After three live albums in a row, the Grateful Dead wanted to record studio versions of songs written since Keith Godchaux had joined the band.

At the time of recording, five of the songs on the album (and part of a 6th) had been in live rotation for up to a year and a half, as arrangements were road-tested and finalized.

Referring to this period, bassist Phil Lesh explained, "We'd learned to break in the material at shows (under fire, as it were), rather than try to work it out at rehearsals, or in the studio at tremendous expense.

"[10] The new compositions drew on many of the band's influences, blending genres from country folk and R&B to ragtime and jazz rock, the latter being more prominent than previously.

[11][3] As had become routine, Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia wrote the majority of the songs; Bob Weir contributed the epic "Weather Report Suite" with lyrics by John Perry Barlow.

It was in Sausalito, near their San Rafael home base, and had been used by cohorts New Riders of the Purple Sage for their successful album The Adventures of Panama Red (which featured input from Hunter and Donna Godchaux).

[14] Though lyrically the songs continued Hunter's Americana themes, a thread of Earth, seasons and life cycles connects the material, particularly with Weir and Barlow's culminating suite.

[15] This is represented in the album cover artwork, designed by San Francisco counterculture artist and band associate Rick Griffin.

It has an Earth tone and simple graphics including a woodcut-derived figure of a harvest-reaping man with a wheat bundle and scythe, and a field crow which was extracted from the card game Rook (and never credited).

"[10] Though pressing their own records was foreseeable, setting up a distribution network to compete with existing channels was formidable and ultimately short-lived.

The Dead's ex-label responded to the loss of the band by compiling "best-of" and archive albums, beginning with Skeletons from the Closet, just months after the release of Wake of the Flood.

All of the songs but "Let Me Sing Your Blues Away" and the first parts of "Weather Report Suite" remained in setlists throughout the existence of the band (though "Here Comes Sunshine" was absent from 2/23/74 to December 1992).

Weir had played the finger-picked "Prelude" for months before attaching it to "Weather Report Suite", ultimately dropping all but the "Let it Grow" section after 1974.