As Van Zandt's former manager John Lomax III explains in the 2004 biopic Be Here To Love Me, "That was the sort of the missing link in his career.

[This quote needs a citation] According to John Kruth's 2007 biography To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, Lomax claims the original rough-board mixes of what became The Nashville Sessions reveal a stripped-down rhythm section providing solid support without the excessive overproduction that was added as an afterthought.

[This quote needs a citation] As Kruth observes, "If the objectionable production can somehow be overlooked, it's apparent that The Nashville Sessions was filled with great songs.

White claims that Chuck Cochran really produced and arranged the album, playing piano and conducting the "monastery"-type backing vocals on "The Spider Song".

The song paints a surreal landscape peopled with oddball characters like Jolly Jane and her dozen husbands who come and go, caught in the oblique routines of their lives with no rhyme or reason.