Featured Essay: I Had That on Vinyl: Black Pear Tree by the Mountain Goats and Kaki King

by Everett Hall

My first attempt at college did not go well. My mental health cratered and I started skipping classes and just walking around the campus. This was 2006-2007, peak iPod era and mine was surgically attached. My dorm had an intranet file-sharing service where people would make their entire music collections available to copy. My roommate and I stole everything we could. I was already into some indie music, Apologies to the Queen Mary was in constant rotation my senior year of high school, but this increased my access to that type of music by orders of magnitude and led me to the favorite band of mentally ill youth the world over: the Mountain Goats.

A few years later, my mental health is still not great but getting better, and I’m writing songs when I’m not making gas station hot dogs. Like most musicians, my first songs are just ripping off the stuff I like - Bob Dylan, Jeff Mangum, Joanna Newsom, but mostly John Darnielle. Eventually I learn that the Mountain Goats are going on tour and me and my best friend at the time buy tickets immediately. When we arrive we get treated to Darnielle solo (with a couple songs performed with opener John Vanderslice) playing lots of deep cuts I didn’t know but would come to be protective over (Any Available Surface belongs to me alone). I am thrilled to find at the merch table they have an EP of new material that hadn’t made it to the internet yet and immediately snatch a copy of Black Pear Tree.

Those six tracks click immediately. The opening song spoke to my condition at the time:

I dug a hole and filled it up with compost

Rested on the cool grass for a minute

I saw the future in a dream last night

There’s nothing in it

…

And when its time came I could see it happen

Blossoms black and sweet as Texas crude

I saw the future flowering like a ruptured vessel

Somebody’s gonna get screwed

It won’t be me

Someday I am going to walk out of here free

I knew already that the Mountain Goats got it, this was confirmation the Mountain Goats got me, too. And the final song, sung from the perspective of Toad at the end of Super Mario Bros, “Thank You Mario, But Our Princess is in Another Castle”, described the feeling I was looking for, and would find time and again with different people in hard times:

I wondered if I’d wake to find myself in flames

As I waited here for you

Yeah when you came in

I could breathe again

That piece of vinyl, mottled black and yellow, was on my turntable a lot, in good times and especially in hard. The anger of “Mosquito Repellent” felt real and earned when I too hoped that the bad guys would win, that the good guys would get their heads bashed in.

Eventually, I get my shit together, go back to college, actually attend classes and occasionally do my homework. I do that enough to get a degree, and then a job, and a way out of my small town in South Carolina to a small city in Virginia. When I got there I learned that while I like my alone time, living alone where you know no one has its hardships And when I got truly lonely I turned to good habits (listening to music) and bad (binge drinking). I had (have!) friends but coming home to an empty place started taking its toll on me. I needed a pet.

In 2016 I was bored at my silly little job and scrolling Craigslist and I saw an adoption listing for a dog. She’s being fostered but her time at her foster home is almost up and due to the abuse she suffered she doesn’t do well in the shelter. She needed a home, fast, and it needed to be somewhere with no other animals and no kids. I do some quick math, realize I meet those needs and arrange a meeting with the fosterer. She warned me that this dog, Josie, will growl at me for a while, but we’re just going to ignore her and talk and she’ll calm down. That’s what happens, and after five minutes of growling I pass Josie’s vibe check, she jumps up on the couch and starts licking my face. That’s when I knew this was my dog.

For the next few years, she was my constant companion, my closest friend, who helped me through heartbreak, loss, and general hard times. David Berman wrote “I’ve been told you can live a long time off the love of a dog,” and Josie proved it. I saw changes in Josie, too. In short order, she realized not only was I friendly, I was her person and she was safe with me. We gave each other the feelings Mario gave Toad: safe, able to breathe.

But dogs don’t live forever, and she was already an adult when I adopted her and our time together was nowhere long enough. I started watching her health decline in 2023 and in early 2024 it started to accelerate. Additionally in 2024 the building my apartment was in got sold and the new owners decided to not renew any leases so they could slap a new coat of paint on the building and jack up the rents. My neighbors and I are sent to scramble to find new homes. My downstairs neighbor and I are lucky and found places, my upstairs neighbor not so much. Last I heard he’s still on a cousin’s couch.

This unexpected move hits me hard in the wallet, and Josie’s continued decline hastens further. It becomes clear that it’s time to say goodbye, give her a good last day and let her rest. Euthanasia is expensive, it turns out. For a dog her size, euthanasia and cremation cost about $300. I talk to some friends from the Mountain Goats Shitposting community and learn $300 is also a fair price for Black Pear Tree.

Selling this record that I once described to a friend as a “grab in case of an apartment fire” artifact was an easy choice if it meant that I could make sure my friend could have a good ending. So I put it for sale and pretty quickly got a bite. Someone is looking for a gift for their partner who loves that EP. I ask what kind of turntable they use, I wanted to know it wasn’t going to be played on a poorly weighted table that would destroy the grooves. Their setup is suitable, but they explain that they have a plain black copy, so they plan to frame this one, and it may never see a needle again. Hearing that, I give it one last spin and then mail it away.

Josie had a good last day. She had a steak and imitation crab the night before and a Wendy’s Biggie Bag before her appointment. She had her standard vet nervousness at first, but then the vet laid out a soft blanket for her to rest on and she got cozy and drifted off with me cradling her head. Her good last day was because I hit the merch table 15 years before.

I left the OR without my dog, broken and shellshocked. Paying the bill I see an electronic candle lit with a sign “If this candle is on, please speak quietly and respectfully as someone is going through the difficult process of losing a pet.” And I think “Oh gosh, someone is losing a pet today? That’s so hard, I hope they’re ok.” It takes me getting to the car to realize it was lit for Josie. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

*Everett Hall (he/him) is the songwriter for Virginia band Felt Lips. Their album “Boris Sent Me” features 11 songs about love, local weather patterns, novelty records, and grief. You’re gonna dig it. *Available here.

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