The Annotated Mountain Goats http://annotatedtmg.org/index.html A comprehensive, referenced source for information about the lyrics of the Mountain Goats, alongside a complete directory of available live shows. Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:35:40 -0500 Jekyll 3.4.1 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://annotatedtmg.org/media/tmg.jpg The Annotated Mountain Goats http://annotatedtmg.org/index.html The end of the Annotated Mountain Goats http://annotatedtmg.org/changelog.html#the-end With an open and loving heart, it is time to say goodbye.

I once upon a time wrote and edited this site obsessively. I have been surprised and very touched by the ongoing interest and love for this project and so recently shared: the web hosting for tAMG is going away in the near future. The project will therefore end sometime in the coming months. Riley Routh, a contributor, has kindly offered to take them over and continue hosting the site in the immediate future. That said, if someone would like to host a mirror themselves, they are welcome to do so. The URLs (annotatedtmg.org and annotatedtmg.com) may eventually lapse.

The source code of tAMG is hosted on GitHub. I have no plans to remove it. You can download and build the website on your computer using the instructions there. There are also instructions on how to download a local copy of the website here. If the website has some importance to you I recommend doing both of these in case GitHub chooses to stop hosting the source data.

Thank you for all the love, music, and good times. I truly enjoyed it. This project meant a great deal to me and I put a lot of my heart into it. It is strange, silly, overly intense, overly literal, and very me — at least a very young me. I feel very grateful for all the kindness and connection I experienced with many of you because of this obsession and our shared love of this music. I am honored to now become ephemera, like much of John's beautiful creations themselves.

]]> Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0500 the-end Live shows return! https://annotatedtmg.org/live.html I am absolutely delighted to have reuploaded all my old live tapes. Some of these are just absolutely precious to me, and include my favorite recordings of all time. In particular, the legendary Bottom of the Hill shows from 2014 are a deep favorite. John and Peter playing Tulsa Imperative on the first night, and all of us singing along to California Song on the last night, are some cherished memories.

A few other favorite moments: the amazing versions of The Bad Doctor and Shadow Song at the Swedish-American Hall, unexpectedly lucking into hearing Sign of the Crow 2 with a tiny crowd at Laurie's Planet of Sound while waiting for the show that night, passing out buttons and meeting new friends in the line and front row of the Great American Music Hall, road tripping across the southwest for the 2014 tour. There are soundboard recordings of some of these, as you can see on the live show directory, but I love the sound of the crowd. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

All of the shows are available at the Internet Archive here, and the shows individually are:

There's a small chance that I'm misremembering taping one of these — I didn't keep any record other than the tapes themselves, and the old forums where I posted them are long gone. That said, I'm confident enough to have uploaded them and believe these to all be mine. If I've made a mistake, please email me so I can fix it.

So, so, so happy to have these out for everyone to hear!

]]> Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0500 live-shows-return Lyrics added for Unreleased songs: # – F https://annotatedtmg.org/unreleased_f.html I've always wanted to have all the unreleased songs up — some of these are my absolute favorite. The first of these pages, Unreleased songs: # – F now has lyrics. Thanks to Riley Routh for their help transcribing some of these songs!

]]> Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0500 unreleased-_f Archival of the Annotated Mountain Goats https://annotatedtmg.org#archival I think everybody knew this was coming except me. I am sad to say that it is time for me to archive the Annotated Mountain Goats. Further edits to these pages are unlikely, although anything is possible.

In the past few months, I've had some incredible changes to my life. New adventures are taking me in wild directions, nearly entirely offline. It's now time to make room for the next era of my life, which means relieving myself of the strange burden I gave myself to complete this impossible project. I intend to keep it hosted as long as I can and I may even edit it from time to time, though I no longer have any expectation of myself to do so.

It's been an absolute joy being part of the Mountain Goats community for such formative years of my life. I view this work, flawed and strange as it is, as my gift to that community. Please feel free to take from it as you see fit; the git repository is intended to facilitate this. If you like, I appreciate being credited when you do so by linking back to this site.

Please do feel free to reach out. I love hearing from readers and fellow fans. My response time is very likely to improve now that I'm not editing the site. Previously, I felt a responsibility to incorporate patches, feedback, and edits, which was an increasingly difficult task and led me to sit on emails for ages. Hopefully you will now find that to be less of the case. You can reach me using the contact information here.

Thank you all for all the shows, fun, connection, and community. John, you know how much you and your music means to me; it has been a deep and precious gift in my life. Thank you, more than I can ever express. I love you all.

]]> Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0500 archival A year of updates https://annotatedtmg.org/changelog.html#a-year-of-updates Thank you tremendously to everyone who wrote in over the past year. Now that the site is back online, I'm excited to share the new annotations with everyone:

Truly appreciate everyone who wrote in, especially everyone's patience as the site disappeared. Thanks much, and it's good to be caught up, at least for faily minimal definitions of caught and up.

]]> Sun, 27 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0500 a-year-of-updates Martial Arts Weekend lyrics are up https://annotatedtmg.org/martial.html My old friend echo took advantage of the new git repository to submit the lyrics to Martial Arts Weekend — thanks so much! I forgot how much I loved Somebody Else's Parking Lot in Sebastopol and Going to Marrakesh. Thanks, that was a pleasure.

I'll be getting to emails soon, thanks to everyone who wrote in!

]]> Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0500 martial-arts-weekend tAMG now available as a git repository https://annotatedtmg.org#git If you're interested in downloading, building, or contributing to the Annotated Mountain Goats, thank you! Instructions on how to obtain a local copy of the site are now available, both in final form as the HTML hosted here and in source form as a git repository. This creates the ability to suggest edits, add annotations, transcribe lyrics, and otherwise improve the site by directly editing the source code.

If you like and are comfortable with git, you can clone, branch, and otherwise manipulate the source like any other git repository, submitting your changes as a pull request. You can also build the site locally if you'd like to be able to see how your changes look using the tools in Jekyll. If git and these programming tools are unfamiliar or intimidating, you can edit directly in the GitHub browser after creating an account. And of course, emailing me directly instead of working with the repository works just as well.

The site is built with Jekyll and written in kramdown. I've written a small introduction to how this works in the repository README. kramdown is very similar to Markdown, which you may have used before. It's not important to know it in order to make suggestions. However, if you're interested in submitting longer annotations or lyrics, it may save you some effort, and is relatively straightforward to learn. kramdown is very easy for a human to read, automates footnote numbering, and generates all the HTML of the site.

For a simple example of kramdown in action, you can compare the template I use for new annotation with its source. To see an example for a completed page, you can compare the Nothing for Juice page with its kramdown source.

Contributions are always encouraged, and I'm hoping using this workflow will make it easier and faster to incorporate changes. If you have any questions about how to help out, please email me.

Thanks as always for reading and writing in!

]]> Fri, 18 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0500 git-and-kramdown The Annotated Mountain Goats returns https://annotatedtmg.org#return-of-tamg Hello! It's really good to see you.

Thank you tremendously for all of the kind words and thoughts over the past year. When I took the site down last May, I was shocked that it was noticed and truly heartwarmed to hear the kind words people had for the website. I appreciate each and every one of you that reached out to make sure all was well. I missed having the site available and I feel joy hosting it again.

The site is back up to stay for as long as I am able to do so. I love this band deeply and for as long as there is a community that benefits from the analyses here, I want them to be available. I took the site down to reshape my presence online; as that is now done, I don't foresee any interruptions in the future.

It's now almost a decade since I started this project, and my life has taken quite a few twists and turns. I've moved onto other endeavors, and while I anticipate tinkering with the site, major updates will probably be rare. Please do contact me with edits, suggestions, and requests to contribute — I always love hearing from you. But changes will be slow.

Several fans have asked about forking the website to continue the project in a more actively-maintained fashion. I'm supportive of the idea. In the near future, I intend to publish the source as a git repository so that you can clone, edit, build, and host the site locally or to more easily incorporate it into your own project. This will also allow for easier contributions to the site in the form of pull requests, at least for those somewhat familiar with git workflow. When ready, I'll post more information here.

In the meantime, if you'd like your own offline copy of the website, one method is to use wget or another archival tool of your choice. The Internet Archive is helpful, but has never captured the site fully or accurately.

Thank you all for your care, friendship, and feedback. I'm glad to be back on the air.

]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0500 return-of-tamg Several months of updates https://annotatedtmg.org Hello everyone! This belated update is largely thanks to the many of you who wrote and pitched in. Thank you for your help and excellent work! I've been gradually uploading these improvements over the last few months.

New transcriptions:

New annotations:

Other updates:

Hope to hear from all of you, and talk to you soon!

]]> Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00:00 -0500 several-months Redefining the Annotated Mountain Goats https://annotatedtmg.org#redefining-tamg We have been blessed with enormous, impossibly vast amounts of incredible music from the Mountain Goats. I still love their music as much as I did when I first heard the band in the mid-2000s, and as when I started the Annotated Mountain Goats in 2012. This project is now nearly a hundred pages of densely referenced writing, containing thousands of footnotes. I'm deeply grateful to everyone who has written me to help with annotations, correct errors, offer feedback, and ask for buttons. It's been a true pleasure.

Whenever I go back to listen to the music I first fell in love with, I feel the inspiration and desire to understand that prompted this website in the first place. The band has always been dynamic, and this decade has seen more change than most. Matt Douglas joined the group, adding woodwinds to their sound, and Goths marked the first Mountain Goats release without the primary influence of John's guitar. These acoustic changes continued through In League with Dragons, albeit differently. John's been clear that these new directions are important for him and the band, and he intends to leave the past well-enough alone. I can't have anything but respect for that desire to tread new creative ground.

More important than these superficial changes to sound are the deeper, thematic and emotional tones that have slowly but critically changed over the years. After the band left the immediacy of the boombox, there has been a gradual shift away from the emotional urgency and rawness of the early years. It's not that the band hasn't continued to sing about the abandoned, lonely, suffering, and intoxicated souls that have always been their focus. But at least to me, it no longer grabs my heart like it once did. Perhaps that's just the instrumentation and stylistic changes, John's maturation, or my aging with the band.

I personally suspect it has more to do with the increasing abstraction of and distance from suffering. Recent releases focus increasingly on nostalgia rather than the immediate and present moment, and I feel like a viewer much more than the participant I once did. Whether it's professional wrestling, goth, Dungeons and Dragons, or even the earlier hints of this direction in Transcendental Youth, Heretic Pride, and Get Lonely, the band seems to be looking back in time for inspiration, and as they find their new way, they become something to love and nourish for other people than me. I send them nothing but fondness and luck as they move on.

So, the Annotated Mountain Goats is being redefined. Rather than chase after a band that no longer calls me as they once did, hoping for some renewal that I would once again crave, I am focusing on the music I've always loved and always wanted to explore. As the cutoff, I am choosing Beat the Champ, the last album that felt to me to be contiguous with the music I have been passionate about for the last two decades. This site will no longer include releases from 2017 onwards, beginning with Goths. Should you wish to pursue these, please let me know and I would love to link to and support your efforts. The only exceptions to this will be when newer work shines an important light on music from the preceding era specifically.

My hope is that this allows me to be reinvigorated by this project, open up space for new fans to explore the music they love, and make the incredibly daunting task of rigorously approaching John's complex and wonderful music much more feasible by at least defining its borders.

So let's go back and listen to some phenomenal albums. If you get to the record player before me, will you save me a seat?

]]> Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0500 redefining-tamg