After the release of On Avery Island, Mangum recruited three musicians to tour with: Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane. On April 28, 1997, Neutral Milk Hotel began a national tour, during which the band members learned to play as a unit. The On Avery Island tour generated enough money for the band members to afford to move to Athens, Georgia, where a large group of Elephant 6 musicians were living. By the spring of 1997, Mangum had written and demoed nearly every song for a second album. He shared the demos with his bandmates before they moved to Denver to record the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
