All of the excellent songs are beautifully written by Sturgill Simpson except the last couple of tracks on this twelve song album that are written by Ray Cline/Ralph Stanley and Steven Fromholz respectively giving some idea to those that have not heard of him before of his roots and direction. His own songs are qualatively on a par with these two greats and are very much tales of life that include stories of lost love tales about a struggling musician and even stories of a hard working coal mining community. The album was produced by Dave Cobb and recorded at a couple of locations in Nashville but don t think despite this being classy country music that it is going to be just another Nashville country album. Whereas much of that is sanitized this album has a genuine hard edge that is obvious to those that really listen. As music in the background (not sure why anyone wants that but some do!) it would sound like a pleasant if high quality country album but when you listen to the album properly it becomes obvious that this is a quite sparse recording with none of the sand papered smoothness of so much other country music. The band plays with great skill and where necessary plenty of restraint and consists of Sturgill on lead vocals acoustic guitar and Telecaster Hargus Pig Robbins on piano Chris Powell drums Robby Turner steel guitar throughout and bass on tracks 1 2 3 5 7 8 10 Brian Freedom Eagle Bear Allen bass on tracks 4 6 9 11 12 Bobby Diamond Bob Emmett on organ and mellotron with Leroy Powell steel guitar on tracks 6 and 9 plus backing vocals on track 6 and finally Dave Cobb 12 string electric guitar on track 7.