Between 1975 and 1977, Young and producer David Briggs periodically conducted recording sessions at Indigo Ranch on nights of the full moon.

[1] In an interview with KOTO FM (which was also posted to his public Facebook page), Young stated that the session was intended to be released as an album not long after it was recorded, but Reprise executives were unimpressed.

The material was considered to be no more than a collection of demos not fit for release, and the label suggested that Neil rerecord the songs with a backing band.

[5] In a four-out-of-five star review for AllMusic, editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated "On Hitchhiker, Young still isn't certain if he's exorcized those demons, and that unease gives just enough complexity to the album's soothing ebb and flow.

Club, Josh Modell gave the album a B+ rating and called it a "fantastic" artifact of Young's fruitful 1970s songwriting period.

Sodomsky wrote, "Young was on the verge of an epiphany in the summer of ’76: his past, present, and future cohabitating in a body of work with the potential to get torn up and rewritten with any sudden vision, any chemical impulse.