giants: Darlings of Peel-Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

They Might Be Giants have a long and fond relationship with Asheville. As documented on the fan-run \u201cthis might be a wiki\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The group \u2013 led by the \u201ctwo Johns\u201d Flansburgh and Linnell \u2013 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\u2019s Flood<\/i>. A single from the album, \u201cBirdhouse in Your Soul\u201d reached the #3 spot on Billboard\u2019<\/i>s Alternative Airplay chart. Another Flood<\/i> track, a cover of the 1953 novelty tune \u201cIstanbul (Not Constantinople)\u201d became popular on MTV. And while their major-label era ended in the late \u201890s, TMBG has continued with a creatively fertile and critically-acclaimed body of work as independent artists.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019re a comedy act. Their musical inventiveness puts them in the progressive rock category. Critics often consider them alt-rock. And they\u2019ve 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<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s latest release \u2013 the pointedly-named Beast of Horns<\/i> \u2013 is available as a digital download, on CD and on vinyl. Filled with quirky classics like \u201cThe Darlings of Lumberland,\u201d one way it is not<\/i> available is via streaming services. Flansburgh explains that TMBG isn\u2019t fond of music \u201cbeing owned by the delivery guy.\u201d Characterizing services like Daniel Ek\u2019s Spotify as \u201cmiddlemen,\u201d he says that his group \u201cputs out enough music that we can hive off a little bit of it to these exclusive things.\u201d Conceding that such a move eliminates a potential income stream, Flansburgh wryly notes that \u201cit\u2019s very easy to ignore the awesome lack of income from Spotify and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

TMBG\u2019s inventiveness has continued apace; Flansburgh hints at an upcoming studio release. He says that the group\u2019s 24th<\/sup> studio album \u2013 their first since 2021\u2019s BOOK<\/i> \u2013 \u201cmay be a game-changer\u2026 or maybe it won\u2019t.\u201d 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<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Some touring groups \u2013 most, in fact \u2013 come up with a set list and then play the same songs night after night on tour, with only occasional and minor changes. That\u2019s not the way TMBG operates; on the band\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Flansburgh and his band mates place a high value on engaging with the audience. He says that\u2019s been true since TMBG began. And long ago he established one metric for measuring success: \u201cIf you could get that guy in the back of the room \u2013 the one with his arms folded \u2013 to unfold his arms, that was a very organic improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n

At TMBG\u2019s first-ever Orange Peel date in September 2004, the band introduced a new song, \u201cAsheville,\u201d 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 \u201cThe Orange Peel\u201d for inclusion on TMBG\u2019s 2004 Venue Songs<\/i> album.)<\/p>\n

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 \u201804 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. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to figure out a good charity,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese things remind you how barely tethered to security we are,\u201d Flansburgh says. \u201cWe\u2019ll be there to cheer you up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,49,62],"tags":[2197],"class_list":["post-29114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-they-might-be-giants","cat-39-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29163,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29114\/revisions\/29163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}