The album's cover art, featuring an imagined jam session between bluegrass legend Bill Monroe and jazz legend Charlie Parker, served as an apt metaphor for the rich fusion of musical styles Hornsby was developing and expanding.

The album found Hornsby expanding upon the foray into jazz sound from Harbor Lights, this time reintroducing elements of bluegrass from A Night On The Town and his earlier collaborations.

[3] Much like the socially conscious lyrics of his earlier work, the underlying messages behind the catchy tunes are often very dark, such as on "Country Doctor", "Hot House Ball" and "White Wheeled Limousine", where story-telling lyrics build around spousal murder, nuclear disaster, and wedding-day adultery, respectively.

[4] The Hot House version of "White Wheeled Limousine" pairs Pat Metheny's guitar with Fleck's banjo for a blisteringly intricate call-and-response alongside Hornsby's piano runs.

"[4] The album also boasts a more prominent role for Harbor Lights alum John D'earth on trumpet and introduces Bobby Read on woodwinds and J. V. Collier on bass.