Walker wrote three tracks ("Ships in a Bottle", "Vessels", and "The 3 Kids In Brooklyn") prior to the Malibu house fires that took his home in November 2007.

These tracks were made available on Walker's Myspace site in demo form in late 2007.

Butch stated in an interview with InklingsTV that "[the fires] made [him] feel like [he] had something to prove, something that [he] needed to say".

[citation needed] Butch released an online-only video for the first single "Ships in a Bottle" through his Myspace website on September 15, 2008.

A special 180-gram vinyl-edition release of Sycamore Meadows was made available for the 2008 holiday season.