1 Going to Buffalo

Performed by The Society of Poor Academics (EvilEivind)

Where you wish you were going: The USA. I have some friends there, but traveling is expensive and I fear I’d shop myself silly.

What it was like recording this song: Frustrating, tedious, and interesting. It was recorded with Audacity, using Zoom h3 for the vocals and plugging my old Casio SA-35 directly into my computer’s microphone input. When I do this I can’t actually hear what I’m playing on the keyboard; I can only hear it after it’s been recorded. A lot of time was used tweaking levels and trying out different levels of reverb. A lot easier when you record everything at once in a single track, which is still my preferred way of doing music. Wanted to make it sound relaxing and ethereal. Hopefully this was a triumph.

What you learned recording this song: That the band Microsurgeon deserved more recognition. Also how I can use the echo function on Audacity.

2 Going to East Rutherford
(or Song For an Old Friend or New York City Football is a Lie)

Performed by A Tribute To (hailsatan)

Where you wish you were going: Central Brazil, roughly 3000 miles from good old East Rutherford.

What it was like recording this song: I had a lot of fun working on this song. It gave me a chance to experiment with some new equipment and some different recording techniques.

What you learned recording this song: I learned that central Brazil is roughly 3000 miles from East Rutherford and that it’s more difficult to measure distance in Google Earth than I would have expected.

3 Going to Queens

Performed by The Plot Holes (iatethelotus)

Where you wish you were going: Durham, England. Alternatively, a Proper Studio.

What it was like recording this song: Life affirming. We hope that the nine-year strings on the bass highlight the wistfulness of the song and reflect an artistic decision to compare the impossibility of the narrator’s final statement with the impossibility of the instrument’s tuning, rather than pointing out our lack of $50 with which to buy new strings.

What you learned recording this song: Basses are heavy. Bodies can be heavy too. It is fun and naughty to play a song in D, and then play its bass line in A dorian. Air can also be heavy, and is even heavier when trying to convince yourself you can know the person who’s currently on top of you.

4 Going to Maryland

Performed by Minor Technicality (lincolnic)

Where you wish you were going: I wouldn’t mind seeing California someday.

What it was like recording this song: Rather than follow my first instinct and record this as a rock band, I decided to take a different approach. I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone, so I combined a bunch of different production ideas I’ve had floating around for a while. The result is something I never would have come up with otherwise – and maybe the second piece of music I’ve ever created that people can (theoretically) dance to.

What you learned recording this song: When used in a certain way, an EBow can get you halfway to the Here Come the Warm Jets guitar sound.

5 Going to Cleveland

Performed by Uke & Duet (Mark Frisch and Todd Kuerbitz)

Where you wish you were going: Port of Miami on February 1, 2009 to set sail on a five day cruise with the Mountain Goats (see Ships and Dip V for details).

What it was like recording this song: A challenge to learn chords I’d never played on the ukulele and a complete blast to be able to put our spin on a Mountain Goats song.

What you learned recording this song: How difficult it is to find a free teapot sound effect online.

6 Going to Michigan

Performed by Vispen

Where you wish you were going: Anywhere but here right now.

What it was like recording this song: At first, just having the guitar and vocals sounded a bit boring, so I had a friend playing trumpet, which in the end didn’t work out. I tried a few other things as well, but in the end went back to the old acoustic guitar/vocals lineup.

What you learned recording this song: I still have no idea what you mean about the burning white rose. No I don’t. No, I don’t.

7 Going to Tennessee

Performed by Michael Walker (whiskeytangofoxtrot)

Where you wish you were going: New Mexico

What it was like recording this song: It was problematic. My strumming finger, microphone, and voice were all conspiring against me.

What you learned recording this song: Apparently there’s no baseball team in Tennesssee, that’s really unfortunate. Also, I will never again misspell “Tennessee”.

8 Going to Georgia

Performed by Fenix Down (BroomPerson)

Where you wish you were going: The world of firefly would be pretty fun.

What it was like recording this song: Easy to perform the actual task, but really challenging to figure out how to make it not be just a copy of the original. And afterwards, tough to decide whether to keep the Casio in or take it out.

What you learned recording this song: I learned that sometimes the most moving stories are told in the simplest ways.

9 Going to Kansas

Performed by nils.

Where you wish you were going: Well, basically, everywhere else than Paris (my hometown). And since I don’t have a clue what it looks like, why not Kansas after all?

What it was like recording this song: Though I’m a huge Mountain Goats fan, my music doesn’t quite sound like John’s (you can hear my stuff at nils3k.bandcamp.com). So I really wanted to cover this one in my own mellow acoustic way and completely forget the original song. I started off listening to it a couple of times in order to remember the melody. And then I tried to forget everything else: the chords, the tempo, the intensity in the singing… I searched for the lyrics on the internet and sang over different chords sequences for hours: at some point there were only minor chords, then there were ten different chords, then I was back to the original chords… finally I started recording the song before I was even sure of what I would settle on, but it soon turned out pretty nice. I had it finished within a couple of hours only!

What you learned recording this song: I’m not sure I understand that question! English is not my mother tongue so I did not spend time trying to decipher the lyrics, I think I got the overall meaning of it and I’m fine with this! But otherwise, recording this song was a confirmation for me than John’s early songs (I mean pre-4AD era) are not just clever words shouted over three basic chords, it’s a very unique musical material that can be performed in a lot of different ways.

10 Going to Lubbock

Performed by Jonty

Where you wish you were going: Right now, Nottingham.

What it was like recording this song: Interesting. I took the middles out of a Saturday and Sunday to record and ‘conceptualize’ (if I’m allowed such a grandiose term for what was essentially making it up as I went along) these two. It was me, a tambourine, and a guitar annoying the hell out of my flatmates for a good few hours. Fortunately, there are no surly intruders into the songs (I think), but I would’ve killed for a nice long stretch in a studio to make Going To Lubbock into a real soundscape, instead of a bit of a hotchpotch.

What you learned recording this song: I learned that I’m developing a masturbatory penchant for layering vocals and guitars. I cut out quite a lot out of sympathy for the listeners. I also learned that my voice is no substitute for my girlfriend’s, and that a game of basketball in the desert with JD and Franklin Bruno could be even more interesting than it sounds.

11 Going to Mexico

Performed by betamax

Where you wish you were going: St. Petersberg, Russia. On an overnight train.

What it was like recording this song: I really struggled with this one. It’s not one I’m overly familiar with, but after a few listens the change in pace of the ‘chorus’ threw me and I couldn’t figure out a way to change the song, but keep that change of pace intact. I felt it was important.I was loathe to record a like-for-like cover and I yearned to make it a slide guitar blues piece, especially with lyrics like “black dog on my heels” in there, but again the change of pace made me rethink. As it stands, I tried to slow the whole thing down but make it a bit more complex than the original. My natural way for doing this is to fingerpick it, and so that’s where I went. Once I got into it, I did enjoy it but I do feel my home recording suffers from a lack of sharpness and clarity in the fingerpicked notes and maybe it was a poor choice. Maybe I should have just shouted my head off like John does so well… it’s certainly served me well on other tMG covers!

What you learned recording this song: That I probably won’t play it ever again and that having two months to record a song is not enough! There’s never enough time; I could have tried to rejig this a hundred thousand times and still not been quite content!

12 Going to Chino

Performed by Lara Mishler (layladarling)

Where you wish you were going: New Mexico

What it was like recording this song: Recording was a hot mess. I had two separate microphones give up on me, and then spent a long time just kind of rolling around with it trying to figure out how i could make it work for me. its really simple to play and the most difficult thing for me was trying to keep it interesting without playing it exactly like it is on the record.

What you learned recording this song: Chino’s got that convenient access to the 60 freeway, amongst other things.

13 Going through Pomona

Performed by Some of the Dharma (rmotte)

Where you wish you were going: I like it here.

What it was like recording this song: There are a million directions you can take these songs. I have a new loop station and delay pedal so I tried that. The strings you hear at the end are from a bowed banjo. I’m lousy with it. In a previous version I just slid all over the guitar and made as much noise as possible but then my girlfriend said she didn’t get it so I don’t know, I guess I listened to her. If recording wasn’t such a pain in the ass I would probably try putting a solo between the verses so it wasn’t so short.

What you learned recording this song: Not much. It’s a song about jealousy right?

14 Going to San Diego

Performed by Joseph M. Gregor (blankwavemessiah)

Where you wish you were going: Space

What it was like recording this song: It was fun and relaxing during the couple sessions I recorded it in… But the time in between working on it was full of bad news. I guess I made it through though!

What you learned recording this song: Your friends and family are going to try to keep you away from certain people, to keep you from getting hurt. But, the truth is that we know what we want, and were gonna fight like hell to get it. We would much prefer to say “I told you so!” than “I guess you were right”. I hope everyone enjoys or at least respects what I’ve done with this great song. I thank TMG forums, daniellescomment, nutopia, all the users involved and on the forums, and of course tMG for getting myself into such a great project.

15 Going to Malibu

Performed by Allegra

Where you wish you were going: Argentina!

What it was like recording this song: Really fun! The first time I ever messed around on GarageBand and it proved to be awesome.

What you learned recording this song: Sometimes you just gotta accept that things won’t work out like you planned them to.

16 Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina

Performed by Chris Jamieson (nutopia1213)

Where you wish you were going: bed

What it was like recording this song: As easy or complex as a cover song can be, there’s always a way. There’s always a foundation to work from; it’s just a matter of whether you want to tear it down, build alongside of it, or build an extension onto it. or all three. I tend to always take the first option.

What you learned recording this song: Better to have lost in love than never to have lost at all.

17 Going to Reykjavik

Performed by Featherweight (shlack)

Where you wish you were going: East/North/East

What it was like recording this song: I’ve been listening obsessively to a lot of Destroyer’s new stuff these days and I wanted to do something different than I’ve done for cover projects in the past. Thus, I recorded my cover in the style of Destroyer’s more recent ambient/disco recordings.

What you learned recording this song: Perhaps I should have anticipated this better: JD’s sense of regular rhythm on a lot of these early albums is very fluid.

18 Going to Alaska

Performed by The Elegant Bachelors (tkpeters)

Where you wish you were going: Jimmy Johns

What it was like recording this song: It was delightful. I ran it straight it through my guitar amp which is always fun. Didn’t have any of my gear with me at the time but was feeling particularly antsy. So, and to cover up my crummy/broken mic’s flaws, I just screwed up the signal by putting it through a guitar amp.

What you learned recording this song: I learned that I don’t have to “sing” in order to record a “song.”

19 Going to Kirby Sigston

Performed by Jamison Murphy

Where you wish you were going: Yoknapatawpha County, if it existed.

What it was like recording this song: I will forever look upon the recording of “Going to Kirby Sigston” fondly. At first I anticipated the recording process would take a week, which was a quixotic estimate to say the least. It ended up taking approximately a month, but recording it was actually quite enjoyable. When I heard I was going to play “Going to Kirby Sigston”, the instrument I immediately knew to use was the Geecheetar, a sort of cigar-box guitar a friend of mine made. I had never recorded with the Geecheetar, but I found that recording it was fairly easy. However, I did not envision my recording as being only on the Geecheetar: I envisioned more of an orchestra of folk instruments, if you will, entirely recorded in my bedroom, and consisting solely of me. I have gotten fairly adept at home-recording my own songs, but I felt I would make a particular effort with this song and the others I’ve been recording recently. I decided to use a mandolin for the song’s other guitar part, my trusty gourd-shaped shaker as percussion, and a harmonica in addition to vocals. The recording took longer than expected to a number of reasons. For one, mixing these instruments was difficult, so I had to re-record a few times, and I couldn’t record vocals due to lingering colds. These impediments went on for a while until one cold afternoon during Winter Break I decided, once and for all, to finish the song. And, in one three-hour recording session, I did, and in this form the song exists today.

What you learned recording this song: I learned that chickens are special, and it is possible to eat cold black eggs all day long.

20 Going to Bristol

Performed by Pure Juniper (SlowWestVulture)

Where you wish you were going: Wonderland. That would be awesome.

What it was like recording this song: It was a great time. We wanted to create something extremely different from the original and I think we achieved that fairly well. Thinking drums would be a good touch, we enlisted our friend Kevin. We realized that drums are incredible and that we should make an addition to the band. We also realized that backing vocals should be recorded shirtless.

What you learned recording this song: It’s gonna be ok.

21 Going to Spain

Performed by Five Dollar William (daniellescomment)

Where you wish you were going: Wawa, a heavenly convenience store popular in the Mid-Atlantic region and ever-present in southeastern Pennsylvania.

What it was like recording this song: It was like hanging out, but with instruments...and Batman.

What you learned recording this song: That it is important to carry around enough capos for all the guitars in the band. Additionally, wearing funny hats while recording almost certainly makes you a better performer. We also learned that the magic was inside us all along.

22 Going to Marrakesh

Performed by The Tree is My Hat (Cerebus138)

Where you wish you were going: Nunavut

What it was like recording this song: Having not picked up my guitar in two years it was a little daunting to try and record my first cover. It was also my first time recording myself singing “seriously”. It’s was a blessing that I knew the song so well because when it came time to do the singing track it came very naturally. It was actually quite amazing to belt out certain lyrics in a way that seemed convincing, and I was already convinced by the words so it didn't feel forced. How it will sound to anyone else doesn’t really matter to me because I am happy with my first recorded voice track!

What you learned recording this song: I learned that singing the words “going to Marrakesh” is very hard to do without it sounding awkward. I also learned that covering a song that means something to me is just as exciting and fulfilling as writing a new song. I thought about how some people’s love can be a very powerful swimming monster, but then thought how much easier it would be if their love could transform into a water creature instead, and then they wouldn’t have to worry about drowning, they would just have to be wary of nets and dynamite. Then I thought about how monsters are usually very stubborn and one-track minded, and that was part of the problem. It seems this couple’s love became a monster because it wasn’t able to grow or change. It was the same thing it was when they first met and it was only fighting the drowning because the people themselves hadn’t changed very much so the monster still meant something, so it wanted to hold on, but then I thought it was much more than that and let my musings get a little too abstract to put into words…

23 Going to Morocco

Performed by Zopilote Steel

Where you wish you were going: Paris.

What it was like recording this song: Difficult! the tab on the wiki didn’t seem right, and I found it hard to dicipher John’s guitar part by ear. So in the end I just slapped the capo half way up the neck and made it up, which was quite a release actually; to not worry about having the precise chords right.

What you learned recording this song: You may be about to get eaten by wolves, but there’s no point in crying about it.

24 Going to Bolivia

Performed by Silver Speakers (SaveMeASeat)

Where you wish you were going: Ireland.

What it was like recording this song: It was fun to just plow through it a few times, it’s a fun song to belt out with all the imagery in the words and a bit of bounciness to the tune. I feel like by combining the guy/girl harmonies with the piano backing we’ve touched on different times & phases of tMG with nice effect.

What you learned recording this song: A new appreciation for JD’s ability to spit out stuff like “and the sounds of a carnival drifted miraculously…” non-awkwardly and perfectly in time with the song. Not easy.

25 Going to Spirit Lake

Performed by Dan Trombley (dtrom4)

Where you wish you were going: Well, I’ve never actually gone to Spirit Lake, but from what I’ve read it sounds intriguing. I’m sure there’s something poetic to say about a serene lake turned toxic only to beat expectations and recover, especially with respect to the characters typically found in a Mountain Goats song. But I’ll just leave that for you to think about.

What it was like recording this song: It’s kind of a blessing and a curse to get a song you’re not familiar with for these cover projects. While it’s intimidating to start a song from scratch with just lyrics, it also makes it easier to come up with something unique. So I found to find a live bootleg and listened to it once or twice to get a flavor of the original, then started working on the song about a week later after I’d forgotten most of it. After developing the basic structure for the song, I had came up with some ambitious plans with several instrumental parts and a couple of solos. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get it to come together. Several attempts (and a few weeks) later I threw everything out and started from scratch and played a shorter version with just the guitar and vocals (sticking to my comfort zone). The rest of the song built up much more naturally from there; in fact, I was tempted to start over again with the longer version, but decided to just keep it short.

What you learned recording this song: Maybe keep it simple? Which isn't really true, since the process of trying different approaches to the song ultimately led to a more interesting arrangement that I wouldn't have come up with if my first attempt had worked. So maybe the lesson here is just “live and learn”.

26 Going to Hungary

Performed by fart

Where you wish you were going: Buffalo

What it was like recording this song: It was ok.

What you learned recording this song: Fart is no Cornell.

27 Going to Jamaica

Performed by Jonty

28 Going to Lebanon

Performed by Jason Bates (j8274)

Where you wish you were going: Happiness

What it was like recording this song: I didn’t do anything crazy or groundbreaking with it, so it was pretty straightforward. I just recorded the guitar on one track and the vocals on the other and called it a day.

What you learned recording this song: There’s something aesthetically pleasing in the simplicity of early tMG.

29 Going to Palestine

Performed by El Nombre

Where you wish you were going: Sleep

What it was like recording this song: Having never heard the song I’d been assigned, I decided it would be more fun not to listen to it and just see what I came up with based on the lyrics. I “wrote” it on guitar but ended up not using any guitar in the recording.

What you learned recording this song: How to use a vocoder (sort of).

30 Going to Japan

Performed by Smiths’re Sorry or The Smith Family is Sorry You Had to Hear This (StatusFrustratio)

Where you wish you were going: Flagstaff, Arizona

What it was like recording this song: One camera, one cassettecorder, one computer’s mic, two counties, two emails, three people. Since Smith 2 and I had both heard Going to Japan, we asked Honourary Smith to do her part with just the lyrics for clues, then stuck our bits over the top. I was going to sing along, but it was so hard for me to get used to the different tune I ended up just shouting the odd bit.