No Deeper Blue is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

Van Zandt flew to Ireland's Xeric Studios to record the songs for No Deeper Blue, which was produced and mixed by Philip Donnelly, who had played guitar on the singer's 1978 album Flyin' Shoes.

You’ve got to go to Ireland and have Philip Donnelly produce your next record, and I walked out into the living room and turned on the lamp and found a piece of paper and it was Phillip’s phone number.

In the biography To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, author John Kruth suggests that "there are some wonderful touches that never would've happened if Townes hadn't hopped a plane to Ireland...The intricate accordion and fiddle fills on "Niles River Blues" recall The Band working out on a catchy Cajun waltz.

Declan Masterson's uilleann pipe weaves and wheeze through Townes most surreal narrative since he crashed his silver ship against the rocks of Andilar."

The album features some lighter moments, such as the comical "Billy, Boney and Ma" and the bluesy "Goin' Down To Memphis", and some heartfelt moments as well, with Van Zandt including lullabies to his two youngest children, "Hey Willy Boy" and "Katie Belle Blue" (the liner notes include a dedication "to John (JT), Will, and Katie Bell").

However, these light-hearted songs are contrasted with "The Hole" and "Marie", some of the darkest material in the Van Zandt canon.

Van Zandt claimed the song was inspired by Meryl Streep's character in the film Ironweed and describes the harrowing plight of a homeless couple who wind up living under a bridge until the woman dies with the protagonist's unborn child "safe inside her."

Van Zandt performed the song years before he committed it to tape, but Michael Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies told John Kruth in 2007 that "it was such a disappointment the way the producer handled it.

Biographer John Kruth believes No Deeper Blue might have benefitted from more of the singer's own instrumentation, stating in 2007, "The album's blues numbers ultimately suffer from the absence of his guitar playing, sounding a bit generic, while some of the ballads beg for his instrumental presence as well."