[7] There, he developed a passion for the sport and local wrestlers like Chavo Guerrero Sr. His childhood love of wrestling would go on to inspire The Mountain Goats' album Beat the Champ.

For a short time after high school, he lived in Portland, Oregon, where he developed an addiction to intravenous methamphetamine and other hard drugs (as referenced in We Shall All Be Healed).

Around that time, the Mountain Goats were born and began touring with just Darnielle on guitar and a bassist, first Rachel Ware and then Peter Hughes.

There is no reoccurring main character or strong thematic subject linking these similarly titled tracks, and in a 1997 interview with KJHK-Lawrence, Darnielle has described the series as "real loose, though.

"Their broader story", Darnielle writes, "involved an alcohol-soaked trek from California through Nevada and then bottom-crawling across the country until they wound up in northern Florida".

[20] There are a number of songs, not all containing the word 'alpha', that are generally considered to be part of the series, and are explored in more detail on Kyle Barbour's site 'The Annotated Mountain Goats.

[21] Darnielle has stated that all songs written up to and including those on Tallahassee are fictional, but that We Shall All Be Healed, The Sunset Tree, and other more recent works are partially autobiographical.

Darnielle is featured on Aesop Rock's song "Coffee" (from the hip-hop artist's 2007 album None Shall Pass) and appears in the corresponding music video.

[30] On September 20, 2010, Darnielle appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon as a guest vocalist in a performance of the song "Digging for Something" with the band Superchunk (whose drummer, Jon Wurster, is also in The Mountain Goats).

[35] Darnielle's first novel, titled Wolf in White Van, was published on September 16, 2014,[36] and was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction two days later.

[45] Darnielle wrote the introduction to the June 2016 book The Empty Bottle Chicago: 21+ Years of Music / Friendly / Dancing, about the eponymous nightclub.

[53] In January 2023, Darnielle made his acting debut in "Rest in Metal", the fourth episode of Rian Johnson's television series Poker Face.

[citation needed] He currently resides in Durham, North Carolina with his wife Lalitree Darnielle, a botanist and photographer (who was featured playing the banjo in the band's 1998 EP New Asian Cinema[55]), and sons Roman and Moses.

[60] In an interview with BuzzFeed, Darnielle identified himself as a feminist, and was described as a "frequent Twitter commentator on women's issues, social justice, and heavy metal.