The album is named after Ben "Junta" Hunter, the band's first official manager, whose nickname is pronounced with a hard J and a short U.

[3] In addition to a few more traditionally structured songs, Junta contains symphonic-like epics and multi-part progressive rock and jazz suites.

Phish held a release party concert for the Junta tape on May 9, 1989 at The Front club in their native Burlington, Vermont.

"Union Federal", "Sanity", and "Icculus" did not appear on the original cassette release, but rather only on the Elektra version, which had extra space on the CD format.

There was a mix up in adding them to the Elektra version post-date, so the May 3, 1988 date inside the album notes is incorrect.