He moved to the Washington metropolitan area in the mid 1970s to work on a film soundtrack; after the project fell through, Almer lived there for the remainder of his life. Although he wrote songs for the annual Hexagon satirical revue and several fake books (consisting of simplified arrangements of popular songs), he mainly subsisted on "intermittent royalty checks". His bipolar disorder often resulted in "erratic mood swings" and abject insomnia; according to Thomas Bernath (a musician who befriended Almer), "He used to tell me the music got better the longer he stayed awake. He didn’t feel like playing until he had been awake for two or three days." Almer continued to record prolifically, amassing a private collection of hundreds of tapes.