Insurance Fraud Number 2

Insurance Fraud #2
Album	The Coroner's Gambit
Released	2000
Artist	the Mountain Goats
Length	3:02
Previous Track	"There Will Be No Divorce"
Next Track	"The Alphonse Mambo"

Insurance Fraud #2 is the 14th song on the album The Coroner's Gambit.

Lyrics

Bag full of oily rags
Fifty cent lighter
Dreams of retirement in Cancun 
Burning ever brighter
There's a lot of ways to make money in this world
But I can't recommend insurance fraud

Burned out shell of a Volkswagen
Blood stains on the driveway
Torn up Mercedes by the side of the highway
Big plans, big plans
Let me tell you something, sister
You will never get away with it

You were sitting in the recliner with the TV on
When you said something evil and then you were gone
Explosives in the water main
A blown fuse
College graduation photograph
Splashed all over the six o'clock news
I won't be cashing in your policy
'Til I find out what it is you're trying to do to me

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song

• "{checking setlist} Oh, no. Oh, no...This is going to go poorly for all of us...This song was only ever played once: when it was recorded. There were two takes of it, hence the number next to its title on the album. I have no idea what the tuning was that I was doing...This is on The Coroner's Gambit, and what you might've thought was an extraordinarily expensive sound effect at the end of it, it's actually a train. Because we lived right next to the train tracks in Colo—I mean, not literally on them because we'd be dead, but we were at a crossing. It made recording an entirely different enterprise than checking into a recording studio. You sorta had to get in and get out before the next train comes. Sometimes you don't get out in time. Sometimes it comes through at just the right moment. That's why this made the album." -- 2007-06-17 - Zoop - Farm Sanctuary - Watkins Glen, NY
• "This is a song in which our narrator counsels the wayward traveler not to fall prey to seductive, deep dreams of insurance fraud. It's called 'Insurance Fraud #2'." -- 2019-05-15 - Thalia Hall - Chicago, IL
• " I have songs back in the old catalogue that are the result of two strings being broken . . . I think Insurance Fraud #2 was a broken string song." -- I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats Episode 204

Live Shows this Song Was Played at

• 2007-06-17 - Zoop - Farm Sanctuary - Watkins Glen, NY
• 2019-04-28 - Wilbur Theatre - Boston, MA
• 2019-05-01 - White Eagle Hall - Jersey City, NJ
• 2019-05-03 - L'Astral - Montreal, QC
• 2019-05-05 - Phoenix - Toronto, ON
• 2019-05-08 - Mr. Smalls - Millvale, PA
• 2019-05-09 - Woodward Theater - Cincinnati, OH
• 2019-05-11 - Minglewood Hall - Memphis, TN
• 2019-05-14 - Majestic Theatre - Madison, WI
• 2019-05-15 - Thalia Hall - Chicago, IL