Editor’s note: Due to health issues, They Might Be Giants rescheduled its two Asheville shows to Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 18 and 19, 2025. This article was reported on prior to the announcement. Learn more here.
They Might Be Giants has a long and fond relationship with Asheville. As documented on the fan-run This Might Be a Wiki website (tmbw.net), the clever and musically adventurous group has played at least nine shows in Asheville, all of which have been at The Orange Peel. TMBG returns to town for two sold-out shows on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 25 and 26.
The group — led by the “two Johns,” founders John Flansburgh and John Linnell — formed in Brooklyn in 1982 and became a high-profile touring act after signing with Elektra Records. It scored a major hit with its third studio album, 1989’s Flood.
A single from that album, “Birdhouse in Your Soul” reached the No. 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 the band’s major-label era ended in the late ’90s, TMBG has continued with a creatively fertile and critically acclaimed body of work as independent artists.
Defying description
TMBG has always been a difficult act to pigeonhole. The droll subject matter and witty wordplay in some of its better-known songs suggests it’s a comedy act. Its musical inventiveness puts it in the progressive rock category. Critics often consider it an alt-rock band. And it’s released at least five albums aimed at children. For its efforts, They Might Be Giants has won two Grammy Awards and received nominations for two more. It also earned a Tony Award nomination for its score for the Broadway musical SpongeBob SquarePants.
Always full of new and unusual ideas, TMBG launched Dial-A-Song in 1983, treating callers to unreleased demos, mock commercials and other ephemera. (Today there’s an app, bringing the revolutionary idea into the modern milieu.) In 2002, They Might Be Giants members took control of their careers with the successful launch of their own label, Idlewild Recordings.
The group was again ahead of trends when it began its own podcast in 2006. Over the years, and beyond their own prodigious output, John and/or John have 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 Spotify as “middlemen,” he says that his group decided to release some of its music without a streaming option. Conceding that such a move eliminates a potential income stream, Flansburgh wryly notes, “It’s very easy to ignore the awesome lack of income from Spotify and beyond.”
TMBG’s inventiveness has continued apace. Flansburgh drops hints about the group’s upcoming 24th studio album — the first since 2021’s BOOK. “[It] may be a game-changer,” he predicts with a sly grin. “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.
Bigger than ever
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 on keyboards and Flansburgh on 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, 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, it’s serving up a radically different set each night, spotlighting different albums and drawing from its 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 — including the March 25 and 26 shows in Asheville — had sold out; in response, TMBG added dates in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.
Flansburgh and his bandmates 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 Orange Peel date in September 2004, the band introduced a new song, “Asheville,” with lyrics that named-checked the concert venue and mentioned that year’s French Broad River flood that wrought serious damage on the Biltmore Village district. (The tune was retitled “The Orange Peel” for inclusion on TMBG’s 2004 Venue Songs album.)
Last fall, They Might Be Giants was putting together the current 2025 tour right around the same time — almost exactly two decades after the ’04 flood — that history repeated itself in Western North Carolina in more devastating fashion with Tropical Storm Helene. In a conversation a few weeks after tropical the storm 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 landed on donating a dollar from the sale of every ticket for The Orange Peel dates to MANNA FoodBank. “These things remind you how barely tethered to security we are,” Flansburgh says. “We’ll be there to cheer you up.”
They have to postpone these shows due to illness.