1 country smash for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in 1983), Van Zandt was enjoying what was for him a stable home life for the first time with his third wife Jeanene and their new son Will.

Nine years after releasing his last album, Van Zandt returned to the studio with producer "Cowboy" Jack Clement, Jim Rooney and a group of top shelf musicians, including fiddle and mandolin player Mark O'Connor and Willie Nelson's harmonica player Mickey Raphael, who all complement Van Zandt's subtle, poetic songs.

The book also reveals that Van Zandt wrote the good-time country-blues romp "Ain't Leavin' Your Love" the day after his wife Jeanene brought their newborn baby home in March 1983.

Palmer also drew comparisons between Van Zandt and Hank Williams, observing that "their songwriting craft and vocal musicianship are exceptional, but what you hear beyond that: it seems to be the direct, untrammeled expression of a man's soul..."[4] Comparisons of the lives of these two men continued to increase following Van Zandt's death on New Year's Day 1997, the forty-fourth anniversary of Williams' death.

Amazon.com opines, "The funky "Ain't Leavin' Your Love" comes complete with an unlikely saxophone solo, while "Catfish Song" boasts the kind of gospel melody that marked this gentle, hard-living man as one of the finest songwriters to have ever worked in a country-folk vein."

"Buckskin Stallion Blues" was recorded and adopted as the title track of a 1994 collaborative EP by country singer Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the grunge band Mudhoney.

The album was released with a sticker containing an infamous quote from Steve Earle: "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."

All songs written by Townes Van Zandt, except where noted The original CD release (and possibly other formats as well) was digitally mixed and mastered.

Some copies included a bright pink sticker on the shrink wrap with the now famous quote from Steve Earle, "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."